Field Guide · Glossary
Shutting down
Body languageA state in which an overwhelmed dog stops offering behavior altogether and becomes still, quiet and unresponsive.
How it works
The difficulty is that it resembles calm. A dog who has stopped moving, stopped vocalizing and stopped trying to leave photographs as a settled dog, and is frequently described as one. What separates it from genuine calm is everything else: a settled dog remains responsive, will take food and will re-engage, while a shut-down dog does none of those things. It is most often seen where a dog has had no way out of something difficult for a sustained period.
What it looks like
A dog at a busy event lies down and stops moving. They do not take food, do not respond to their name, and stare at nothing in particular. The owner reports that the dog has settled. The dog has stopped trying.
Commonly confused with
- Learned helplessness
- Shutting down describes a dog in a state now. Learned helplessness describes a longer pattern, where repeated inescapable experiences have taught a dog that nothing they do changes anything.
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