At every step in a dog’s ontogeny, predictive relations are refined and integrated into a base of genetic and experiential prior knowledge. These predictive relations are organized to promote stability through change, referred to as allostasis. Allostatic adjustments enable dogs to anticipate and avoid future risks to stability, thus enhancing adaptive efficiency by responding to predictive signals. The genes that regulate neuronal activity depend heavily on experience for the information needed to maintain the brain’s functional stability and capacity for coping proactively with change. The feed-forward unfolding of genetic information via experience-dependent gene activation and suppression is consistent with the notion that regulatory genes are responsive to positive and negative prediction-error signals. Consequently, causing neuronal activity to increase or decrease results in the production of structural proteins and enzymes, and thereby alters the neurophysiology in the process of mediating allostasis. Thus, the process of emergent individuation is seamlessly interwoven into a multitude of neurobiological changes that mediate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral adjustments. During such accommodation and allostatic change, the activation of neural protein synthesis and synapse building serves to integrate predictive information into the physical substance of the organism, leading to far-reaching benefits or harm influencing not only behavioral adaptation but also biological adaptation. By such means, knowledge acquired by experience is directly integrated into the neurobiological phenotype from where it exerts numerous adaptive and maladaptive effects on the developing organism. Acute stress is triggered in response to the detection of discrepant events that exceed the normal safe range of accustomed variability in combination with a perception of uncontrollability; that is, stress is a biological response to the violation of expectancy or a failure to establish predictive control over significant motivation events. Such events elicit intense state arousal, active vigilance, and increased action readiness in anticipation of reactive emergency or defensive adjustments. Thus, chronic and uncontrollable challenges (loss of comfort), threats (loss of safety), and unconditioned aversive events mismatching prediction-control expectancies promote stress and allostatic load that adversely affect a dog’s adaptability. Chronic exposure to aversive conflict situations perceived as uncontrollable tends to become increasingly problematic when they are also inescapable. Allostatic load associated with social ambivalence and entrapment is hypothesized to orchestrate widespread neuronal changes and emotional disturbances that adversely affect selective attention and impulse control.

Under social and environmental circumstances where a balance of predictive exchange is lacking, the ensuing instability and allostatic load make the work of adaptation increasingly costly. A failure to integrate a mutually satisfying household relationship based on predictable and controllable relations is not only disruptive at the level of social exchange — the consequences of such influences impact at various levels of a dog’s biology and may gradually impair its capacity to adapt. According to cynopraxic theory, many maladies affecting canine health and well-being are traceable to disease associated with chronic interactive conflict and compensatory allostatic load adversely impacting critical biological systems necessary to sustain health and survival fitness (see Immune Stress and Cytokines and Stress, Thyroid Deficiency, Hypocortisolism, and Aggression). As such, cynopraxic therapy serves to promote both behavioral and biological stability by mediating changes that reduce interactive conflict and promote mutual appreciation and interactive harmony while enhancing the human-dog bond and improving the dog’s quality-of-life (QOL). The capacity of cynopraxic therapy to promote beneficial changes depends on the integration predictive control relations mediated by social exchange and transactions governed by a principle of fairness promoting mutual reward, cooperation, and affectionate playfulness between interactive partners around points of common interest and potential conflict.

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