Diana Logan, CPDT

Certified Professional Dog Trainer

Pet Connection Dog Training www.petconnectionmaine.com

FEAR IS A STICKY THING.

This statement sums it up nicely. Fear is one of the most difficult challenges to deal with in our dogs. If you have a fearful dog, you know how stressful it can be for him and everyone around him, human and canine. One of the big problems with fear is that our dogs are experts at adding more and more somewhat related triggers on top of the original fear, like layering paper sticky notes on top of each other. If Rex is afraid of, say, strangers coming into the house, he might become fearful when a car drives up the driveway. Or when he hears a car door close. Or footsteps approach. Or the doorbell ring. In the end, it’s one big growing wad of fear made up of lots of sticky notes. Yikes. Where to begin?

First of all, we must look deeper than the behavior Rex is exhibiting. Behaviors (such as barking, growling, etc.) are just an expression of his underlying emotion, and it’s essential that we work on modifying the emotion before any related behaviors can change. To that end, we must not punish our dogs for expressing their fears but rather keep them feeling safe (away from the things that trigger the fears) and at the same time change their minds about the scary thing. Unfortunately, each sticky note that’s added to the pile means significantly more work as each one may have become an independent “scary thing.”

How can we change Rex’s mind about strangers?

“On paper,” it’s very simple: Classical Conditioning and Desensitization. Classical conditioning is systematically pairing the scary thing (the stranger, for instance), with something Rex finds REALLY good. The Desensitization part is the “intensity” level of the scary thing, so with a stranger one might start at a distance. With enough repetitions, the dog starts to associate the scary thing with the good thing and those layers of fear start to melt away. At the same time, the “intensity” factor can be increased and the “good stuff” factor adjusted so that the dog is continually associating positive things with what used to be a negative thing.

As an example, our younger dog was terrified of unknown cars (and the people inside them) coming up our driveway. I paired the approach of a car with a game of fetch – his favorite thing in the world. The person getting out of the car would be given a ball to toss as well. It took many games of fetch, but we had success: now he has become a nuisance about getting strangers to play ball with him. This is a price I am very, very happy to pay!

Fear is, however, a very complex topic and the “on paper” aspect means that some cases of fear require more work. If we don’t address our dogs’ fears right away, they have a tendency to grow.

If you have a fearful dog, there is hope, but you must act soon or that pile of sticky notes will quickly grow out of control.

Here are some resources that you should find very helpful:

Reinforcing fear: why the debate? (6/1/09)

http://www.nj.com/pets/index.ssf/2009/06/reinforcing_fear_why_the_debat.html

http://www.fearfuldogs.com