How do I build my dog's confidence in anxiety?

Help shy and fearful dogs feel safer by building trust and teaching skills to manage their fear. Food Dispensing and Puzzle Toys are a great way to build your dog’s self-confidence, helping them to problem solve while encouraging them to explore their environment. When you find a food puzzle your dog likes, feed them one meal out of it every day and change it up by freezing the food or using the grass as a natural snuffle mat. Building trust is an important part of our relationship with dogs. We need to respect their needs and normal canine social behaviors. Positive Interactions are Important, tossing treats behind your dog gives them an opportunity to return for more instead of forcing them to take treats from a new person’s hand. Conditioning relaxation on a mat will give your dog a safe haven that you can bring with you to places like the vet, in the car, on vacation, and in a crate. This conditioning is a building block for more advanced behavior modification. When it comes to shy and fearful dogs, remember that these dogs will often show improvement over time once you become more predictable in your interactions with them and they learn the routine.

Building confidence with dogs is an important aspect of our workshops, which focus on the theme of staying safe around dogs. Our supplementary resources help cover topics such as responsible dog ownership and building confidence around dogs. Our workshops are designed using behavioural science to help children behave in a safer way around all dogs. We also provide free curriculum-linked teaching resources which bring dog-themed learning to life and help children have safer interactions with dogs in different settings. Our goal is to reach as many young people as possible and create a lasting impact. Our suite of free resources will provide an engaging and memorable learning experience with fun dog-themed content. Our resources can be used with pupils between the ages of four and 16 and can be downloaded according to each age group.

To build your dog's confidence in anxiety, recognising your own dog’s temperament and how they approach new situations, can help you understand how they are likely to respond - and how best to manage those situations and work to build your dog’s confidence. A secure and confident dog is a happy dog, and confidence can make all the difference in your canine best friend’s overall wellbeing. Create a secure attachment from the very first moment you bring your puppy or dog home, you need to work on the relationship between you so that you are the person your dog knows they can trust and rely on. They need to be so secure in their attachment to you that they look at you to see how to behave so you will give them confidence in any given situation. Never put them in situations that are scary or that make them worried or anxious. Reward based training is one of the best ways to build confidence, by teaching your puppy life skills and training exercises, using rewards when they get it right, not only are you teaching them how to behave but you are building confidence. Punishment and harsh methods have the opposite effect. Socialisation is also important, it’s essential that dogs be positively exposed to a variety of people and experiences between 3 to 14 weeks of age, this enables them to build a ‘database’ of what their new life holds and what is ‘normal’. This will help build their confidence gradually and put them on the path to becoming well-adjusted adults.

One way to help a dog feel more confident is to use repeated exposure to the scary thing so that it becomes less novel and more routine, this is called desensitization. You must be careful, though, not to overwhelm the dog because this can create insecurity or fear of a person, place, or thing. If you want to get your dog comfortable with, say, going to a popular park, first bring them to a quiet corner of the park and allow them to see and hear other people and dogs from a safe distance. Observe their body language closely to get clues about how they're feeling. Over many short sessions, you can move incrementally closer to the busy walkways and more crowded areas, always watching the dog for signs of discomfort. If your dog seems overwhelmed, you’ll need to figure out a way to decrease the stimulus to the point where it’s not scary to your dog, and then move on from there. Proceed at whatever pace your dog appears to feel safe. You can enhance the desensitization sessions by adding really yummy treats, called counter-conditioning, this technique involves the animal experiencing a very tolerable exposure to a stimulus, followed by a delicious treat. To build your dog’s confidence in a more general way, provide them with enrichment activities and relationship-based training, simply feeding your dog via food puzzles and getting them involved in nose work can make them more confident. Training your dog using positive reinforcement teaches them that making decisions and engaging with you and the environment earns them good things like treats and praise.

If your dog is reactive in their behaviour, then reducing the number of instances where they are likely to encounter strangers is a good first step to building their confidence. Be sure to maintain a reasonable distance from others when out on walks or consider taking a quieter route. It’s good to know the maximum distance from someone that your dog is comfortable with. Try to picture an invisible bubble around your dog. This is effectively their safe space. A great way to build your dog’s confidence around strangers is by introducing them to your friends and members of your family that you see regularly. This can be achieved in your home where your dog has a safe space to move to, such as their bed. Be sure to take slow steps so that your dog doesn’t get overwhelmed. Practise positive reinforcement training. This involves praising and rewarding your dog when they display calm behaviour around strangers. Start by slowly building up your dog’s tolerance level to being near people they’re not familiar with in a controlled space. Treat them when they display calm behaviour, offer them a treat, this will help to reinforce the positive association between their behaviour and the treat. Exposure is key, as your dog gets more comfortable and used to this, you can slowly start to increase their exposure to strangers when out and about. Praise and reward your dog throughout when they display calm behaviour and be generous enough to offer them two treats for moving away from others while staying by your side. It’s essential to build trust with your dog to help reduce any anxiety or stressful situations for them when they’re around people they’re not familiar with. Be patient, building your dog’s confidence takes time and patience, however, a safe and secure environment combined with consistent positive reinforcement training will gradually help your dog to develop lasting confidence around strangers.

Dogs learn from positive association. The best way to help a shy or fearful dog gain confidence is to expose them to what frightens them at a low intensity. Pair this exposure with something positive, like a tasty treat. This is called counter conditioning and desensitization, and when done successfully, it helps them feel more comfortable around the source of their fear. Build up trust with your dog before bringing them to public settings like the dog park, a friend’s house, or a dog-friendly restaurant or brewery. Putting your dog in a stressful situation will set their progress back. Go slow and give them time to gain confidence and trust. Most fearful dogs gradually improve with time, training, and trust. Treats and happy, positive interactions can go a long way, but don’t expect a total transformation.