Taken out of equilibrium, a collisional gas is known to rethermalize as follows from the second law of thermodynamics. The trajectory by which a gas takes to do so, however, may well be complicated by the nature of collisions and the rate at which they occur. In particular, ultracold, but not yet quantum degenerate, gases of dipolar particles experience wildly anisotropic scattering as the dominant two-body interaction. In this talk, we will explore how dipolar collisions affect collective gas dynamics en route to equilibrium. Along the way, motivations for understanding such processes will be discussed, along with applications of its theoretical modeling to experimental measurements.