Helping an Anxious Rescue Dog Get Over a Fear of New People

By: David Codr

Published Date: September 13, 2019

Leo LWRD Terrier - Helping an Anxious Rescue Dog Get Over a Fear of New People

For this Omaha Dog Psychology session we help Leo, a 5 year-old Yorkshire Terrier mix, stopping his fear of strangers using some positive reinforcement. Leo is a rescue dog placed through our friends at Little White Dog Rescue and we always enjoy helping dogs placed through them.

Leo refuses to approach or take a treat from his guardian’s mother who is in a wheel chair. I pulled out some high value training treats and handed the guardian my camera to share tips on helping a anxious dog approach someone they are fearful of.

Im hoping that this positive dog training method to help a dog get over a fear of people will work. But without seeing Leo and the grandmother together, we wont know for sure until that happens. I asked the guardian to work on the other things we covered in this in home Omaha dog training session for a few weeks and them try a visit. If he is still fearful of the wheelchair or grandmother, we may need to set up a follow up session in a month to work on that fear of strangers behavior.

I shared a number of dog behavior tips that will help Leo feel more confident in his guardian’s leadership, something crucial when rehabilitating a fearful rescue dog. We also talked quite a bit about Dog Psychology and things to do and not to do when helping a scared rescue dog.

I asked the guardian to follow up with us in 2 weeks so we can set up a day for him to join us at our Puppy Socialization class to see if having him play with the puppies in our puppy socialization class will help. This process is called habituation and its a wonderful way to help a fearful dog regain social skills and confidence.

We finished the session with a roadmap to success video to help the guardian remember everything we covered in this in home Dog Psychology session.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Categorized in:

This post was written by: David Codr