When It Comes to Anxiety, Do Dogs Feed Off Your Energy?
“Is my anxiety making my dog anxious?” We hear this question a lot! It recently came up in a Psychology Today article entitled “Why Do Anxious Owners Tend To Have Anxious Dogs?” It reads, “The reasons for this relationship are unclear but several studies suggest the causal arrow points from owner to pet.” (This type of conversation pops up often outside of this article too.)
Words matter. If you are someone who experiences anxiety (like I am), this type of language may be enough to bring some of it on. When it comes to dog behavior, I find that the behavior lens is both effective and kind. So I thought it would be nice to use it to look at this question in another way (perhaps to partially remind myself that a label the world has given me as a characteristic of who I am is insufficient to use as a cause of my dog’s behavior).
“Anxious” is a construct -- a label. In the science of behavior, we look at the observable and measurable. There’s a lot to go off of there!
Behavior and the environment are in constant conversation. All of us are learning ALL the time. You can’t turn it off. So yes, our behavior absolutely influences our dog’s behavior and our dog’s behavior absolutely influences ours. Because we are a part of our dog’s environment, and our dogs are a part of ours.
But when we look with a behavior lens, we are empowered. We can define our “anxiety” in observable behaviors. Then we can either change our behavior (e.g. dog tags cue you to exhale rather than tense up) or we can teach our dogs that our behavior means something else (e.g. “oh crap” means turn around with me).
So What About Anxiety? Might We Also Be Giving Environmental Cues to Our Dogs?
Every morning I put on shoes to take my dogs outside. Inevitably, they wag their tails and stretch. I often feel groggy at this time. I don't hear people say my grogginess caused my dog’s behavior. Most people know that my putting shoes on in the morning predicts a walk, and therefore has become an environmental cue for my dogs.
In the first video in the post above, you’ll see that I walked my dog, Otis, to one of my “happy spots.” I felt “calm and happy” during the videos (not “anxious”). I acted out some “anxious behaviors” that I might do if I felt nervous on a walk: I scanned the environment (looking around with furrowed brows) and then tensed up and gasped. In the video, see if you notice how Otis’s behavior changes based on my behavior.
It’s no secret that dogs have evolved alongside humans and have become quite skilled at reading our body language and behavior -- even when it’s super subtle. I wasn’t feeling anxious at all, so Otis didn’t catch my anxiety like one might catch a cold from a friend. But in that video, it is incredibly obvious that my behavior influenced Otis’s behavior.
My scanning cued Otis to scan long before I even gasped. Why?! Here is my educated guess. I am human. I find it super jarring (and aversive) when Otis barks and lunges when I’m not expecting it. His barking and lunging taught me to scan the environment looking for things he might react to in order to avoid being surprised or to prevent his barking altogether. Overtime, my scanning started to predict triggers for Otis, so he learned that scanning meant a trigger was coming. You see how we are both influencing each other’s behavior?
Here is the good news! If we are using a behavior lens, we can actually do something about it! I noticed long ago that I had a bit of a “reflex” to grab up high on the leash and pull up/in when I got nervous (aka a kid on a scooter comes out of nowhere). So I taught Otis that that behavior was no biggie and just meant to look at me for a treat.
Watch this next video in the post above and observe my behavior and Otis’s. I arguably exhibited more “anxious behavior” in that last video, but Otis didn’t respond with scanning or barking or anything that looks “nervous.” Why? Because he learned that me tensing and choking up on the leash means to look at me. We can all do this! If we cannot change our own behavior, we can at least teach our dogs (in a safe space to start) that it means something else (like turn with me or look to ground for a treat).
We absolutely influence our dogs’ behavior, and they influence ours. This is a much broader truth about the relationship between behavior and the environment. It is always a good idea to be curious and observant about how our behavior is impacting our dogs, but we would argue that we can do this more effectively and kindly without using big constructs like anxiety in a causal way.
For the record, I could dance up and down the leash, gasp, swear, scan, and tense up (with real feelings of anxiety) and my other dog, Sully, remains soft and calm. If it were the “anxiety,” why isn’t she affected? It makes more sense when we look at the anxious behaviors as cues … they just aren’t salient signals for her … so no response!
How To Respond When You’re Walking Your Dog and Someone Says ‘Just Calm Down’
We’ve all been there. Your dog does something on a walk, and you find yourself in a spiral of anxiety, guilt, and frustration ready to blow at the next leaf that crosses your path. And then somebody tells you that you need to “just calm down” and perhaps they say “your anxiety is making your dog anxious.” … At which point, your eyes retire to the back of your head.
First and foremost, you are human and feeling a wide range of emotions is normal. You CAN learn to move through the thoughts and emotions that show up. That is very different from expecting yourself to “just be calm” all the time. Second, what the heck is calm!? If someone says “raise your shoulders,” you can physically perform that behavior. If someone says “just be calm,” what are you supposed to do? That feels like a setup for frustration!
As someone with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (and a history of panic attacks), it felt absurd to even imagine feeling calm walking my dogs. After all, if I could “just be calm,” I would have done it long ago. I had very little experience with calm behaviors, so I had to start from lying on the living room floor and build up. It took me months before I could even take a deep breath while standing up. In other words, just like w/dogs, I practiced calm behaviors outside of the conditions I wanted to use them in first.
What happens if we start by operationalizing (defining in measurable behaviors) “calm.” One of the things that helped me the most was actually defining calm in terms of measurable behavior. Once I did that, a huge shift happened: Instead of trying to BE calm, I could PRACTICE calm behavior. Perhaps: Low heart rate, slow and deep breaths, attending to the present moment, relaxed muscles, etc. Clench your whole body (raise your shoulders, curl your toes, scrunch your face, make fists) as you take a big inhale. Hold your breath for three to five seconds. Do a BIG exhale and release all of the tension you just built so your whole body feels soft.
When I brought my “practice” to walks, I gave myself a phrase to repeat (e.g. “All of it belongs” or “Wow”). If I feel panic show up in my body after my dog barks, I say “Wow,” put my hand on my heart, take a breath, and start noting what I feel in my body or notice around me with some compassion (e.g. my chest got tight, my head feels hot, my heart is racing, etc.). For me, this gives me space to be safe in what I am experiencing and then I can practice my “calming behaviors” (breathing, attending to the present, softening muscles, etc.).
By the way, our Attention Unlocked e-course combines giving you ways to support and train your dog (thereby making walking them a bit easier) while also inviting you to bring some awareness to your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
