16/07/2026
Met cursisten heb ik het vaak over opwinding.
Voor sommige voorjagers een waar hoofdpijndossier.
De hond en opwinding......
Opwinding en rust....wat is waardevol en wat is noodzakelijk?
Rust in het werken met de hond is nodig maar opwinding is net zo noodzakelijk.
Vaak stel ik voorjagers de schaal vraag.
De mate van opwinding inschatten is niet makkelijk. Leren zien op welke schaal jouw hond zit en welke schaal een optimaal leerrendement geeft horen bij het werken met de hond.
Dit stuk beschrijft heel mooi dat rust geen heilige graal is...
Dus in plaats van zoeken naar rust, zoek naar de juiste verhouding van opwinding en leervermogen.
Arousal Is Rarely the Enemy: Why Calm Is Not the Optimal State for Learning in Working Gundogs
For years, dog owners have been told that the ideal training session begins with a calm dog. Social media is filled with advice encouraging handlers to wait until the dog is completely relaxed before asking for any work. While there is certainly a place for emotional stability and self-control, this belief has gradually evolved into the misconception that calmness itself is the goal.
Science, however, paints a far more interesting picture. For a working gundog, learning does not occur simply because the dog is calm. It occurs because the dog's brain is sufficiently activated to pay attention, process information, solve problems and remember experiences. In other words, arousal is not the enemy. In fact, without an appropriate level of arousal, learning becomes inefficient.
Understanding Arousal
Arousal refers to the level of activation within the nervous system. It is not simply excitement, nor is it the same as stress. Instead, arousal represents the degree to which the brain and body are prepared to respond to the environment. The challenge for trainers, therefore, is not to eliminate arousal but to understand it, shape it and keep it within a useful range.
It helps to imagine arousal as a spectrum. At one end lies deep relaxation or even drowsiness, where heart rate is low, attention wanders and motivation is minimal. At the opposite extreme lies overwhelming emotional activation, where stress hormones surge and thinking begins to shut down. Between these two extremes is the zone where the brain functions most effectively.
This concept has been recognised in psychology for over a century through the Yerkes-Dodson Law, first described in 1908. Their research demonstrated that performance generally improves as arousal increases, but only up to an optimal point. Beyond that point, excessive arousal begins to impair performance. Working dogs are no exception.
The Brain Was Designed to Work Under Activation
A gundog was never bred to perform while half asleep. Retrievers, spaniels and HPR breeds evolved to work in highly stimulating environments where gunfire, scent, moving game, changing wind, water, rough terrain and multiple handlers all create considerable sensory input. If these dogs only learned when completely calm, they could never perform their historical purpose.
Instead, evolution selected dogs capable of maintaining cognitive function while emotionally activated. When a dog anticipates work, several important neurological changes occur: the sympathetic nervous system increases heart rate and blood flow, adrenaline enhances alertness, dopamine increases motivation and focus towards rewarding outcomes, and noradrenaline improves attention and sensory processing. Together, these chemicals prepare the brain to absorb information.
Far from preventing learning, moderate activation actually primes the nervous system for learning.
Dopamine: The Hidden Driver of Learning
One of the most misunderstood chemicals in dog training is dopamine. Many people associate dopamine simply with pleasure, but modern neuroscience shows something different: dopamine is primarily involved in motivation, prediction and reward expectancy.
When a dog becomes excited because it sees a dummy bag, hears the slip lead or anticipates retrieving, dopamine activity rises dramatically. This increase sharpens attention, increases persistence, enhances memory formation and encourages exploration and problem-solving. In practical terms, the dog becomes mentally prepared to learn.
This is one reason experienced trainers often observe that the first retrieve of the day is not simply about exercise. It activates the brain and helps the dog enter a neurological state where subsequent learning becomes more effective.
Cortisol Is Not Always Harmful
Stress hormones often receive unfair criticism. Cortisol has developed a reputation as something trainers should eliminate entirely, yet it performs numerous essential functions. During moderate challenge, cortisol helps mobilise energy, improve memory consolidation and increase alertness.
Research in both humans and animals has demonstrated that emotionally significant experiences are often remembered more effectively because moderate cortisol interacts with the amygdala and hippocampus to strengthen memory storage. The problem arises only when cortisol remains elevated for prolonged periods or reaches excessive levels: chronic stress damages learning, while moderate challenge enhances it.
