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Arousal
Arousal and impulse control
Owners of busy dogs hear two pieces of advice: tire the dog out, and be firmer. This page explains why neither works on its own, what over-arousal actually looks like, and how a settle is taught.
Two definitions
Arousal is how revved up a dog is; impulse control is choosing the better option anyway
Arousal is a dog's level of physical and mental activation. Low arousal is a dog dozing on a cot; moderate arousal is a dog that is alert, interested and able to listen; high arousal is the dog at the front door when the bell rings, all claws and noise. Arousal is not good or bad in itself. Excitement, frustration, play and fear all raise it, and every dog moves up and down the scale many times a day.
Impulse control is the skill of not acting on the first urge: waiting for the door to open, leaving a dropped sandwich, holding a sit while a ball rolls past. It is taught like any other behavior, by reinforcing the pause rather than the grab. The catch is that it gets harder as arousal climbs, so the two have to be trained together, starting calm and adding excitement in small steps.
- Low arousal: resting, slow to respond
- Moderate arousal: alert, listening, taking food gently
- High arousal: frantic, grabbing food, deaf to known cues
- Impulse control works best in the middle of the range
Not disobedience
Over-arousal versus disobedience: a dog that cannot respond is not refusing
A dog that sits beautifully in the kitchen and ignores the same cue on a windy beach is usually not being stubborn. It has gone past the level of arousal at which it can process a cue learned in a calm room. Signs include snatching or refusing food, a fixed stare, frantic sniffing, biting at the leash, jumping and a body that cannot keep still. Repeating the cue louder only adds noise to a brain that is already overloaded.
Telling the two apart changes what you do next. If a dog can take food softly and glance at you but does not sit, the cue may need more practice in that setting or a better reward. If it cannot take food or look at you, lower the arousal first: add distance, turn away, give it something simple such as a hand target or a scatter of food to find, and ask for the harder skill later.
- Takes food gently and can look at you: a training question
- Snatches food or will not eat: arousal is too high
- Fixed stare, frantic movement or leash biting: calm things first
- Louder cues rarely help
The settle
The settle: an off switch taught as a skill, not something you wait for
A settle is a trained behavior in which the dog lies down on a mat or raised cot and relaxes there until released. It differs from a stay in that the goal is a calm body, not just a held position: a hip rolled to one side, the head down, slower breathing. Taught well, it becomes the place a dog goes to come down after excitement. Our answer page on the place command covers the cue itself.
Place and impulse control are both on Foundation's skill list, and Advanced adds neutrality and further impulse control work for dogs whose self-control falls apart around distractions. A typical Dogtown Academy day already includes trainer-led settle time, so dogs learn to switch on and switch off, and a stay builds on the same rhythm. At the go-home lesson you learn to cue the settle and, just as important, to reward your dog for settling when you did not ask.
- 01
Put a mat or cot in a quiet room and reward any interest in it
- 02
Reward four paws on it, then a down, before you add any word
- 03
Reward relaxed details: a hip rolling over, the chin dropping, a sigh
- 04
Add the cue once the dog goes to the mat readily
- 05
Practice after short games, so the dog learns to come down from play
- 06
Release with a word, and keep early sessions to a few minutes
Exercise myths
Exercise myths: a tired dog is not a calm dog, and more chasing can mean more arousal
Exercise is a real need, and plenty of restless dogs are simply under-exercised. The myth is that exhaustion produces calm. Fast, repetitive games such as endless ball throwing raise arousal while they last, and stamina grows with practice, so the amount of running it takes to wear out a young, fit dog keeps creeping up. A worn-out dog may lie down, but it has not learned to settle when it is not worn out.
What works better is a mix: exercise at predictable times, mental work such as scent games and puzzles, and calm practiced on purpose. Dogtown's enrichment menu, a sniff room session for $7, a puzzle game for $7, a lick mat for $5 or a frozen Kong for $6, can be added to daycare, Academy and overnight days for that reason. In a Cape Ann summer, when Gloucester's public beaches are closed to dogs, these quieter outlets carry more of the load.
- Exercise meets a need; it does not teach calm
- Repetitive chase games can wind a dog up
- Scent work and puzzles tire the brain at low intensity
- A practiced settle after exercise is the missing piece
The research
What the research says: too much arousal hurts self-control, and self-control is not one skill
A 2015 study in Animal Cognition by Bray, MacLean and Hare compared pet dogs with assistance dogs bred and trained for low arousal on a detour task that required them to inhibit a direct reach toward food. When an experimenter raised the dogs' arousal with eager encouragement, the calmer assistance dogs did better, while the more excitable pet dogs did worse. The authors linked the result to the Yerkes-Dodson law, in which performance peaks at a moderate level of arousal.
A 2017 study in Frontiers in Psychology by Brucks and colleagues gave 67 dogs a battery of common impulse-control tests and found that scores did not correlate from one task to another. The authors concluded that self-control in dogs is context specific and warned against judging it from a single test. Both studies used short laboratory tasks rather than real training, so they describe patterns, not your dog. The practical message holds: a dog that waits at the door has not automatically learned to wait for a squirrel.
At Dogtown
Switching on and switching off
Board and train, Academy days and the enrichment menu all work on calm as a skill, not just on burning energy.
Asked and answered
Questions people ask about this
Short, complete answers you can act on today. More in the full FAQ.
Is my dog over-aroused or just badly behaved?
Can a board and train teach my dog to settle in my house?
Should I stop playing tug or fetch?
Is a high-energy dog a fit for daycare?
What does neutrality mean in the Advanced stay?
More questions? Read the full FAQ
Sources
- Bray, MacLean and Hare (2015), arousal and inhibitory control in dogs
- Brucks et al. (2017), inhibitory control measures in dogs, Frontiers in Psychology
- City of Gloucester: beach information
Rules and dates change. We re-check every beach, licensing and ordinance page each spring and fall; the source above is the current word.
Keep reading
Next step
Teach the off switch.
Tell us when your dog loses its head and what sets it off. The training team answers within one hour on business days and books the assessment with Gabby.
- 01Free evaluationWeekdays 6:30 – 9:30 AM
- 02Book a dayOnline, in the app or by phone
- 03Play, rest, repeatReport card at pick-up
