Canine Emotional Wellness: Moving Beyond Behaviour "Problems"

There are things that every individual needs in order to be and stay secure and well in life.

You and me, included, as are our dogs.

While educated professionals are becoming more aware of canine emotional wellness and many people it comes naturally to care about how dogs feel.

Empathetic people prioritise that dogs in their care are supported and not going through life anxious. They understand that a dog's inner world matters just as much as their outer behaviour.

They see beyond the surface to the sentient being beneath, a creature with fears and hopes, preferences and boundaries, just like us.

That said, we have created and perpetuated a myth that anything at all our dogs struggle with is a behaviour problem and that dog needs training.

This reductionist view strips away the complexity of what it means to be a living, feeling being navigating a world not built for them.

It transforms genuine emotional distress into something to be corrected, suppressed, or managed, rather than understood and supported.

While we are becoming more invested in human emotional and mental health, and we will hopefully get there with dogs too eventually, awareness of their needs is sadly currently lacking.

We speak about trauma-informed care, nervous system regulation, and emotional safety for ourselves, yet we rarely extend this same compassion and understanding to the dogs we share our lives with.

"We wouldn't expect a human who has experienced trauma to simply 'get over it' through training, yet we often expect exactly this from our dogs."

We wouldn't expect a human who has experienced trauma to simply "get over it" through training, yet we often expect exactly this from our dogs.

Needs of an individual include not only food and water, a warm bed and shelter, but agency, autonomy and the ever important physical and emotional safety.

All of these are crucial needs, but for dogs are often overlooked.

We've been taught to believe that if we provide the basics (the kibble in the bowl, the roof over their heads, the occasional walk around the block) we've fulfilled our responsibility.

But what about their need to make choices?

Their need to feel safe in their own nervous system? Their need to explore the world through their extraordinary sense of smell, to engage their minds, to have some say in how their day unfolds?

The Cost of Denying Dog Autonomy

When we deny dogs these fundamental needs, we're not just failing to enrich their lives, we're actively creating conditions for stress and reactivity.

A dog without agency is a dog living in a state of learned helplessness. A dog without autonomy has no anchor, no sense of control in their world.

And a dog without emotional safety exists in a chronic state of stress, their nervous system never quite settling, never quite believing that they're truly okay.

We often see things like the dog who is barking and lunging, put into a prong collar. Or the dog who is scared of crowds being forced into class.

We see the dog who pulls on lead being yanked back with force. The dog who's anxious being flooded with the very thing they fear.

It's clear to see that these dogs are struggling and even shut down, an emotional state that is far from wellness.

Their bodies are telling us everything we need to know, if only we would listen. The whale eye, the tucked tail, the frozen body, the excessive panting, the avoidance behaviours.

These are not signs of a dog being "naughty" or "stubborn." These are signs of a nervous system in distress, a dog desperately trying to communicate that they don't feel safe.

The Problem with Force and Suppression

And yet, the response is so often more control, more force, more suppression of what the dog is trying to tell us.

We see their fear and we push them through it. We see their stress and we add more pressure. We see their shutdown and we mistake it for calmness, for learning, for "respect."

"What we're actually seeing is a dog who has learned that their communication doesn't matter, that their feelings don't count, that their only option is to endure."

But what we're actually seeing is a dog who has learned that their communication doesn't matter, that their feelings don't count, that their only option is to endure.

So how can we ensure our dogs are emotionally well? It begins with a fundamental shift in how we see them and what we believe they need.

What can we do to create autonomy for them? How can we help them to be emotionally well and resilient?

These questions invite us into a deeper relationship with our dogs, one built on trust and cooperation.

What Dog Autonomy Looks Like in Daily Life

Autonomy for dogs looks like having choices throughout their day:

• The freedom to move away from something that frightens them
• Having multiple places to rest where they feel secure
• Being able to access their guardian when they need comfort
• Engaging in species-specific behaviours like sniffing, foraging, and investigating their environment at their own pace
• Having predictability in their routine so their nervous system isn't constantly bracing for the unknown

But perhaps most importantly, autonomy means having a voice in their own care.

This is where practices like cooperative care become transformative. Instead of restraining a dog for nail trims or forcing them through grooming, we teach them that they can participate in these processes, that they can communicate if they need a break, that their comfort matters as much as the task at hand.

This shifts the entire experience from something that happens to them to something they engage in with us.

Resilience isn't about hardening dogs to stress or exposing them to difficult situations until they "get over it."

True resilience is built on a foundation of safety and security. It's the capacity to encounter challenges and return to a state of balance. It's having a regulated nervous system that can experience stress and then recover.

It's having confidence born from experience that says, "I can handle this, and even if I can't, my guardian will help me."

How to Build Genuine Resilience

We build resilience through providing our dogs with activities that challenge them appropriately (not overwhelming them, but stretching them just enough).

Nosework and scentwork are extraordinary for this because they engage the dog's most powerful sense while giving them complete autonomy in how they work.

They build problem-solving skills and confidence while simultaneously regulating the nervous system through the act of sniffing itself. The dog is in control of the search, making decisions, using their natural abilities, experiencing success.

Resilience also comes from having our needs met consistently. From knowing that when we communicate distress, someone listens. From experiencing that when things are hard, we're not alone.

From learning that we can trust our guardian to keep us safe, to not push us beyond what we can handle, to be our advocate in a world that doesn't always understand us.

There are small tweaks that make a huge difference:

• Giving your dog five extra minutes on their walk to sniff where they want
• Letting them choose which direction to go sometimes
• Creating a safe space where they can retreat when the world feels too much
• Learning to read their stress signals before they escalate
• Speaking up for them when someone wants to pet them and they're clearly uncomfortable
• Slowing down enough to notice how they're really doing beneath the surface
  
  

"These are shifts in awareness, changes in perspective, moments of choosing to see and honour the sentient being before us."

These are shifts in awareness, changes in perspective, moments of choosing to see and honour the sentient being before us.

They're moving from "what do I need my dog to do?" to "what does my dog need from me?"

Join a Community Focused on Dog Emotional Wellness

The topic of this post is the exact work we do in my community: exploring these questions together, learning to see our dogs differently, discovering practical ways to support their emotional wellness while deepening the bond we share with them.

We look at the science, yes, but we also look at the soul of the thing. We understand that our dogs are not problems to be solved but beings to be known.