What is “threshold”

When two dog trainers talk about a threshold, both will have a solid understanding of what is meant. Which is pretty miraculous really, when you consider how nebulous the definition of a threshold is for behaviour.

The most basic interpretation of a behaviour threshold is the point at which a dog’s behaviour changes from one state to another. A dog moving from a calm state to a state of panic will have crossed a threshold somewhere. The most common interpretation of a behaviour threshold is the point at which a dog begins expressing a specific unwanted behaviour. For example, if a reactive dog begins lunging toward another dog, they have crossed a threshold. Most definitions will include or imply that the threshold is a point of no return; easy to approach, but once surpassed it can be very difficult to go back to doing what you were doing beforehand. Dogs described as “Over-Threshold” have reached an emotional state so intense that they cannot function as they typically would under baseline conditions. Most commonly dogs described as “Over-Threshold” cannot follow known cues, cannot respond to their own name, and cannot even eat their favourite treats from right under their noses. This “Over-Threshold” state, which is usually a stress response, vexes many a pet-parent because once your dog is cast into this unresponsive mode, by definition normal operant style training does not work. The path forward becomes very unclear, and mounting desperation can lead to ineffective, high-stress and exhausting strategies for both human and dog alike.

The reason two dog trainers understand the concept of a threshold almost implicitly isn’t because these definitions are truly sufficient. It’s because we have a collective shared experience - many hours of it - dancing around this invisible line in the sand. When you come back around to describe the experience to somebody without those hard hours though, these definitions can start to feel vague. When you try to actually measure threshold, these definitions can feel downright slippery.

Measuring Threshold

Often, dog trainers use a behaviourism-style approach to training. Since we can’t know how the dog is feeling internally, we don’t try to guess. We can only measure the observable behaviour the animal displays, and track any differences to understand whether or not our methods are working effectively. Measuring threshold is important, to ensure the dog is in the right state to learn and not in the potentially volatile “over-threshold” state; but measuring threshold is no easy task.

In perfectly controlled setting, we might be able to measure dog’s behavioural state using the stimulus intensity as a proxy - for example, if a stranger dog appearing at 10 m away does not promote a stress response but at 8 m away it does, we can make some inferences about where the threshold is via the metric of proximity. The same can be true for other metrics like volume, size and speed. When training using set-ups in a facility, proxy metrics can be hugely valuable, but it isn’t always feasible to train set-ups. We live in the real world. Each stimulus encountered outside is an independent study of one, and your mileage will vary if you are trying to predict your dogs reaction using a single proxy metric like distance. It’s slippery because it’s often very helpful to know that a dog will typically not react to other dogs passing outside a set distance, but then it can seem surprising when this rule is broken because the passing dog in question was a larger size, or displayed more intense body language.

The more effective measurement that we have for threshold is behaviour. As a dog approaches their threshold, their outward body language behaviour will change in stages. For a dog who resource guards food, we might see behaviour progress from freezing to covering to growling, snarling and eventually biting as the stimulus (an approaching human) increases in intensity. We know that we are approaching the threshold for biting, because the dog is already growling softly. We are on the pathway, so to speak. The same is true of dogs who urinate on meeting a new person, or dogs who lunge at other dogs on leash. In every scenario, escalating body language behaviours will inform us of an impending threshold for the target behaviour. By understanding how body language behaviour changes as we increase stimulus intensity, we can usually avoid triggering a full blown stress response by removing either the dog or the stimulus from the scenario, or by preventing the stimulus intensity from increasing any further.

Threshold Chart for Reactivity Training by When Hounds Fly

It wouldn’t be a fun blog post if this was the end of the story. We need at least one bombshell revelation per post, so here it comes: I don’t use the concept of threshold with my clients much anymore. We don’t want to trigger a stress response, so emphasizing threshold is about as useful as telling a client to cross a minefield, then spending all your time describing the explosion without explaining the safe road across to the other side. I’m going to spend the rest of the article explaining how I navigate threshold instead. With the dog trainer equivalent of a map and a compass, by the way.

Two-Step Threshold

Amy Cook wrote a blog way back in 2019 which spoke about a “one step” threshold. In this blog, Amy postulates that really, the only threshold that matters for training is the one between the state of “not noticing” a stimulus, and “noticing” a stimulus. The moment your dog takes a single step on the behaviour escalation pathway towards a stress response you can consider them “over threshold” for the state of calm and apply your behaviour modification protocol. It’s never too soon to help your dog return to baseline, so why wait for things to escalate?

