Training Dogs with Fearful Behavior
It’s a common misconception that dogs should be left to work it out, to overcome their fears just by experiencing the things and events that are scary to them. This doesn’t work, because if a dog is scared of something and is exposed to it, it will increase fear levels, not decrease them. When a dog is exposed to scary things and his fear is increased, this is called sensitization.
Our goal in training should always be to work at a level a dog can handle, whether that’s in response to fear or even just what he’s capable of at that moment in time. For example, we can’t expect a dog to stay for 2 minutes with high levels of distractions outside, if we haven’t even taught a 3-second stay indoors with not much going on in the environment. Similarly, we can’t expect a dog to overcome his fear of new people by forcing him to be up close, accepting petting from a stranger. We would want to work at a level he’s comfortable, perhaps from 20 feet away, just relaxing watching a new person; then maybe move up to 18-19 feet away and gradually work towards the final goal.
Our technical term for this is staying below threshold - always working at a level that causes no fear, anxiety, or panic while the dog is aware of the scary thing. It’s common for people to refer to crossing the threshold of a doorway to enter the next room. In this analogy, for dogs we would be remaining on the first side of the door, not crossing that imaginary line where the door would close and block off the next room. When we work at exposing a dog to things that scare him below threshold (or below an anxiety/panic point), we can help desensitize to those things/events - that is, help a dog become more comfortable with or around them.
For separation anxiety - dogs’ fear of being left alone, separate from their people - the gold standard technique is to use desensitization. With many other types of fears - fear of new people, other dogs, sounds, walking across slick surfaces or through doorways, etc. - we actually combine desensitization with counter-conditioning, which is pairing the scary things and events with things dogs enjoy in order to create new, positive associations with the scary stuff.
In order to help scared dogs stay below their anxiety point/threshold, we need to be capable of reading their body language and behavior - this will provide us with in-the-moment information to make sure we don’t push forward too fast. This is something that we can help you with - creating training plans to follow with feedback on when to make it easier, stick at the same level, or push ahead to the next challenge.
The key is to always work at the individual dog’s pace. If we set realistic expectations for training progress, we’ll alleviate potential frustration when behaviors take time to modify. In any type of learning there will usually be jumps ahead, set-backs, and plateaus at times. In particular with fearful behavior, it’s worth the effort to help our dogs become more confident over time to enjoy a good, happy life.