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puka
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puka is offline  
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Joined: Nov 2016
Posts: 13
Female 
 
09-05-2017, 01:07 AM

Desensitizing fearful dog...how to know when you're pushing too hard?

Hi everyone,

I've posted here before about my anxious and fearful rescue puppy and got some really helpful answers.

Puka has a serious fear of traffic when we are out on walks and it's a nightmare to deal with. I have been trying everything to calm her down. She seems to be getting worse rather than better - and I'm hoping this particularly bad patch is related to the adolescent fear period and that she'll improve slightly again.

So, I decided to take things back to square one. Instead of taking her for city walks, we've been sticking to the courtyard inside my apartment building. She has become 100% comfortable there - even to the point of eating treats, which is a miracle because she used to be too anxious to eat even in there (the idea of taking a treat while out in the big city is a complete non-starter)

Anyway, so because she became 100% comfortable in the courtyard I decided to take the next step tonight and bring her to the street right in front of our apartment. It's a pedestrian street with benches - but it's short and you can hear the traffic on the adjacent streets at both ends.

She immediately freaked out as soon as we got to the door. She pulled like a maniac to get back inside. I brought her out anyway and tried to get her to sit on the bench with me right outside the door of the building. All she would do was pull to go back, while trembling and sometimes crying. I tried to distract her by running up and down with her a bit, but no progress. She only wanted to run toward the door.

So my first question is...how can I manage to help desensitize her to the city, when this is her reaction to just stepping one foot outside the front door?!

I don't want to push her over her threshold, but if I can't get her out the door, it's impossible to work on desensitization...

And my second question is... how to calm her when she's freaking out? I am really unsure of how to calm her when she's in fear mode. I know I shouldn't coddle her or tell her it's ok because I don't want to reinforce the fear. But it's hard to know what to do to help physically calm her.

As soon as we went back into the courtyard (after 10 minutes out on the street), she switched to perfectly happy, playing fetch etc, tail up, body relaxed etc. Like a different dog.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Danielle
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tawneywolf
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tawneywolf is offline  
Location: Bolton
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 24,075
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09-05-2017, 12:14 PM
The desensitising idea has actually been disproved from what I remember.
One of my girls, who is a little old lady now, was the same, her sister never bothered, but it was a nightmare, I just had to keep taking her out, short trips, off road whenever possible, but of course we had to cross roads to get there. Tried taking her on buses and trains and she freaked, despite her calm sister by her side. She was fine going in my car, but going in a strange car was an issue as well. I have always gone training with them, and over the years she has become a lot less fearful, heavy wagons thundering past make her jump but she no longer tries to jump a wall to get away for instance. I do wonder if perhaps she has extra sensitive hearing actually.
Take her outside literally for one minute, then back again and keep doing that, and then increase to two minutes if you manage the one minute and so on. Forget about the treats, she is far too panicky to even realise they are on offer. Reassurance and cuddles, but don't go overboard on that, be quite businesslike, calm and non reactive to whatever she does or however she performs. There is no quick fix to this, it is her, and how she is, and you will have to adjust to this and work within the very small perameters available and gradually widen them, its a long term problem that can only be helped by taking a long term strategy
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