· By Minou Tpain
Author: Denise Partlow
Instagram: @modernk9 Carolinas
When training a nervous dog we must take into consideration their emotional state and find ways to help them feel comfortable in our human world.
Yes, we can stop certain behaviors immediately but you cannot change the way your dog perceives the world in just one session. It is going to take months, and for some it can take years.
The majority of your training should focus on helping your dog to gain confidence in his own body, new environments and the stimuli that may be in each type of environment.
So what does the training look like?
Always start in the house. Any particular stimuli your dog is nervous around, try to find ways to incorporate it into your training but indoors first, where he feels most comfortable.
I will use a fear of noises for an example. My foster dog, Reid, is scared of every noise, so while holding a place stay I will incorporate some noises (that I know he struggles with) such as grocery bags, cardboard boxes, trash bag, things dropping etc and use them while we train. But it is important that you don’t put the dog over threshold, so how do we do that?
First, I would not make the noises last long and I would do it at a distance that he’s comfortable with. If he is trying to bolt and run and hide then I know I am too close or too loud. Short quick exposure is good in the beginning so you can help them build up a tolerance to longer bits of time. You may choose to reward with food, praise or just removing the scary noise can be reinforcing.
Many dogs that are nervous may not take food; that may be another indicator that the exposure is too overwhelming and you may need to back up a few steps (figuratively or literally).
For body confidence, it’s important that our dogs know what their bodies are capable of doing. It could be that they are not used to jumping on and over things, so providing them with opportunities is important but you must start off small. You cannot ask your dog to jump on a high surface before he is able to jump on a low one, so build his confidence with something he is willing to do and gradually increase the height.
