Building Up the Confidence of a Little White Dog Rescue Dog

By: David Codr

Published Date: July 23, 2019

Annabelle LWDR Poodle mix2 - Building Up the Confidence of a Little White Dog Rescue Dog

For this Omaha Dog Psychology session we share tips to help 9 year-old Poddle-Bichon mix Annabella stop fearing humans.

Annabella also has a separation anxiety problem, but it quickly became apparent that this dog was so fearful that we needed to build up the dog’s confidence first. Knowing that she came from our friends at Little White Dog Rescue, I wasn’t surprised. That rescue does an outstanding job of getting dogs out of bad situations and placing them in wonderful supportive forever homes.

I started off by leaving out treats half way between us to motivate her to practice approaching me. While we did this, I didn’t encourage, look at, talk to or try to pet her. As a dog behaviorist I learned a long tome ago that when you have a fearful dog with low confidence, giving space, being patient and creating a situation where the dog can do the work on their own is highly beneficial.

I wanted to share some tips to help fearful dogs build up confidence so I filmed the guardian as I directed her through some exercises to help build up confidence in insecure dogs.

Finding ways for Annabella to move forward towards things she is fearful of, in the easiest situation possible is the first step in rehabilitating a fearful or anxious dog. This may seem rudimentary, and it is and that is the point. Building up confidence in scared dogs is all about achieving small successes on top of earlier successes.

To help the guardian remember the rest of the positive dog training tips we shared in this in home Omaha dog training session, we recorded a roadmap to success video that you can check out below.

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This post was written by: David Codr