Working dogs experience small increases in stress hormones every time they solve difficult retrieves, overcome environmental challenges or work through mild uncertainty. This is not harmful; it is part of adaptation.
Why Completely Calm Dogs Often Learn Poorly
Imagine asking someone to solve advanced mathematics immediately after waking from a deep sleep. Their brain is functioning, but it is not optimally activated. The same occurs in dogs. Dogs displaying extremely low arousal may show slow responses, reduced motivation, poor persistence, limited attention and weak memory formation.
They may appear beautifully relaxed, but they are not necessarily ready to perform demanding cognitive tasks. Many handlers’ mistake inactivity for engagement, yet the two are very different. A dog lying quietly beside you may simply be disengaged from the learning process.
Productive Arousal Looks Different
A dog working within its optimal arousal zone rarely appears perfectly calm. Instead, you often observe bright eyes, forward body posture, fast tail movement, intense focus, quick responses, high enthusiasm and a strong desire to engage.
Importantly, this enthusiasm remains controllable. The dog can still think, process information and solve problems. This is productive arousal, and it is exactly what trainers should seek.
When Arousal Becomes Too High
Of course, excessive arousal carries consequences. As adrenaline continues rising, activity shifts away from the prefrontal areas responsible for flexible decision-making and towards more reflexive survival systems. Behaviour becomes increasingly automatic, and the dog may vocalise, break steadiness, ignore cues, rush retrieves, lose memory, become frantic or struggle with impulse control.
Learning now deteriorates, not because arousal exists, but because arousal has exceeded the dog's cognitive capacity. This distinction is crucial. The solution is not to make the dog calm; it is to reduce arousal back into the optimal learning zone.
Gundog Training Should Build Emotional Control, Not Emotional Suppression
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding in modern dog training is confusing emotional control with emotional suppression. A good working retriever should desperately want the retrieve. It should anticipate the fall, feel excitement and experience motivation. Yet despite all this internal activation, it should remain steady.
Steadiness is not the absence of excitement; it is the ability to control excitement. That difference changes everything. The world's best working dogs are rarely emotionless. They are emotionally regulated.
Confidence Grows Through Controlled Challenge
Every time a dog successfully manages an emotionally stimulating situation, the nervous system adapts. Neural pathways become stronger, confidence increases and the dog develops resilience. This principle mirrors findings across behavioural neuroscience: adaptation occurs through exposure to manageable challenge.
Avoiding all excitement prevents this development. Instead, trainers should expose dogs to increasing levels of stimulation while ensuring the dog remains capable of making successful decisions. Learning occurs at the edge of competence, not inside a bubble of complete calm.
Practical Implications for Gundog Trainers
Rather than asking whether your dog is calm enough to train, ask better questions: is my dog engaged, is it thinking, is it motivated, and can it still make good decisions? If the answer is yes, your dog is probably within its optimal learning zone.
If excitement begins to overwhelm thinking, lower the difficulty rather than removing all emotion from the session. Likewise, if the dog appears flat, disconnected or lacking enthusiasm, increasing motivation may improve learning far more effectively than waiting for additional calmness.
Likewise, if the dog appears flat, disconnected, or lacking enthusiasm, increasing motivation may improve learning far more effectively than waiting for additional calmness. Great trainers learn to adjust arousal just as carefully as they adjust distance, distraction or difficulty.
Final Thoughts
Working gundogs were never designed to perform in a state of complete relaxation. They were bred to think, adapt and make decisions while operating in exciting, dynamic, and often highly stimulating environments. Their remarkable abilities come not from the absence of arousal, but from their capacity to remain cognitively engaged despite it.
The aim of training should therefore never be to eliminate excitement. Instead, it should be to shape that excitement into focused, controlled energy that drives performance without overwhelming thought. A dog that is motivated, alert, and eager to work is not a problem to be calmed, it is a brain ready to learn.
The true skill of the trainer lies in recognising where the dog sits on the arousal spectrum and adjusting the session accordingly. Too little activation and the dog disengage; too much and thinking gives way to impulsive behaviour. Between those two extremes lies the state where learning is fastest, memories are strongest and performance reaches its greatest potential.
That is where great gundogs are made.
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