We human beings are animals – mammals, homo sapiens. Here’s a story for you explaining how animals overcome fear.
A friend of mine Michelle was terrified of snakes and spiders, because her parents were afraid of them – by proxy she carried that fear. She thought snakes were slimy and didn’t want to get bit, the very reason she didn’t want to be around them. Michelle trusts me as a friend. We ended up at a pet store one day, she needed food for her dogs and this store carried snakes and spiders. Great, lets go have a look. Asked an employee if I could handle one of the boa constrictors they had, it was probably a foot and a half long, pretty small. I had this snake crawling over me, put it around my neck, on my face etc and Michelle was watching me.
I asked her if she would like to touch it. Again, she trusts me – she trusts that I wouldn’t use the snake to scare her, that I wouldn’t toss it at her. I just stood there with the snake cupped in my hands. She made the choice to come forward and touch it with the tip of a finger, she realized it wasn’t slimy and wasn’t prone to bite. She touched it with her whole hand, one step at a time. Before long, she was holding the snake – something she was terrified of 10 minutes before. What happened?
She chose to follow a person she trusted to help her overcome a fear. If Michelle didn’t trust me, she never would have touched the snake, let alone hold it.
The same goes for any animal. Dogs are no different, if the dog is afraid of something – and they don’t trust the owner or the people they are around – they have no reason to attempt to overcome a fear. This is why trust should be number one.
Trust is the first thing I go for. The dogs that I tend to work with are fearful, nervous, insecure etc – they don’t have any trust in people. I need the dog to learn to trust me – and vice versa. To that end, we go for a long walk – generally in a dog park away from dogs – and all we do is walk. It’s a chance for the dog to sniff around, mark some territory and gives me a chance to analyze what the dog is missing. I don’t care about pulling or what not at the moment, that will change when the dog calms down. I stop periodically, offer my hand to see if the dog is simply ready to accept me. Most times, the answer is no – so we walk some more. I want the dog to understand that I’m not there to control it, not there to hurt it – that you can trust me.
When the dog finally gets to the point where it’s coming to me for affection, then I know we have some trust. It’s time to start meeting dogs and people cause the dog is willing to follow someone it trusts. The dog needs to trust that I’m not going to put it in harms way, that I have its’ back in all instances, that there is nothing to be afraid of. I need to prove that I’m worthy of leadership.
When meeting dogs, everything has to be calm. Go for the bum sniff, dogs should be nose first – and I will guide the dog I’m working with to the bum sniff. That’s the dog handshake, and dogs learn it pretty quick.
Using this simple method, I’ve seen dogs go from being a complete basket case to calmly meeting dogs and people within a few hours.