This resonated with me deeply, but it didn’t quite satisfy. It was sometime after reading this blog post that I started using two new phrases to describe threshold to my clients: “threshold of perception” and “threshold of behaviour”. I needed two thresholds, because I want my clients to perform different training tasks depending on where their dog is on the progression pathway towards stress. By having these two thresholds, I can more easily map out for them what to do, and when to do it.

It was much later that I discovered Malena Martini’s certified separation anxiety trainers (CSATs) had the lingo for this all along. If a dog has separation anxiety, the threshold of perception is the moment the dog realises they are alone, usually when the human leaves through the front door. The threshold for behaviour occurs when the dog begins to feel uncomfortable, which can happen several minutes or even hours after the human leaves. The threshold for behaviour is defined by a specific behaviour or set of behaviours, usually an early step on the stress progression pathway. In separation anxiety, it can be anything from pacing to staring at the door, or even just nervously scratching an ear. It can then be several more minutes before the dog progresses through increasing discomfort to hit their classic “over-threshold” stress state. CSATs describe the space between the threshold for behaviour and going over threshold as the “zone of itchiness”. Interestingly, just because a dog is in the zone of itchiness, doesn’t mean they will always go over threshold - many separation anxiety dogs learn to self-soothe and bring themselves back to baseline, rather than tip over into panic. This wasn’t a revelation for me, but it did bolster a gut feeling that I had after reading Amy’s blog: sometimes it’s OK (and dare I say even beneficial) to walk more than one step along the progression pathway towards stress, so long as the dog has some kind of a de-escalation exit-ramp to take (or is saved from going over-threshold by a timely intervention). Indeed, the CSAT separation anxiety treatment protocol involves delving briefly, carefully and systematically into the zone of itchiness; gradually building resilience in a dog who is afraid of being alone. Progress is simply made faster this way, compared to lingering around the threshold of perception.

The Threshold for Perception

The threshold for perception, or Amy Cook’s “One Step Threshold” is the most important threshold to grasp at the beginning of any training plan which aims to mitigate stress in the dog. It’s our first opportunity to intervene, and it’s the easiest place to find success.

When a dog first notices a stimulus whether it’s a noise, a skateboard, a child playing or a dog approaching, usually the first tip-off that our dog has noticed it is a look in the direction of the stimulus. Be careful here, because some dogs have different behaviour tells. Where one dog stares, another might drop her tail and look away, or another might self-groom. Identifying what your dog looks like at the threshold of perception is crucial, so don’t assume. When you see your dog pass this threshold, it’s your cue to begin training.

The types of training that work at this stage are, in my opinion, based mainly around desensitization AKA controlled exposure. This is where the dog is allowed to look at the stimulus and is protected from further escalation. Either, the stimulus is removed, or the stimulus is present at such low intensity that the dog can safely let it go. Most desensitization plans do not involve strategic reinforcement, as food or toys can mask early body language cues for stress. The notable exception for this is personal play, which is a wonderful reinforcer to use alongside desensitization plans, as it does not easily mask early stress signals. If you’re not sure how to apply desensitization based protocols, have a look at Grisha Stewarts BAT2.0, or Amy Cook’s Play Way. Malena’s CSAT protocol for separation anxiety also leverages this heavily, as explained above. Desensitization is a wonderful tool to have in your toolkit, because it encourages dogs to find their own exit-ramp away from the stress response. Depending on the problem my client is facing, I will typically give them some form of desentization based exercise to perform at the Threshold of Perception.

There are two issues with training at the threshold of perception. The first is that we, as humans, are often pretty bad at it… until we gain the critical observational skills to notice those subtle early signs that our dog has perceived a stimulus. This means there can be an ugly trial-and-error phase for new handlers, and the dog may tip over into the stress pathway more often than they should.

The other issue is for my city-dwelling friends. You know this issue intimately. It would be lovely to hang out at the threshold of perception and then stop the stimulus from intensifying, unfortunately, this just isn’t realistic in a place where stimuli are everywhere, at too-high intensity, as soon as you leave your front door.

Modifying the Threshold of Perception

One of the big ways that we can help our city dogs is to modify the threshold of perception. Making your dog more or less sensitive to perceiving a stimulus can go a very long way to turn an environment from “impossible to train in” to “difficult, but achievable”.

