Helping fearful dogs

While staying with friends in Costa Rica I had the chance to watch a family interacting with their 7 month old terrier mix pup. Duke (unfortunately pronounced 'Dookie' in Spanish) was everything you'd want in a dog; engaging, playful, responsive, friendly and cute to beat the band, a classic little scruffy Disney character. My Spanish is limited and when the father of the family began ...

A fearful dog's best chance of learning new skills and becoming more confident in the world often rests on their handler's understanding of how fear affects a dog's behavior. The goal of the shy dog seminar is to present information to trainers, rescuers and rehabbers so that they can respond appropriately to a dog's behavior in any situation and continue to work toward improvement in ...

During our woods walk, as we headed down the mountain toward the Roaring Brook, Annie the cocker had stopped, standing perpendicular in the narrow trail, her gaze off into the woods as she processed a scent. Behind me I heard the pounding hoof beats that was Sunny barreling down the trail toward us. As he veered left to avoid Annie, she headed in the same ...

My border collie has a high tolerance for pain. When his attempt to herd an SUV a couple of summers back proved to be a dismal failure, I was amazed and at the same time heartened to see his tail wag as I carried him into the vet's office- a hind flank degloved, opposite hind leg broken, fractured pelvis and other lacerations- when ...

Thought I'd share a couple of great resources with folks. Roxanne Hawn has created MP3 files of Dr.Karen Overall's Relaxation Protocol. Check out her blog for stories about working with her own fearful dog Lilly. Casey Lomonaco of Rewarding Behaviors Dog Training is Dogster's oracle on fearful dog behavior this month, creating posts with resources for fearful dog owners. Check out her website for lots ...

I recently returned from a trip to Puerto Rico, where in my other life, I often travel with groups for my work in organizing active, educational travel adventures for women and students. While staying at the Seagate Hotel, run by Penny Miller, who years ago was among the go-getters who helped get a shelter and clinic built on the island, I met several ...

After Sunny had lived with us for several months and it became clear to me, after he escaped from the house once, and again from a friend's fenced in yard, that Sunny was not going to go far, I let him be my 'wild boy' and spend most of the day off leash outside. At the time we didn't have a fence and I'm not ...

Here's a link to a short video of Sunny messing around with boxes. Nosework is all the rage these days and folks have been clicking & shaping their dogs to do 101 things with a box for awhile, but Sunny has been too afraid to interact with a box. Boxes move and have moving parts, that's enough to be of concern to Sunny. But he ...

Sunny came to us a dog with no skills for interacting comfortably with people. That was obvious, but what wasn't obvious to me at the time was that being in a house was also a horrifying experience for him as well. It was winter in Vermont when he first arrived and having grown up in an Arkansas hoarder's compound, being an outdoor dog was not ...

I’m a pragmatic New Englander and although many of us won’t admit it, we take pride in not being like our footloose, compatriots who occupy the other coast with their year round tans, Esalen retreats and anything to do with colon cleansing. So when my fearful dog Sunny, who had spent his early life in a pen in Arkansas, escaped from our house in the ...