Help With Fright

[corvus]

Then why is one of your dogs a nervious wreck?

Oh, come on, you are not that stupid. It's a wee bit more complicated than good leadership=calm and relaxed dog at all times. Erik is not what I would ever call a nervous wreck and never has been. He gets easily aroused and does not easily recover back to baseline is all. He's not even 18 months old, though. He's still a baby. He has come a long way and I'm pretty happy with his progress. He just keeps getting better.

I talk about the problems I've had because I think it might help other people to share the things that have helped Erik. Day to day, though, Erik is pretty good these days. That's why I share what we've done. I assume it's helped.

[sas]

Then why is one of your dogs a nervious wreck?

Oh, come on, you are not that stupid. It's a wee bit more complicated than good leadership=calm and relaxed dog at all times. Erik is not what I would ever call a nervous wreck and never has been. He gets easily aroused and does not easily recover back to baseline is all. He's not even 18 months old, though. He's still a baby. He has come a long way and I'm pretty happy with his progress. He just keeps getting better.

I talk about the problems I've had because I think it might help other people to share the things that have helped Erik. Day to day, though, Erik is pretty good these days. That's why I share what we've done. I assume it's helped.

Excuse me? How about you go back and read that again. It's a fair question, your dog seems to have a host of behavioural/emotional problems yet you're offering advice to someone with a dog having emotional problems?

So I don't think it's appropriate to call someone stupid whose pointing out the balantly obvious.

[VJB]

Is he crate trained?

Perhaps a crate might make him feel safer?

Yes, and he does enjoy his crate. It is in another room, and it is a larger pen/den type hexagon thingo. Maybe they could bring that to the front room as it is currently in another lounge room area.

[VJB]

I HOPE I can convey what I'm trying to get across.....

Yep, I get what you are trying to say. Makes sense.

[VJB]

Negative reaction by owners (telling off for barking) is still attention to the dog.

I would really be looking at setting him up for success rather than letting him fail.

Agree, and I told owners last night that rather than telling him off, maybe adding a distraction would be a better way of dealing with it..... This is the first time dog for them, although one had some dogs when growing up...but first time owners as adults. They are great dog parents, and learning stuff along the way. He does not go to training, and probably hasn't been around another dog since this happened, but I know that they do attend the local dog park without any issues.

I am going to go down to their place in the next few days with a bag full of treats to show her a clicker and how it can be used in loads of situations..... as she may well be able to use a clicker to help get past some of this.

I know the owner feels terrible about what happened,, almost guilty... highly possible that the dog is picking up on this, even though she is attempting to be 'normal'.

Edited November 17, 2010 by VJB

[Greytmate]

We are not necessarily dealing with just behaviour. IME, it pays to identify whether the main motivator is something tangible or something that then leads to a sought after change in emotional state. It is not nice to feel afraid and an animal will try to find ways to behave that will alleviate that feeling of fear or anxiety or even just high arousal. For example, say you're worried about getting a nasty surprise. One possible strategy is to just be more alert. But when you're more alert, you hear more things and see more things and smell more things and if you are more alert because you are afraid of something bad happening, you will tend to expect all these things you sense are probably going to turn out to be bad. So you react to them as if they are bad, which gets you more upset because you are in a constant state of preparing for something bad to happen, so even when it doesn't happen, you can't relax much before something else gets you worried. Or alternatively, you react to the worrying stimuli, nothing bad happens to you, and so you feel like you've averted the bad thing and continue to repeat that behaviour because it makes you feel like you're averting disaster.

I think I'm not communicating this very well. I really just want to say that it's likely to be complicated and I think that treating the behaviour without considering the emotional state that might be driving the behaviour is a mistake. It may well work, but at what cost to the dog? You won't ever know. But to me, this is the exact situation where I would want to be there for my dog. If I can do something to make him feel more relaxed...

I would agree with all of that, but the rest of your post doesn't offer any insight into anxiety problems.

I would recommend a behaviourist be brought in to assess the level of anxiety the dog is exhibiting, see how the owners react to that and act generally around the dog, and then decide what technique would be best to work with.

You can not always help a dog that is emotionally unstable, as it is genetic, but you can try different things to manage the barking problem and make the dog feel better. This one does sound a bit extreme so I wish them luck.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Greytmate