You can influence your dog to become less likely to perceive a stimulus in several ways. You can do this completely by accident by having your hand in your treat-pouch. Yes, I am specifically calling you out - stop doing that. You know who you are. When your hand is near the food, your food-motivated dog may be so interested in this that they simply don’t notice the world around them. It might help you get out of a tight spot, like an elevator or a busy trail head, but it won’t do your dog any favors in the long run if they’re always wearing treat-goggles that limit their perception to 2 ft in front of their nose.

Sometimes we do want to mask the threshold of perception on purpose, such that the dog doesn’t notice a stimulus at all. We would only do this if there’s no chance of the stimulus intensity reaching a critical point by which the dog would notice it despite masking efforts. For example, if your dog is barking at people through the car window on a drive, we might use a car-crate or a calming cap. You can’t bark at what you can’t see, and it’s fairly easy to keep the world outside of your car away from your dog inside your car.

If your dog doesn’t see the stimulus until it’s reached an intolerable intensity, then by the time you enter the stress progression pathway you are much closer to a full blown stress response than is useful, plus you are dealing with an unhelpful “startle” element now, too. In fact, if the threshold for perception is masked until a critical trigger intensity is reached, you will have a dog who moves from calm to full-blown stress response with none of those escalating body language signals that serve as your only road map. I call these dogs “explosive”, because they might seem to explode from one state to another. For these dogs, modifying the threshold of perception in the opposite direction is crucial.

To help your dog notice stimuli in the environment sooner than they normally would, you can either teach them an informational cue, or reinforce them for noticing low-intensity triggers. Leslie McDevitts “Look At That” game teaches an informational cue quite well, by teaching our dog to look around the environment when we say “Look At That”. The dog can then clock the stimulus early, giving you more room to implement your training strategy. My favourite way of enhancing my dogs perception, though, is the “Engage” part of the “Engage / Disengage” game, or stage 1 of Emma Parson’s Click to Calm. This teaches your dog to automatically scan the environment for interesting things, rather than relying on a cue from the handler. If you’re feeling fancy, you can do a bit of both.

Of course, the other way to do it is to use your environment wisely. Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of high ground in the Art of War thousands of years ago - you can see further when higher up, and that gives you an advantage. If you have a small dog, take a moment to think about how far they can actually see at ground level, and then maybe take them somewhere with a nice little hill to practice your training exercises.

The Threshold of Behaviour

I don’t like talking about the threshold that you cross right before a full blown stress response, because by the time you’re at this threshold, it’s already too late to implement any kind of training plan. So instead, I choose a specific behaviour or set of behaviours on the pathway towards stress as my “threshold” instead. When these behaviours occur, the client will be given a specific exercise to do. With desensitization at the threshold of perception, the dog typically learns to self-regulate. But when you’re already one foot into the stress progression pathway, it makes more sense to guide your dog to the exit ramp yourself.

There are many ways to do this, but most involve either teaching a different behaviour (like recall, or eye contact) and then reinforcing that behaviour, or applying a counter-conditioning technique in addition to the desensitisation we were doing over at the threshold of perception. Some techniques use a combination of both. I’m not going to go into any specific training plans here, because there are so many, but my favourites are Engage / Disengage or some of the Control Unleashed Pattern Games by Leslie McDevitt. The crucial takeaway is explaining to your client “when you see x behaviour, do y”. And if you’re dealing with a couple of issues, you can have several different thresholds for behaviour without contradicting yourself. If you have too many, though, you’ll need to start making some gnarly flow-charts which I don’t recommend.

Modifying the threshold for behaviour really happens through training, rather than clever environmental arrangement. At the end of the day, this is what “behaviour modification” really is - changing an animals behavioural response to a stimulus. As behaviour begins to change from stress escalation behaviours to de-escalation behaviours, you can start changing the focus of the training plan to meet whatever goals you actually have for the dog-handler team.

My Dog is stressed, now what?

The reality of living in a busy city environment is that, from time to time, our dogs will “go over threshold” in the full-blown stress meltdown sense of the word. While I don’t spend too much time dwelling on this, I do like to guide my clients through the process of helping their stressed-dogs find peace again.

Some dogs are obvious in their stress response - lunging, barking or running away. Others might freeze and go quiet. Some dogs will lunge and bark without being stressed at all. It is worth “describing the explosion” a little bit, so the handler doesn’t try to push through a stress response when they should take some time to de-escalate.

If a dog truly goes into a stress response, the first priority is to remove the stimulus or move the dog away from the stressful environment. The next priority is to decompress in a safe space with no stressful stimuli (easier said than done sometimes). You can play some relaxing games like scatter feeding, but the real trick to over-coming a stress response is giving the dog time to fully recover from the incident.