When Avoiding Your Dog’s Trigger Backfires
How short-term management quietly sabotages your long-term training goals
By Jenna Romano
I often see guardians turn avoidance of triggers from temporary management into a permanent lifestyle.
That is, guardians of anxious, reactive, and/or aggressive dogs avoid putting their dogs in triggering situations as a ‘solution’ to their dog’s behavior problems.
Often the guardians who pick “avoidance” as their solution intend to make it the short-term, management solution. This isn’t inherently a “bad” solution.
BUT! It can backfire when overtime Mr. Complacency quietly sneaks in and sabotages the Guardian’s long-term training goals.
Here’s how this inevitably plays out. (And we’ll use reactivity/aggression as an example.)
Every time Sally takes her reactive dog, Marcus, on a walk, Marcus gets super anxious and overwhelmed.
Sally reads on IG: "If your dog is anxious, frantic, or reactive on walks... just stop walking them! Ditch the walk!" So Sally stops walking Marcus as a short-term solution.
Sally finds other ways to enrich Marcus in the meantime, which may not meet ALL the needs Marcus gets met from the walk. BUT at least it avoids Marcus going over threshold, experiencing more trauma, and/or exhibiting “bad” behavior.
Over time, in finding these alternative means of enrichment, Sally becomes conditioned to this new way of “avoidance/management life.”
So much so that the real long-term training plan feels so overwhelming and exhausting that maintaining the status quo becomes the path of least resistance, simply because ‘avoidance’ is familiar.
Would Sally like to be able to take Marcus on a walk again? Sure! Of course.
But the friction of starting and maintaining the long-term training plan requires so much energy that it’s easier to just be complacent in the avoidance lifestyle.
Now, importantly, despite Mr. Complacency sabotaging Sally’s long-term goals with Marcus, she still feels a mountain of grief and guilt for not walking Marcus. She knows Marcus is essentially living a life sentence cooped up in the living room. And not to mention, Sally enjoys walks with her dog; she needs that bonding enrichment as much as Marcus does.
Of course this story is about anxiety on walks. But I see it in separation anxiety cases (“I’ll just never go out to coffee with friends ever again.”) and resource guarding (“We’ll just make sure there’s 300 ft between us and his food at all times.”) all the time, too. Mr. Complacency traps guardians in all sorts of management situations.
If this sounds like you – if a whole bunch of avoidance and management has made your life “live-able”, but you and your dog are missing out on actually enjoying it, and then you a whole bunch of resistance comes up every time you try to start actual training – then this episode is for you. ⬇️
🎙️“Trapped in Management as a Lifestyle - When Management/Avoidance Becomes the Norm”
Ep 12, Season 2 of the Get a Calm Dog Podcast on
& anywhere you get your podcasts
In it, I’ll help you:
Determine if you’re in a season that requires mostly short-term or long-term solutions (because both are required and both have their seasons!)
Commit to one long-term training goal / plan that you know you’ll feel resistance in doing, but it will serve you and your dog’s long-term happiness.
Give you next action steps to follow through on that long-term training goal.
And if you’re looking for a trainer to guide you
