Desensitization

After coming up with a team and plan to make sure your dog is not alone, now we can start to train. The initial assessment will determine your dog’s starting point for how long he can be left alone without showing signs of fear.

At all times during training your dog should be kept below his fear-threshold, meaning he is never pushed to the point where he panics - or displays overt signs of anxiety/fear.

Desensitization is the process of exposing an individual to the thing that causes fear/anxiety, but at a level where the individual is not afraid (not over-threshold), and then gradually increasing exposure and intensity of the thing, always making sure the individual is not afraid and is comfortable before making the situation more challenging.

For many dogs the training will start with you leaving for seconds, and gradually building up to longer durations away (minutes then hours).

This also means the training plan varies for each individual dog and session. We will only be increasing alone-time as the dog is comfortable and showing no fear at the current criteria level.