Some tips to Help a Fearful Rescue Dachshund Puppy Get Over a Fear of Walks

For this LA virtual dog training session, we go over tips to help a dog get over a fear of being walked on busy streets to help 10 month old Mini Dachshund puppy Gertie.

I first met Gerti’s guardian over the phone as they were referred to me by one of my favorite dog outfits, MaeDay Dog Rescue. I shared some potty training tips with the guardians as I was out of state, but a week later they called to set up a virtual dog behavior training session.

We spent a good period of time going over the importance of rules and how dogs learn. I suggested they practice my petting with a purpose philosophy and stressed how important it is to reward desired actions and behaviors.

A few of the problems the guardians wanted to work on were the dog’s fear of the harness as well as the puppy being scared on walks on loud and noisy streets. The negative association of the harness may be a result of the dislike of walks in busy areas.

I promised the guardians I would share a video that shows how to use a Conditioned Emotional Response (CER) to help Gertie stop feeling anxious of the harness.

Id like the guardians practice this tip to help a dog get over a fear of the harness a few times a day for a week, in different rooms of the house and different times a day. Ideally practicing with 10-15 treats for each practice session.

To help the dog stop fearing walks, I shot a positive dog training video using one of my own dogs, Max. You can learn how to help a dog get over a fear of walks by watching the video below. Dont worry, this will work for you even if you are not a professional Mini Dachshund dog or puppy trainer.

By starting out in an easy environment and building up Gertie’s confidence before making the situation more challenging, the guardians should be able to stop the puppy from being fearful of walks on busy streets.

Id also like to see the guardians teaching Gertie a few new tricks and commands. This is an awesome way to develop a solid leader follower dynamic and it can boost the puppy’s confidence which will help in many ways.

Id recommend getting a clicker as this tool makes puppy training much easier. This video explains how to prime or load a clicker which is the first step to puppy clicker training. Once the dog sees the clicker as a positive indicator, they can use it to click for more advanced training lessons.

It will be a good idea to do some basic puppy training like the leave it command, to drop things on demand, hand targeting, to focus on the humans staying clam when being leashed, help develop good problem solving with puzzle toys and feed Gertie out of a snuffle matt.

I covered quite a bit more in this in home virtual puppy training session. To help the guardians remember everything, I filed a roadmap to success summary video that you can watch below.