How to make a dog more confident outside?

Establish a strong bond with your dog to help reduce any anxiety or stressful situations for them when they’re around people they’re not familiar with. 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. 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. 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. 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 teach your dog to be comfortable around strangers when you’re out and about. It’s good to know the maximum distance from someone that your dog is comfortable with. It’s important to remember that building your dog’s confidence takes time and patience.

To build confidence in dogs, you can use repeated exposure to the scary thing so that it becomes less novel and more routine, this is called desensitization. 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 you’re unsure how to make an exposure less overwhelming to start with, think about how you can manage factors such as noise level, amount of the stimulus, and invasiveness or distance from the scary thing. For example, if your dog is anxious about meeting new dogs, ask a friend with a well-socialized dog to help, with both dogs on leash, take a walk parallel to each other, far enough apart that the dogs can’t touch. As your dog gets more comfortable, you can gradually move them closer to each other. You can enhance the desensitization sessions by adding really yummy treats, called counter-conditioning.

Try to avoid situations with lots of strangers. When you are out on walks, try to maintain the distance from people that your dog is comfortable with. This might involve safely crossing the road so that strangers don’t try to approach them head-on, walking on quieter routes, or going out at quieter times. Find your dog's “bubble” and try to keep a diary and watch your dog carefully when you're on walks to identify any patterns in the people they struggle the most with and the distances at which they start to find it difficult to cope. Stay calm and try not to pull on the lead, as sudden pressure on the lead can increase their anxiety, as they may feel restricted and unable to move. It's a good idea to practice basic training at home, such as loose lead walking and teaching your dog a 'watch me' cue, so that you can keep your dog walking by your side without any pressure being applied to the lead. Change your dog's response to people using rewards, to change the emotion that your dog feels when they see someone new, by associating a specific tasty treat with strangers. As you walk, watch your dog carefully and as soon as they notice a person, calmly acknowledge that they have seen them with a marker word such as ‘yes’ or ‘good,’ and then reward them with a treat. Ideally as you give the reward you want to keep encouraging them and also move your dog away from the stranger.