#121 - Try it: Learn Your Pet's Ladder of De-Escalation

We talk a lot about recognizing when our pets are becoming more stressed. But what about when they’re calming down? In this episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Emily Strong walks you through a practical and insightful skill: identifying your pet’s ladder of de-escalation. It’s the crucial flip side to recognizing escalation, and it is just as important for supporting your pet’s full stress recovery.

Emily breaks down a six-step process to help you recognize when your pet is moving toward relaxation and how to tell the difference between “just coping” and “truly relaxed.” From self-soothing behaviors to the difference between “resting” and really resting, this episode is filled with tips, common mistakes to avoid, and why you should absolutely film your dog sometimes.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways

1️⃣ The Ladder of De-Escalation Matters – Understanding how your pet moves down from stress is just as important as knowing how they go up.
2️⃣ Six-Step Observation Process – Learn six steps to better observe and interpret your pet’s body language.
3️⃣ Film and Repeat – Every animal is different, and context matters. Filming and revisiting behavior helps you learn about your pet and what’s consistent and what changes.

Links & Resources from the Episode

🧾 For full episode transcripts: Arial l OpenDyslexic

🌐 Go here for the full episode show notes

🎧 #120 - Why Your Pet Needs a Safe Space (and How to Make One)

🎧 #118 - Amber Quann: Biofeedback, Beer, &  Backpacks

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: Just like with a ladder of escalation, when we understand where our dog is in their ladder of deescalation, we can better support them and prevent them from. Getting back up again, like not being able to complete their stress response cycle, but going back to being stressed again.

[00:00:16] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:34] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:35] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. 

[00:00:56] Emily: In this episode, we're gonna learn how to identify your dog's ladder of deescalation. A lot of people are learning how to focus on their dog's ladder of escalation and being able to identify where their dog is, is at in their trigger stacking process. And that's awesome. I love that. But actually Ellen was the first person to gently ask me, why don't we also have clients practice identifying deescalation. And I was like, why Ellen Yoakum, you clever beast.

Yes, of course. That is also important. So shout out to Ellen for helping me realize that this was an equally important part of the education process for getting to know your dog better and understanding what your dog is doing, where they're at in their stress response cycle. Um, so let's talk about how to do that.

First of all we need to pay attention to the dog's body language signals, not just when they're experiencing stress, but also after that stressor has gone and your dog is starting to come down from that really stressful event. So pay attention to as many body language signals as you can see.

And and then identify what they look like from their like peak stress to just after the stressful event ended. Then step two is identifying the signals. That indicate that they're starting to be able to resume their regular activities again. Typically that looks like whatever they were doing before the stressor showed up, right?

So for example for Bri, I could tell that she was sort of ready to. Carry on business as usual. After that deep puff, after a stressful event, she had this like whole constellation of body language signals that she would do that was like, oh, can you believe that thing just happened?

Oh my God. And then when she was kind of ready to get over it, deep sigh, and then she would return to whatever activity she'd been doing. before the stressor showed up. Step three is to identify differences between their body language during regular activities before versus after the event.

Notice what's different. So even though they're able to return to whatever they're doing beforehand, chances are usually pretty good that they don't look exactly the same as they did. They may have gone back to their food puzzle or gone back to watching TV or digging in the yard or whatever they were doing.

But there are probably some differences in their body language or just how they're carrying their body in general. Muscle tension, pilo, erection, stuff like that. Let's pay attention to what it looks like before and after so that we can notice when our dog is able to go back to business as usual.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're done completing their stress response cycle. And this is important because I think this is where a lot of people miss an opportunity or make a, make a mistake. This is an. Often where people actually get confused because they're like, I don't understand why, like, she's over it.

She's gone back to what she was doing, but then she just snapped at my kid and she's never done that before. And it's like, because she's not actually done completing her stress response cycle. She's just completed it enough to carry on with what she was doing before, but she's still stressed, right?

That's step three. Step four is identify what they do to self-soothe and prepare for rest after they, they've completed whatever that activity was. And actually I do wanna say, I'm gonna kind of retroactively go back and talk more about step four here, because sometimes dogs don't resume the activity that they were doing before.

They'll just do something else instead. And same thing though, in terms of like, let's notice what's different in their body language. So let's say your dog was working on a snuffle mat and then the mailman dared to approach your property and. Your dog was, outraged at such an injustice.

And then the mailman leaves and instead of going back to the food puzzle, now they're sitting and. Like staring out the window, like their chin rested on the window sill. They're not barking anymore. They're not pacing. Their hackles have gone, uh, they didn't resume their, their food puzzle activity.

But they're also like past the point of reactivity and they've come back down enough that they can just sit there and stare out the window. So that's an example of like an alternative outcome, but you still wanna do the step four thing. Why, you know, to notice the difference in their body language between what they were doing before and what they're doing now.

And the reason I say that in step five is because. What they might do to self-soothe after they're, they've decided they're done staring at the window might look different than what they would do to self-soothe if they were able to return to the food puzzle activity. So sometimes the differences that, and what they were doing before and after actually sort of like.

Set them on different paths entirely for what that completing their stress response cycle would look like. So we need to kind of understand the context in which they can go back to an activity they were doing before versus when they kind of get derailed from that activity and do something else, because that may actually change how they complete their stress response cycle from then on for like from that moment forward.

so step five, identify their pre rests ritual behaviors. And this may happen a few minutes after the event. It may happen a few hours after the event. So we continue to watch their ladder of deescalation for as long as it takes for them to return to their baseline. Because we don't get to decide how long it takes them to return to their baseline.

And by the way, that doesn't mean that you just have to sit there and stare at your dog for the rest of the day. Um, you can carry on with your life. Just notice the dog every time you happen to look at the dog, take note of what they're doing and what their body language looks like. You can jot it down if that's helpful to you.

