DS460: Optimal Arousal: Consent and the Working Dog

Arousal: Understanding "THE ZONE"

According to Wikipedia, “arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs being stimulated to a point of perception…. [It] is important in regulating consciousness, attention, alertness, and information processing.” 

In other words, arousal is not only a normal, but a necessary state. We want our dogs to be focused and alert, and to do work we ask of them. For that they need to be aroused! It’s pretty hard to work with a sleeping dog.

Arousal is a complex, physiological response that helps us interact with the world. It involves our autonomic nervous system (heart rate, bodily functions, pupil dilation, fight or flight reactions), our endocrine system (adrenals, thyroid, etc.), and the ascending reticular activing system (ARAS). 

The ascending reticular activing system (ARAS)

What the heck is the ARAS, you ask? Great question! This little piece of our brainstem is critically important. It effectively acts as a filter, helping us tune out all the extraneous information that is constantly bombarding us. Scientist estimate that, at any given moment, we are receiving around two million separate pieces of information from our environment. TWO MILLION bits of data per second! 

Our brains, big and complex as they are, can only process around 100 bits per second. Without the ARAS, we would be completely paralyzed by all that input. As such, the ARAS helps us function in the world by filtering out everything that is deemed unimportant, allowing us to focus on what matters.

Have you ever noticed how, when you start thinking about something in particular, suddenly you see it everywhere? You learn a new word, for example, and all of a sudden you hear everyone using it. Or you put on a purple top and then notice that everyone is wearing purple that day?

Here’s another example: I recently bought a new car. During the shopping process, I evaluated brands and decided on a Subaru. Suddenly, all I saw on the road was Subarus! Before that decision, I thought they were a rather unusual brand. Nope! I just never noticed them until I set my ARAS filter to Subaru.I ended up buying a white, 2009 Forester. Do you know how many white, 2009 Foresters there are out there? They’re EVERYWHERE! Who knew? 

On the flip side, while I see Subarus everywhere now, especially white Foresters of the same vintage as mine, I couldn’t tell you what other brand of cars I passed on the way into town yesterday. My ARAS, set on Subaru seeking mode, filters all other brands of cars out. They still drive by me, but they no longer register. 

Similarly, when your dog’s ARAS is set to Sheep! or Amazing Scent!! his brain is going to start filtering out everything it perceives as extraneous to the goal of acquiring said sheep or following that scent trail.

Importantly, all our senses except for smell—that is sight, sound, taste, and touch—are filtered through the ARAS. 

When we get focused on something, our ARAS starts to block data in considers extraneous to achieving that focus, including from senses not involved. Once our dog gets locked onto a scent, for example, she may stop tasting food, stop noticing physical touch (including corrections), and even stop hearing! At least things that don't contribute to acheiving the goal her ARAS is helping acheive: following that scent.

For this reason, our dogs will often stop responding to our cues when in arousal. As such, when we give our dog what we thought was a well-trained cue and she does not respond while hyper focused on some task, she is not "blowing us off". Rather, she literally cannot hear us. Or rather, her brain does not interpret the data. Her ARAS filters out our voice—a sound not connected / contradictory to achieving the goal at hand—as being unimportant data.

This filtering system also explains why so many dogs won’t / can’t eat around things that excite them, and also avoid touch or find it annoying.

Interestingly, the sense of smell is not included here and, instead, information from scent goes directly to the emotional center of the brain! We can use this to our advantage. More on that in a later discussion.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Another piece of this puzzle we need to consider is the Yerkes-Dodson Law. According to this law, there exists an optimal level of arousal for performance. Too much arousal, and we can no longer function. Not enough arousal, and we have the same problem (for different reasons).

[Image credit: By Yerkes and Dodson, Hebbian - Diamond DM, et al. (2007). "The Temporal Dynamics Model of Emotional Memory Processing: A Synthesis on the Neurobiological Basis of Stress-Induced Amnesia, Flashbulb and Traumatic Memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson Law".]

The Zone vs. The Red

Our goal is to try and keep our dogs in the “optimal arousal zone”—henceforth referred to as “The Zone”. There is no measure for this, and every dog will be different. But we can test for it through regularly checking in with our dogs as we work (once again, more on how to do so coming soon!).

Two points to keep in mind: 

1) We need arousal! We want our dogs focused and alert enough to respond to our cues and the task at hand. We do not want a dog who is apathetic nor totally relaxed. Strongly focused is fine. Is good. Aroused to the point of being unresponsive is what we want to avoid.

2) Stressing low is NOT low arousal. Some dogs “stress high”, meaning they get very agitated and display behaviours such as barking, chasing, biting etc. These worked up dogs are easy to recognize and are pretty common in the sport world.

In contrast, some dogs “stress low”. These are the dogs who seem to “shut down”, freeze, or quit etc. 

It’s critical to understand that BOTH types of behaviours are symptoms of being aroused to the point of impaired performance. That is, both the high stressing and the low stressing dog can be found on the right hand side of the optimal performance curve, the area labeled “the impaired performance zone”. We’ll call this The Red. 

Applying arousal raising factors to a low stressing dog (getting excited, clapping, making high pitched repetitive noises, etc.) can push her farther into The Red, thereby shutting her down more. Or, if we are able to elicit a response in this way, we can be left with the emotional fall-out of a negative conditioned emotional response (-CER).

Note: The Red, the zone to the right of optimal performance in the curve above, is where the use of aversives and punishment typically come into play in traditional training. Specifically, if the dog is kept a little afraid, their focus is thereby split. The ARAS has to filter information to keep track of both the task and the scary thing. This serves to broaden the spectrum of focus and bring the handler back into the picture.

If we wish to use an +R strategy instead, we must find a way to get our dog's ARAS to consider our cues important for the successful completion of the task at hand, without using fear. To keep their focus broad enough to receive the data we send them. To stay in The Zone, and out of The Red.

Therein lies our challenge!

So, how do we keep our dogs in The Zone? Answering this question is what we'll be exploring for the rest of this course!