Bleeding Backwards Through Time

Have you ever had a Monday through Friday job that you hated? Did you dread getting out of bed Monday morning? Sometimes Sunday nights can start getting depressing. Then pretty soon just waking up on Sunday knowing it’s your last day off can also get depressing. After a while you might even start dreading Sundays on Saturday night.


This same thing can happen with dogs. Puddin’s trainer mentioned a good example: Thunder is loud and very scary. If lightening happens soon after Thunder, soon your dog can become afraid of lightening. After a while you dog can start to predict the drop in barometric pressure that happens before a storm.

Another example was sited in a book by Jean Donaldson. She said that she had two food aggressive dogs and she was babysitting two additional food aggressive dogs. She usually fed everyone after the morning walk and feeding time was tense. Soon she noticed that the dogs started acting tense when they walked in the door after their walk. A short time later, the dogs started getting tense when they turned the corner signaling they were almost back at the house.

Bleeding backwards doesn’t always make dogs tense or aggressive. Consider car rides. If you take your dog to dog park often, you might at first notice your dog get excited when you pull up to the park. Later your dog might get excited about turning the corner to the park. Later on, the dog might just get excited about getting in the car while you still parked in your driveway.

Bleeding backwards can often explain why dogs seem to have a “sixth sense” about things. It can also explain why a dog might suddenly seem aggressive about something when he/she wasn’t before. The situation that makes the dog snarl might be related to something that happened two months earlier.