Have you ever heard the view that throwing a ball for your dog can be bad for them because of the effect it has on their arousal levels? The idea is in part that the arousal problems come because ball chasing interrupts a dog’s natural predatory motor pattern and so their arousal stays high because it doesn’t allow them to bring themselves back down again. Sometimes the shift in arousal that is said to happen during predatory behaviour is called a curve of arousal. I’m intrigued by it because predatory behaviour is so much my area of interest and also because the curve of arousal I always think about is the Yerkes-Dodson curve which I mentioned in a previous blog
Plus - whenever I ask people where the information comes from, they tell me that it came from a class they did or that a dog trainer told them about it but I haven’t been able to track down the thinking behind it. So I decided that best thing I could do is to spend some time in research mode and find out what I can about it.
To say that the results of my research are interesting is something of an understatement. I found a whole new way of understanding predatory behaviour in this research. Let’s dive in.
Let’s start by understanding what arousal is. It is simply being physically and mentally alert and ready to take action or respond to a situation. Really, any time your dog is awake they could be described as aroused. But usually, when people talk about a dog being ‘aroused’, they mean that the dog is really hyped up.
Here are the sorts of things that would indicate a high level of arousal.
Some dogs are constantly highly aroused and find it hard to settle down and rest properly. Any tiny sound or movement has them up and moving.
If your dog is normally obedient but sometimes they ignore you asking them to do something that they know well, that’s a sign that their arousal is high.
Being unwilling to take and eat food rewards is a big flag that your dog is highly aroused - especially if your dog is normally food motivated.
If your dog is whining, panting loudly when it isn’t warm or barking more than usual, they may be highly aroused.
An indicator of high arousal for your dog might be them jumping up and grabbing at their lead or at your clothing. Some highly aroused dogs struggle to put toys down once they have caught them.
Sometimes dogs who behave aggressively are highly aroused. These dogs may be sweet and friendly when their arousal levels are lower.
You may have been told that sniffing is calming for dogs and often it is but not always. Dogs with a high prey drive who are searching for prey using their nose will probably have higher levels of arousal.
This feels like it should be the opposite of an aroused dog but actually sometimes a still or slow dog is experiencing high levels of arousal. They just aren’t moving much at that time.
These sorts of things can often be frustrating to us and are often seen as a training issue but sometimes they have nothing to do with training and everything to do with the dog being in a high state of arousal.
It’s a great question isn’t it because everything in the section above could be a sign of high arousal and equally could have another cause.
The answer to this question is that it depends on your individual dog and on the context. To work it out the best thing that you can do is spend time really getting to know your dog. Take courses and classes either in person or online to help you. If you are having issues with your dog’s prey drive and you want to get my individual advice, join my High Prey Drive Club and I’ll be really happy to help you work it out.
Let me give you a concrete example. This video is of one of my dogs. Spike was 8 months old when I took this video. I’d walked him as usual that morning and then had popped out for a short while. Usually when Spike has been walked in the morning he happily goes into his bed and has a nap.
The morning, I took this video, as you can see, he isn’t.
He’s sitting up and looking around. He looks pretty calm to me. He isn’t barking and there is no sound of him whining on the video. He isn’t panting and his breathing doesn’t look more rapid than normal. Yet when I checked on him a few times over the course of 10 minutes or so and he was consistently sitting up like that, I cut my trip out short and came home.
His arousal was higher than I would expect under those circumstances, and I wanted to make sure he was okay. It was purely the context of him sitting up at a time when he would normally be relaxed and sleeping that made me do that.
However, if I took him to a group training class and he sat up calmly like that and was able to just look around for 10 minutes, I would be saying to everybody – “Look at how calm Spike is!” – and I would be congratulating myself on my training skills.
It’s the same with your dog. The context matters when you are trying to judge when arousal is low, high or too high.
When it comes to arousal, the part of the nervous system to focus on is known as the autonomic nervous system. It is called autonomic because it works mostly on autopilot. It controls things like the speed your dog’s heart beats at and how they digest food. All the parts that they don’t have conscious control over.
There are two halves of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system which is all about doing. It is activated when your dog needs to do something. It helps with achieving goals, performing active tasks, focusing on a task and filtering out the rest of the world so that they can stay focused on the task. When your dog is highly aroused, this half is going to be doing most of the work.
The other half is called the parasympathetic nervous system. It handles all the functions that need calm to happen like digestion, rest and slowing down the heart rate down. It helps your dog to settle into a state that allows them to relax.
