1. Select a menu of strategies from those offered in this article, and start working with your dog. Show 2. As you try them out, determine which strategies work best for the two of you, and discard the ones that don’t. 3. If you don’t seem to be making progress, seek the help of a qualified, positive behavior professional. 4. If your dog is extremely anxious and fearful, through discussion with your behavior professional and in consultation with a veterinary behaviorist, explore the use of anti-anxiety medications to help improve your dog’s quality of life. There are a lot of things in our world that have the potential to frighten our dogs. How is it that some dogs deal with these stimuli without batting an eye, while others cower behind their owners with little or no apparent provocation? The Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz seems to say it all in one simple word: “Courage!” But it’s really not so simple. Why do some dogs seem to be consistently brave, while others are timid? Even more important, absent Dorothy and a wizard, how does one go about helping their timid dog get brave? We’ve written (a lot!) in the past about using counter-conditioning and desensitization to help dogs change their association with fear-causing stimuli in order to change their emotional response. (As just one example of step-by-step instruction for a counter-conditioning program, see “Reducing Your Dog’s Anxieties,” WDJ April 2007.) That’s still good information, and I urge you to review the article to refresh your understanding of that important behavior modification protocol. This article, however, is going to introduce you to several other complementary exercises you can do in addition to counter-conditioning, to help your timid dog learn to cope with a scary world. Some of the exercises that follow we’ve introduced in other training contexts. Some come in the “change behavior to change emotional response” category by doing fun stuff your dog loves; some have more to do with management; and some do both. If you’ve already taught some of these to your dog it will be easy to apply them in situations where he’s acting fearful. If you haven’t already taught them, there’s no time like the present! Note: Be vigilant and protect your dog. During the confidence-building period, you must protect your dog from becoming overwhelmed by things that scare him. If, for example, you force your timid dog to accept the attentions of bearded men while he is still fearful of them, or you stay at an event that turns out to be noisy with your noise-phobic dog, he may become sensitized to the scary stimuli, making his behavior worse, instead of better. Basic Good Manners TrainingYou don’t have to do a lot of fancy stuff to help your dog become more confident in his world. Simply teaching him basic good manners – to respond appropriately to your cues – will make his environment more predictable. It builds confidence to understand what you’re asking of him, and to understand the consequences of his behavior. Of course it goes without saying that you will use positive reinforcement-based training with him so the consequences are happy ones. Nothing can destroy a timid dog’s confidence faster than the application of verbal or physical punishment; this will convince him he’s right to think the world is a scary and unpredictable place. Combine his positive reinforcement good manners training with structure in his routine and stability in his life and you will have taken a large step toward increasing his confidence. But of course, you want to do more to help your dog get brave. Happily, you can do that simply by doing fun stuff with him, such as: Targeting
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