Elements of Temperament
Drives, Thresholds and Nerves

Part Three: Thresholds

By Joy Tiz, MS, JD

Thunder is my now five year old neutered male GSD. He is byb, half West German show lines and half who-knows-what. He is a gorgeous black and red with (wouldn’t you know it) good hips and elbows. He is healthy, athletic and agile. Thunder gets along exceptionally well with other dogs, likes to clown around and greets humans with friendly enthusiasm unless he’s on his own territory. However, Thunder’s defense drive is off the charts, and he is something of a nervebag, but luckily for me, he’s got a pretty high threshold.

Since his earliest days in Schutzhund, Thunder has demonstrated all defense, all the time, despite the fact that he has excellent prey drive, it is not accessible to him under the stress of bitework. Watching Thunder do bitework is a lot like observing primal scream therapy. It’s stressful and exhausting for him (which is why he is now retired from Schutzhund and doing only scent work these days, at which he excels). He puts on a heck of a show.

A dog with that degree of defense drive could be a menace to all society, if not for the threshold. By drive threshold, we mean how quickly the dog perceives a threat and responds to it. In Thunder’s case, we are talking about defense drive and the point at which it kicks in. On the protection field, the sight of the helper in a sleeve is enough to stimulate a strong reaction. That is the result of his prior experiences, or training. It’s also reality based behavior, he has learned that the appearance of the guy with the sleeve means he can start the action now.

Genetically, his overall stimulation threshold is fairly high. He showed us this early in life. I got Thunder when he was seven weeks old and promptly took him to his first vet visit. After being poked and prodded by the tech, we set him down on a metal table to wait for the vet. Thunder reacted by stretching out and falling asleep. Thunder has been known to conk out in other stimulating situations. On more than one occasion, he has taken a nap while on a long platz during one of my group obedience classes. There are those who would argue that going to sleep is a show of avoidance behavior, but I don’t think that fits this dog. He has overall, a very calm temperament.

Some time ago, we were outside of our local Pet Smart, talking to a lady who used to breed GSDs. Thunder was on lead, doing a long platz. A toddler appeared suddenly, came screaming up behind Thunder and grabbed him hard on both flanks. Thunder turned his head to see what had attacked him, then looked up at me and went on doing his assigned task while I reamed out the toddler’s parents. The former GSD breeder commented about what an interesting temperament test Thunder had just taken. Thunder has had minimal exposure to toddlers, so his reaction was a function not of good socialization to kids, but his threshold for stimulation. Even that obnoxious conduct by the child was not sufficient to spark a defensive reaction.

Callie

Callie is a three year old, also black and red GSD owned by a client. She is from West German showlines and came from a breeder with a track record of producing spooks. Callie, like Thunder has high defense drive. If a stranger gets within ten feet of Callie, she barks, backs up, lunges and raises her hackles. She has no reservations about trying to bite neutral strangers. Callie reacts to non threatening events as if her life were at stake. For example, each and every time Callie’s owner goes into or out of the house, she closes the sliding glass door behind her. And, every time, it makes a “thud”. And every time, Callie barks at it. If someone drops a book on the floor, Callie goes into a barking frenzy.

Callie and Thunder both have roughly the same degree of defense drive. Yet, Callie cannot be approached by strangers at all, whereas Thunder approaches strangers willingly and allows strangers to pet him. Both Callie and Thunder are weak nerved dogs. The difference is that they vary greatly in stimulation thresholds (and Thunder has had more socialization). It takes little more than a leaf blowing by to send Callie into a defensive panic. Conversely, it requires very specific learned cues to throw Thunder into defense mode. Thunder can stretch out and relax in a crowded store. Callie can’t relax on her own front lawn.

You can see that a highly defensive dog with a low threshold for stimulation is a very dangerous dog! This is a dog who is very quick to perceive a threat where none exists and react aggressively.

Threshold is not another word for nerves, rather it is a function of nerve strength. The stronger the dog’s nerves, the less likely he is to go off in a panic over nothing and the more stimulation is required to get the dog to react.

Some dogs react to absolutely everything in the environment. This is not uncommon among some of the terrier breeds. The sound of the washing machine changing cycles or a phone ringing sets them off into a barking, out of control frenzy. The low threshold dog reacts to nearly everything and often overreacts. It is very easy to over stimulate these dogs. It’s almost as if the dog is missing some sort of filter that screens incoming stimuli.

You may have seen the calm, laid back dog snoozing in the living room, who barely lifts his head when a car door slams. That would be the high threshold dog.

We had a one year old Mastiff in a large group obedience class who had quite a high threshold. The dog next to her was a crazy rescued GSD with horrible nerves and a low threshold. The poor GSD growled, lunged, barked and attempted to bite any human or canine that got too close to his personal space. The Mastiff pup responded by flopping down on the grass and taking a nap.

The GSD in the group also was prone to, when sufficiently agitated biting his own handler when he couldn’t get to the object of his loathing. Along with his other considerable problems, that dog was not clear headed.

Clear In The Head

You will hear the term clear headed bounced around a lot in working dog circles. Clear headedness is closely related to both thresholds and nerves. A clear headed dog is a dog who doesn’t panic easily because he is in good contact with reality. He may have tons of drive, but has a built in ability to cap his drive when the need arises.

If we had my Thunder out on the field being agitated, and he was in full drive for a bite and you were to come up behind him and pull his tail, Thunder wouldn’t bite you. That’s clear in the head. He is under maximum pressure, but still able to recognize that you are not the threat, the guy with the sleeve is the one to worry about.

Compare this to the dog who goes into a frenzy when a stranger walks down the street, or another dog goes by his window. His owner approaches him and he bites her. What happened? The dog lost contact with reality. He got agitated too much for his own tolerance level. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is very common. (See Rudy’s story in I Love My Dog, But . . .). Some trainers will tell you this is perfectly normal for a high drive dog. No it is not. The dog got too stressed and lost contact with reality. That’s one definition of insanity. The dog is telling you laut and clear that his tolerance for stress is inadequate. Biting the handler rather than the desired object is called displacement aggression. A well balanced dog doesn’t lose his grip on reality that easily. This is not about drives, it’s about a threshold that is dangerously low.

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