Comments on: Helping My Dog Face Her Fears

By: Maggie

Maggie — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 21:33:26 +0000

So wonderful how you’ve been working through all that with Honey. Cooper is pretty much afraid of everything, but his “broom” is a baby gate. Even if it’s just leaning against the wall, he doesn’t want to walk past it. We have gates on three doors, and he gets rattled when we open and close them. To help him overcome it – and since he already knew “open” and “shut” with our cabinet doors – I’ve been teaching him how to nose open and nose closed the gate that separates Newt’s litterbox. We’ve made huge progress. He went from fleeing the room if I opened the gate to running over to shut it for me! I’m going to try to film him doing it soon, but it’s been huge. (It did not, however, generalize to the other two gates…)

By: 24 Paws of Love

24 Paws of Love — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 03:40:30 +0000

Still working on that one. the only dog that were dealing with new fears (besides Brut of course) is Silver. As she has aged, she’s become scared of thunder storms, snow blowers, and raising voices (even if they are in excitement). I started playing treat games with her to keep her mind busy and that works the most. We haven’t had a thunderstorm in some time, so I have yet to encounter that again. God forbid we fight or get excited, she runs out of the room. Haven’t figure that one out yet.

I think what you’re doing with Honey is great! I can’t imagine having a dog that was timid. Our dogs are so strong willed.

Can’t wait to hear your adventures on the water! That’s going to be so cool! Good luck!

By: Jen Gabbard

Jen Gabbard — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:18:21 +0000

She definitely seems brave, and you’ve given her quite a confidence boost with all that training. The one thing Laika feared was the vacuum, but we got her desensitized to it with treats and just relaxing by it. Now she doesn’t even seem to notice when it’s turned on. My last dog was terrified of thunderstorms and I had a hard time calming him down.

By: DZ Dogs

DZ Dogs — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 22:59:22 +0000

Not sweeping would be nice. 🙂 I love how you worked with Honey on the doggy ramp!
Dante is only scared when daddy shoots his bow, I think the woosh and thwack noises are what bother him.
Ziva? She’ll startle at a sudden loud noise but nothing major.

By: Lauren Miller

Lauren Miller — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 20:41:09 +0000

That’s awesome that Honey is getting over her fears! She is too cute!

Both of my girls were rescued as adults. With Zoe we have no idea about her past history and with Phoenix all we know is that firefighters took her out of a burning house and her people never came back for her. Phoenix is afraid of strangers, kids and the smoke alarm. She is also dog selective. Zoe is afraid of loud noises and it’s actually getting worse over the years. It started out as her being afraid of fireworks and now it’s progressed to her even being afraid when the upstairs neighbors bang around their apartment.

With Phoenix, the first year was pretty rough because she was extremely skittish but hyper. I never let anyone try to pet her and never pushed her into doing anything scary. We also work really hard to make sure our smoke detector does not go off. We place a fan underneath it when we cook so if there is any smoke it gets blown away from it. With her people fear, I’ve taken her to grocery store type places and clicked and treated every time someone passed by us. We will have had her 3 years this coming October and she’s just now starting to great people on outings.

Zoe’s fear is much tougher. You just can’t predict every little noise. Most of the time I just have to manage it because her fear is so severe. We are actually starting to look into anxiety medication because living with so much anxiety is not good. We do use herbel remedies, too. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t it just depends on what’s going on. I used to be able to do the same thing with her as you do with Honey, get her interested in trick training or food toys but it no longer works. Sometimes having Phoenix around helps, though. She can see that Phoenix is fine and not worried so sometimes she will snap out of it quicker. A lot of the time, I just have to crate her until she feels better.

By: RumpyDog!

RumpyDog! — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 17:51:04 +0000

Rumpy is fearful of the smell of gasoline, which isn’t a problem usually. But I have come across it before when I left the mower out to cool in the summer or we were passed by a car with a gas line leak.

By: Martine

Martine — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:13:02 +0000

Zach, our younger dog, is fearful of men. He was that way when we got him at 4.5 months. We’re rural, so he doesn’t get many opportunities to work on his fear (and it’s a 40 min drive into town where such opportunities would be more frequent). There aren’t many men in our lives, so it’s not a big issue, and we always give him room to avoid the men that do visit.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 15:17:13 +0000

Torrey is like Honey, she is much happier hanging out in the house than running down a critter. She can be a bit timid with weird stuff that moves suddenly, but we don’t have a lot of that going on. She has a comfort zone, and she likes it there.

By: Blueberry's human

Blueberry's human — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 14:59:26 +0000

Blueberry still has fear from loud noises – but she’s so much better than she used to be. She has her safe place and as long as I am with her in that place, she’ll actually fall asleep. She’s come a long way from her first days with me. I think it has helped that I have never forced her to approach something that is scary to her – often I’ll try to treat her to get closer to it to check it out, but if she doesn’t want to, we move on. Usually, she ends up approaching the scary object on her own and finding out it’s no big deal.

I remember the second time I had a foster dog – that dog was over the top fearful of a LOT of stuff. One day, my neighbor was working on his roof and she was petrified. Not knowing any better, and getting really bad advice and then stupidly heeding that advice, I forced her to stay outside. Of course, that method totally didn’t work in helping her overcome the scary thing, and I ended up putting her back several steps in her training. I felt just horrible and after that, found better, kinder, more effective ways to help her overcome her fears. Live and learn, I guess.

By: Groovy Goldendoodles

Groovy Goldendoodles — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 14:53:22 +0000

So happy for Honey (and you!) that was amazing. Harley had a great fear of sewer drains. Those that are under the sidewalks. He would pull so hard, he’d choke himself. Yet he’d try really hard to inch himself closer at times to see what was down there. I have spent many a rainy or snowy chilly morning allowing him all the time he needed to get comfortable inching closer each time. It’s taken years, but we can now walk past without making a scene!