The other thing to note about the autonomic nervous system is that if your dog is doing something active that goes on for too long or gets too intense then their body can be triggered into a stress response.
I know that I’ve vaguely said, “too long” and “too intense” and I totally get that if you are reading, you probably want to know how to prevent your dog becoming stressed. Here’s the thing, again, the context matters. What could be too long or too intense for one dog won’t be for another. And - when your dog has more experience and training under their belt, what was too intense for them may become just the right amount of stimulation for them to feel good.
When dogs are under stress, their arousal will be very high, and you might recognise one or more of these instinctive responses in your dog:
This means your dog actively trying to deal with the situation. They may bark and lunge or run toward it. In this state, the sympathetic nervous system is in control.
Your dog would be trying to escape the situation. They might run away or run around you if they are on a lead. Here again, the sympathetic nervous system is in control.
If your dog goes into a freeze state, they would be completely still and tense as a way to avoid what is going on. In this state, the sympathetic nervous system is active, but the parasympathetic system is also active and is in control.
In this state, you dog may try to avoid the situation by being appeasing.
I mentioned earlier that some authors write about a curve of arousal that is associated with prey drive in dogs. I’ve seen and heard various versions of this but most often the idea seems to be that all stages before a grab-bite are arousing and then dogs will start to calm down. If you want to know more about the stages, you can read about them here.
I’ve put question marks on the image because I’m not so sure about it.
Now that we’ve talked about arousal, high arousal and that very high arousal can trigger a stress response – as well as what is said about arousal and predatory behaviour – it is time to talk about a new way of understanding prey drive that has been proposed by recent research.
Broseghini et al. (2024) published a proposed ethogram for a predatory motor pattern in dogs. An ethogram is a detailed description of what animals have been observed to do and this one is the first one that has been proposed for predatory behaviour in dogs. It is important because this is the first time researchers have observed what dogs do and have documented their findings.
The research team used video footage taken of dogs in situations where the dogs were going after prey. By the end of all their work, they ended up with a final motor pattern for dogs that has 4 stages:
Search - this includes hunt and orient from the motor sequence. This stage is all about finding prey
Approach - this includes orient, eye and stalk. This stage is all about getting as close as possible before the prey runs.
Chase - this includes chase. This stage is about getting close enough to bite the prey.
Bite - this includes grab-bite, possess, kill-bite and dissect. This stage is where the dog would capture the prey.
The researchers were limited to including types of dog where they could find enough videos to review. That meant that their research included pointing breeds, scent hounds and sighthounds. They did not have enough videos to be able to include terriers, dachshunds, retrievers or flushing dogs (such as spaniels).
You may be wondering why orient appears in both the search and the approach phase. The researchers only saw an orient behaviour in the pointing dogs, and it seemed to mark the transition between search and approach phases for those dogs so it is included in both stages.
Key for this blog’s subject of arousal are the descriptions of each stage.
This phase wasn’t seen in the sighthounds. The researchers were unable to tell if that was because sighthounds don’t tend to search for prey or if it was because the dogs in the videos they reviewed had been taken to a place where the dogs knew there would be prey. In both the pointing dogs and the scent hounds, this stage was characterised by the dogs moving and covering large areas of ground. Movement is associated with higher levels of arousal.
At the end of this phase, the pointing dogs would slow down, and their body would become stiffer. Slower movement with a stiff posture is associated with higher levels of arousal. As is what the scent hounds would do which was to bark more while becoming focused on a scent trail.
The approach phase was slow and controlled for the pointing dogs. They would alternate between being still to point and stalking. Muscle tension could be seen in their bodies during this phase. The approach phase for the scent hounds looked similar to the search phase but the dogs would be moving faster and barking with a higher pitch. For the sighthounds, the dog would trot toward where they expected prey and if they saw the prey and it hadn’t started moving, they would flinch as if anticipating the start of a chase. All of these descriptions suggest higher levels of arousal.
This looked the same for all breed groups. The dogs move fast to get close enough to the prey to bite. The exception was the scent hounds who would produce shrieking barks while chasing.
So far, this looks as if arousal is building as the pattern goes on.
The researchers saw the bite phase in all groups, and it is in this phase that if the arousal makes a neat curve, there should be something in the descriptions that would indicate lowering of arousal.
