Adaptogens and the Working Dog: on performance, injury, and career longevity

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[This article is the first of two papers on adaptogenic herbs in dogs. The second is on senior dogs. Enjoy!]
I love dogs. I especially love working dogs, for the enthusiasm they bring to their work, for their generous spirits, and for the pride they take in doing a good job. So, I love working with working dogs and helping them cope better with the inevitable stresses of their jobs.
STRESS AND LIMITS
Stress is an inescapable part of being alive. But while the word "stress" has an almost universally negative connotation in our culture, stress is not always a bad thing. In fact, our bodies need a certain amount of repeated stimulation in order to maintain our capacity to respond to whatever life brings, and to increase our capacity for work and our resistance to injury and illness.
The trouble comes when we are repeatedly operating at or near our limits, whether physically or psychologically, and often both. As long as we remain below our current limits, then damage is minimal and adaptation is possible, even inevitable with the right input. However, when we are operating in the 90+ percent range of our capacity, as many working dogs are, it is very easy to step over that invisible line and exceed our capacity. Injury or illness occurs, either a little at a time or in one catastrophic failure, when the structural or functional limits of the body are exceeded. The same could be said of the mind and its mental and emotional limits. There is some elasticity; but when overstretched, the elastic breaks.
Physically, and probably psychologically as well, training is most effective when we are operating in our 90+ percent range, but below 100 percent (the point beyond which damage can occur). The common notion that it is good to "give 110 percent" (or 150 percent or 1000 percent or some other mathematical absurdity) needs to be dropped from our thinking. Giving 110 percent means you're putting yourself in debt to the tune of 10 percent each time. That is not a good thing; it is neither honorable nor smart, as the resulting damage tends to be cumulative.
Along the same lines, "no pain, no gain" also needs to go the way of the Dodo. It is simply untrue, and a harmful fallacy at that. An athlete does not gain in work capacity (strength/speed or stamina) because he exceeded his limits and made himself hurt; he gained in capacity despite it