If you have an extraordinary memory, you can just kind of. Remember if you have the ability to video it, you can video it. But just check in with your dog periodically. You don't have to make it your full-time job to just stare at them creepily while they're existing after, after a stressful event.

They probably would also be weirded out by that in addition to be it being unsustainable for you. Step six is to learn how to differentiate between. A Downs stay or some other type of prone, but alert position versus full relaxation. And here's another area where a lot of people sort of miss a trick because.

People assume that because they kind of did their deescalation thing and then they did a pre rests ritual, um, and now they're laying on their relaxation station or, their safe space or whatever. Therefore they must have returned to baseline, but that's not always true. We often work with dogs who don't return to their baseline.

After a stressful event, and it may take several days before we can see them actually relaxed or they may not be able to actually relax until nighttime when they're actually asleep. So it's really important to be able to identify when the dog has just gone somewhere. To sort of seek comfort, but they're still alert versus a dog who is actually returning all the way down to baseline and they are truly melty, droopy eyed, loosey goosey, muscles, relaxed.

 Just like Amber and I were talking about in her episode, and one of the biggest difficulties that we see in our field is that people struggle to differentiate between a dog who is prone but alert versus a dog who is actually fully relaxed. So learn what those differences look like in your dog, because every dog is different.

Of course, there are some similarities. A fully relaxed dog is going to have loose muscles. Right. So that's something that's always gonna be true. But dogs can look different in terms of, of what that, what relaxed really looks like for them, especially if they're. Still learning how to relax. There are some dogs who don't know how yet, and they have to be taught.

And if that describes your dog, then we have to meet the learner where they're at, and we have to identify what their version of relaxed looks like, which may be prone but alert. But that's not our end goal. That's where they're at now. But we wanna get them to the point where they're actually relaxed. So.

Here's some tips and tricks and common mistakes. First of all, I mentioned earlier, film it if you can. I think I wanna make that a little stronger and say, ideally you should be filming this if you want to be really clear on your dog's slaughter of deescalation because, every dog is different and it can take different lengths of time, not just across dogs, but also within an individual dog across different scenarios or contexts, right? And also most of us don't have an eidetic memory where we can just look at a dog and have a perfect, accurate snapshot in our head of what the exact body language signals were. and, you know, impressions only take us so far.

This is one thing that, I see a lot in professionals who have gotten good enough at body language that they don't think they need to keep learning body language. They think they're like, oh yeah, no, I, my first impression was, was correct. And it's like, I don't think this is about correct or incorrect.

I think this is about how much detail you're actually paying attention to, because sometimes the devil's in the details. in my opinion, you can never be too good at body language. You can always learn more and you can always get better. And, um, one of the best ways to do that is by filming it and then going back and reviewing it.

When you have a little more objectivity, you have the ability to slow it down. You have the ability to repeat it, right? Um, so ideally we should be filming it. My other tip, or one of my other tips is do this for both res stressors. In other words, good stressors, exciting stressors, and also do it for distress, stressors, fear, frustration.

Whatever other labels we wanna use for negative emotions, because for many dogs, their ladder of deescalation is going to look different depending on whether it was a eustress bike or a distress bike. So it'd be cool to know what that looks like for your dog. I think it's just really helpful to know your dog well enough to be able to tell when they had a really exciting moment and they now they need to kind of chill out a little bit versus when they had a period of acute distress and they're in recovery from that.

My last tip is repeat this process multiple times. It's great to do it once and if once is what you got. Awesome. That's so much better than so many people, um, who live with dogs. So you're already ahead of the curve. If you've already done that one time, that's amazing, celebrate that. But ideally, if you can do it multiple times what you're going to get out of that is learning what behaviors and body language signals are consistent across contexts versus which behaviors and body language signals are context dependent.

And the better you know your dog, the better you can support them. When they go through periods of stress in the future. All right. And then my last really big tip it's such a big tip that it probably should have been its own step, but.

I, I don't necessarily think it, it needs to happen for every individual dog. We'll just call this a really, really big tip. I strongly suggest that you identify where in their deescalation process your dog is able to do specific things or respond to specific stimuli. For example identify when in that deescalation process, they're able to check in with you.

Identify where in the process they're able to take food at all. Identify where in the process they're able to take food, gently identify where in the process they're able to ignore stressors, identify where they're able to play or otherwise engage with their environments. Identify where they can actively learn or problem solve.

Identify where they take themselves to their relaxation station or safe space. And finally identify when and where in that deescalation process, they're able to work on melty projects, long-term calming projects, when they're able to get nesty and munch on their munches and lick on their licks and self-soothe and kind of get themselves into that resting state.

Because just like with a ladder of escalation, when we understand where our dog is in their ladder of deescalation, we can better support them and prevent them from. Getting back up again, like not being able to complete their stress response cycle, but going back to being stressed again. So I think that's a good idea is just know, be able to correlate between body language and behavior that you see versus what they're capable of when you see those body language signals.

Okay. To recap, step one, pay attention to the body language signals. Step two, identify the signals that indicate they're able to resume their regular activities, whatever those were, or do another activity as we discussed. Step three, identify differences between their body language before versus after the event.

Step four, identify what they do to self-soothe and prepare for rest. Step five, identify their pre rests ritual behaviors. And step six, learn how to differentiate between a downs stay or other types of prone, but alert positions versus full relaxation. And friends. If you have done or decide to do, uh, ladder of deescalation for your pet, we would love for you to share it or share videos of your dog in their ladder of deescalation.

Send those to us on Instagram at pet Harmony training. Thanks friends, and happy training.

[00:14:46] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.