How to help your fearful puppy gain confidence (Photo: Pomeranian mix with whale eye)
Is your puppy fearful?
Does she jump twenty feet in the air when the garbage truck backfires?
Does she back up when strangers approach? Hide behind your legs?
Or perhaps she rushes toward strangers and visitors barking and growling…and then backs up.
You’re beginning to worry about the way she behaves when guests come over. Your puppy is beginning to:
-air snap (bite the air near people)
-nip
-growl
-bite at people’s ankles
-put their mouth around people’s arms, hands, legs, etc
If your puppy is older, you may have even stopped having visitors over because your puppy’s behaviour stresses you out so much. You’ve tried putting her on a leash and holding her collar, but that only seems to make her growl and lunge more.
Now, you’re locking her up in a bedroom or laundry room, which makes you feel terrible because you can tell she doesn’t like being in there.
She paces. She howls. And now she’s starting to chew the baseboards and the trim.
You want other people to see the puppy that YOU see — the sweetheart (Photo: boxer with his head, chest, and arms dangling out of a window beside a sign that reads beware of dog)
Let’s get your fearful puppy the help she needs.
It’s time to build your puppy’s confidence.
It’s also time to learn how to train a fearful puppy, because there’s a lot of nuance to it and it’s completely different than training a confident puppy.
First, we need to make sure that we have trust and respect.
Most owners who have fearful puppies haven’t earned their puppy’s trust yet. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’re here to learn how. This is a safe space to build you up too. Breathe and believe.
As human beings, we often apply human psychology to our dogs. We say things like “It’s okay” when it’s absolutely not okay, like after growling at one of your houseguests. We also tend to pet our dogs in this moment, accidentally showing them that we liked the growling.
To build trust with your puppy, you’re going to:
-stop saying the phrase “it’s okay”
-stop petting your puppy when she is tense, fearful, growling, etc (basically, we’re only going to pet and reward your puppy when she is calm because we want to see more calmness)
-stop retelling her rescue story (this is keeping her stuck in the past and we are in the present)
-show her what she can do instead of barking, growling, lunging, etc (we’re going to teach her the place command.)
Learn more about the place command here: https://beyonddogtraining.ca/news/what-is-the-place-command
and here: https://beyonddogtraining.ca/news/place-command-construction-edition
How will the things on this list begin to build your puppy’s trust in you?
Stopping those first three things on the list will help remove your soft energy. When we feel sorry for our puppy, they have to lead us. They are hardwired to follow calm and confident leadership. If we don’t provide it, they will fill the leadership role. Your fearful puppy doesn’t want this heavy burden, so we’re going to do the job from now on. You can do it.
Teaching your fearful puppy the place command is going to provide her with a confidence boost. If she’s super fearful, she may be shut down and think she can’t do that task. While stepping up on a cot seems minuscule to us, it’s a lot of effort for a puppy who has no confidence.
When you lead them through activities, they learn to trust you (Photo: Corgi mix sitting on top of a platform looking happy)
Some puppies are so fearful that you may need to flip the cot upside down to begin teaching the place command — and that’s 100% okay. Check out the video of Bandit the Australian Shepherd X Border Collie on my Instagram to see how suspicious he was of his new cot. He actually hid while it was being put together. Even the box moving around scared him.
Your puppy will learn to trust you as she realizes that nothing bad happens when she steps on the cot. In fact, as you show her that this is her do-not-disturb zone, she will trust you even more to protect her space from other people.
Pro Tip: Be sure to put the cot on a non-slip floor. The last thing you want for your fearful pup is for her to be brave enough to step on the cot, only to have the cot slide and make a noise that she finds scary.
Fearful puppies are my absolute favourite to work with because they are so often misunderstood. To outsiders, they look aggressive, but when you peel off that layer of fear, you find an absolute sweetheart underneath — and you can feel their relief that someone finally speaks their language.
I always say that at the client’s front door I’m having two conversations simultaneously — one with the owners and one with their puppy. The conversation and greeting are completely different. When we greet humans, we make eye contact, we talk out loud, and sometimes shake hands. When we greet puppies in this manner, especially puppies who are fearful, we completely overwhelm them. Dogs are a different species. If we remember that and greet them in a way that is natural to them, we can earn their trust immediately.
Try using this formula when you greet a new puppy/dog and you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes in their energy.
No touch.
No talk.
No eye contact.
Post in the comments below if you know who succinctly summed this up for all of humankind.
Need more tips on placework and want to see more fearful dogs overcoming their fears? Check out all of our videos here:
On Insta and FB: Go Beyond Dog Training.
On TikTok we are at Beyond Dog Training.
You’ll see:
-guest greetings go from barking and lunging to dogs sitting calmly beside their owners
-fearful dogs learning the place command, how to go in their crates, how to go into rooms they are afraid of, and more
-Marley the fearful rescue dog who used to lay down and try to disappear (by closing her eyes) overcoming her fear of the garage
Thank you for reading the blog!
Have a wonderful weekend, Dog Leaders!
Alyssa
Photos by: Michelle Tresemer @mtresemer (Pomeranian mix with whale eye,) Don Agnello
@donangel (boxer with his head, chest, and arms dangling out of a window beside a sign that reads beware of dog,) Alvan Nee @alvannee (Corgi mix sitting on top of a platform looking happy,)