The authors reported several types of bite:
Assessment bites – these were repeated and rapid bites with the prey held on the ground by the dog’s front paws and the dog bending over it. The possible intention may have been to check that the prey was dead but not to dissect it.
Tug bites – in these, the prey was bitten by more than one dog at once with them both tugging. During this sort of bite, the dogs would be keeping their attention on the prey and on the other dog.
Kill-bite – This was described as an intense and rapid shaking movement that was vigorous enough to shake the dog’s whole body.
Possess bite – In this one the dog would hold the prey firmly and run back to their handler.
All of the bite descriptions included a high energy activity which would be incompatible with a lowering of the dog’s arousal level. To further make the predatory curve of arousal idea seem unlikely, none of the dogs dissected or consumed the prey.
I haven’t observed my own dogs needing to progress to bite or consume in order to have a lower level of arousal.
As an example, this is one of my dogs in the woods where I live. I had released her and told her she could run freely. She is in the search stage and possibly sometimes the approach stage. The woods here are full of wildlife and birds and it would be unlikely for her not to encounter some sort of prey while running. It is unusual for her to chase prey, and she has never attempted to capture it. What would be normal for her is for her to search, approach and then when she finds prey, to come away from it - and go back to search.
You can see that even though she starts off running fast, which would be a sign of high arousal and even though she doesn’t catch or eat anything during that time, within a few minutes, her arousal has lowered and she comes to me to hang out and see if I might do some training with her.
Perhaps there is more to dogs being able to moderate their arousal then focusing on the stages of the predatory motor pattern.
Let’s have a look at what things you can do to help your dog manage their arousal levels and not end up stressed:
Sleep – make sure your dog is getting plenty of sleep. Dogs need far more sleep than people do so your dog will need comfortable and quiet places to rest during the day as well as at night.
Chewing – having appropriate things to chew can help dogs to settle and calm down.
Time to rest and digest – make sure that when your dog has eaten, they have time to lie down and relax. After dinner is not a good time for an exciting game of ball with your dog.
Calming sniffy walks - ACTUALLY for dogs with a high prey drive, walks in nature or sniffy walks on a long line may result in high levels of arousal due to the wildlife that the line keeps them from interacting with.
Instead, learn to understand your own dog’s individual preferences.
Make sure that the predatory needs that YOUR dog has are being met. I don’t use chasing games like flirt poles or thrown toys with my spaniel you saw in the woods because she doesn’t enjoy chasing and catching so much. Those activities are frustrating for her – and that raises her arousal in a way that becomes stressful for her.
There seems to be little merit in the idea that dogs need to perform specific activities to lower levels of arousal after doing something predatory. Rather, an individual approach that fits closely with each dog’s preferences would seem to be more sensible. Along with a holistic look at your dog’s whole lifestyle to make sure that there is time in each day for them to relax and rest.
Broseghini, A., Lõoke, M., Guérineau, C., Marinelli, L. and Mongillo, P., 2024. Ethogram of the predatory sequence of dogs (Canis familiaris). Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 279, p.106402. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2024.106402
Coppinger, R. and Coppinger, L., 2001. Dogs: A startling new understanding of canine origin, behavior & evolution. Simon and Schuster.
Lord K, Schneider RA, Coppinger R. Evolution of working dogs. In: Serpell J, ed. The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior and Interactions with People. Cambridge University Press; 2016:42-66.
MacNulty, D.R., Mech, L.D. and Smith, D.W., 2007. A proposed ethogram of large-carnivore predatory behavior, exemplified by the wolf. Journal of Mammalogy, 88(3), pp.595-605. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1644/06-MAMM-A-119R1.1
Roelofs, K., 2017. Freeze for action: neurobiological mechanisms in animal and human freezing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 372(1718), p.20160206. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0206
Sapolsky, R.M., 2004. Why zebras don't get ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping. Holt paperbacks.
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I am the founder of Best Dog Learning and Stuff and a massive prey drive enthusiast. I've lived with high prey drive dogs for over 20 years and I love them. I run the awesome High Prey Drive Club where I help my members learn to have fabulous walks and happy lives with their high prey drive dogs.
I am a published researcher in my field with both my original research and my review of the literature looking at prey drive in dogs being published in the respected journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
I peer review for Applied Animal Behaviour Science to help bring quality research into the world.
I am the author of Canine aggression: Rehabilitating an aggressive dog with kindess and compassion.
I want to show you how easy and fun it can be to have a high prey drive dog.
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