A Finnish study showed that 73% of pet dogs struggle with fear and anxiety – over 6,000 dogs were fearful of strangers and/or other dogs they didn’t know.
I’m working with a dog at the moment who is afraid of cars, so can’t walk along a road without either flattening herself into the verge whenever a vehicle appears, or trying to chase passing cars away. The owners had contacted another trainer who had recommended they take her to a main road and stand there “to get her used to traffic”.
Unsurprisingly it made her far worse.
Are you afraid of anything?
My best friend is terrified of spiders. If she sees one, she goes pale, hyperventilates and has a full-blown panic attack. She can’t focus on anything else or on anything people say. All she can focus on is where the spider is and what it’s doing, while feeling helpless and terrified. I don’t really like spiders, but I can deal with them rationally using the tried and tested glass and sheet of paper trick. My friend can’t – she can’t get near enough to the spider.
Telling her spiders are harmless and can’t hurt her doesn’t help her – there is no way she can even process that information in her developed, analytical brain – it has already shut down. Telling her to face her fear is counterproductive – she just becomes more panicky. The lizard amygdala brain is screaming at her to run. She can’t even stay in the same room once she’s seen a spider.
Dogs react in a similar way when faced with something scary.
Facing the fear might work if your dog isn’t very scared in the first place, but it’s not a good method for helping a truly fearful dog.
Fear doesn’t “go away” either – dogs won’t grow out of fears.
You need to take the fear seriously and respect your dog’s emotions. There are three important steps to helping a fearful dog:
- Keep your dog feeling safe. Allow them to move away and hide if they want to. You may even need help from your vet to calm them enough to do the required training. Never, ever force them to move closer to the scary thing/person or whatever.
- Then you need to help your dog feel more comfortable with the scary thing by pairing it with something the dog loves, such as really yummy treats. Patience is essential – it can take a long time and you might have to start a very long way away at first.
- Then use positive methods to train fun and useful behaviours that will help your dog and build their confidence.
We teach you fun games to play with your dog to help them become your Perfect Pet at our signature course. The games help you build your relationship with your dog, loose lead walking, coming back when called, good manners with people and other dogs and being happy to be handled and groomed. All the games are in our course book where you can record your progress and your own training notes.
Come and join the fun!
Keep training and keep safe,
Carol