The more I train dogs, the more fearful dogs I encounter. Dogs that are afraid of mailmen, being alone, kids, strangers, other dogs, being handled, traffic noises, novel things they haven’t seen before, things appearing suddenly in the environment . . . the list goes on. One little dog I worked with a few years ago was afraid of so many different things that her guardian was overwhelmed after just a few weeks of life together. She’d asked me for recommendations on books about fearful dogs. How I wish Debbie Jacobs’ A Guide to Living With & Training a Fearful Dog (“Guide”) had been available then!

A committed dog geek, I’m always studying dog behavior and training. I’ve read several books on training fearful dogs but the Guide is unique. Drawing from years of experience living, working with and training her extremely fearful dog Sunny, Debbie cracks a tough nut that’s essential to helping any fearful dog – putting ourselves in their paws as they navigate a world fraught with scary triggers.

As the Guide explains so well, rewiring one’s mindset is vital to helping a fearful dog. Goals and expectations that might be entirely reasonable when training confident well-socialized dogs are often unrealistic for dogs with severe and/or multiple fears and anxieties. Imagining life from a fearful dog’s perspective helps guardians cultivate compassion, empathy and patience both in daily life with the dog and when training to reduce/overcome fears.

Grounded in solid science-based training, the Guide also addresses the significance of the relationship between guardians and dogs. Establishing trust in the guardian is crucial to building the dog’s confidence, reducing fear and anxiety, and changing fearful behavior.

Wonderfully readable and easy to understand, the Guide provides a wealth of concrete information on a host of useful topics including why positive training is a must; the dangers of punishment-based training; suggested treats and rewards; how play can help a fearful dog; how to gauge the dog’s progress; training games and exercises; medications and other calming remedies.

One of the things I like best about the Guide is the discussion of real and sometimes difficult questions that many fearful dog guardians face. Living with and training a fearful dog can be taxing and draining. It may require more of an investment from a guardian than s/he can realistically or wants to make. The Guide takes on these issues with refreshing frankness and lack of judgment considering not only the dog’s well-being but that of the human caretaker.

Debbie Jacobs’ knowledge, candor and humor shine throughout the Guide. Her sound practical advice spells hope for guardians of all dogs, fearful, anxious, and otherwise. For those with shy or fearful dogs, reading and following the Guide will be one of the best things you can do for your dog. I suspect you’ll find yourself returning to its pages over and over again. Thank you Debbie for this gem of a book!

To order the Guide and learn more about Debbie Jacobs, CPDT-KA, CAP, visit her fabulous Fearful Dogs blog at www.fearfuldogs.com.

Whether you’ve just adopted a puppy or an adult dog, or you’ve had a dog in your family for years, here are 10 great reasons to train your pooch now:

1. Get your dog started (or keep him going) on the right paw. Training will teach him good manners from the get-go, maintain good manners and prevent the development of bad habits and behavior problems.
2. Training provides your dog with one form of mental stimulation, which is vital to his behavioral health. Without sufficient daily mental and physical exercise, dogs get bored. Boredom usually leads to behavior humans don’t like, like boredom barking, and destructive chewing and digging.


Training means more fun & off-leash freedom

3. Training helps your dog control his impulses in everyday life. Dogs are highly impulsive, opportunistic scavengers. Learning and maintaining impulse control makes for a better behaved pet.
4. Training teaches dogs how to learn. This makes future training easier for you and for your dog.
5. The Fun starts now! Positive reinforcement training is reward-based, not punishment-based. Of course rewards are fun (otherwise they wouldn’t be rewards)! When you use reward-based training, in no time your dog will LOVE training. A dog who loves to train and do what you ask…how fab is that?
6. Training may save your dog’s life. In our busy urban environment, you could easily find yourself and your pooch in a situation where you need him to come to you immediately or stay exactly where he is to avoid oncoming traffic or some other hazard. Training snappy recalls, lightning speed sits, and rock solid stays sets you and your dog up for safety and success in emergencies.
7. Training behaviors like stays, settle down, and coming when called means more off-leash freedom for your dog, more peace of mind for you, and more — here’s that word again — fun for you both.
8. Training makes travel and other outings with your dog hassle-free. You and your dog’s quality of life improves when you can take him on vacation or into any dog-friendly café or other establishment.
9. Positive training deepens the bond between you and your dog. You’ll have a relationship built on mutual respect, clear communication and trust, rather than pain, force and intimidation.
10. Positive training builds a more confident dog. Positive training is especially wonderful at building confidence in shy and fearful dogs. Fearful dogs are more likely to bite, so decreasing fear and increasing confidence are good things.

A new client dog who I’ll call Misty is very fearful girl with multiple fear triggers. Misty has growled, snarled and lunged at people in certain situations but hasn’t bitten anyone. Misty’s human definitely has her hands full. “I don’t want her to be the type of dog that bites,” she said when we first met.

I know what the woman meant but I explained to her that actually, all dogs are “the type of dog that bites.” Given the right circumstances any dog can bite.

Biting and other forms of aggressive behavior most commonly arise from fear. Dogs typically avoid engaging in physical combat including biting, because fighting is expensive behavior for the dog from a survival standpoint. In combat, dogs risk being killed or seriously injured. Rather than do battle when faced with an upsetting, threatening or scary situation, most dogs flee or use ritualized forms of aggression to diffuse the conflict and avoid fighting. In other words, most dogs try to get the heck out of dodge, or do things to get the scary thing to go away. Barking, lunging, snarling, and growling are some of the more obvious behaviors that in dog language mean, “Go away. Back off. You are seriously freaking me out.”

I think of bites as a dog’s last line of defense. It’s unusual for a dog to leap frog over warning signals and proceed to biting. Usually long before biting, the dog has been communicating his fearful upset state using subtle warning signals. Well-meaning humans are frequently unaware of the dog’s warnings. Humans don’t notice the signals or don’t know what they mean. But ignoring a dog’s warning signals is a good set up for a dog bite.

All dogs have bite thresholds – points beyond which they are likely to bite. Because every dog is a unique individual, bite thresholds vary from dog to dog.

A dog can be pushed over his bite threshold when multiple fear triggers are presented simultaneously. Think of each fear trigger as a rock. Exposing the dog to fear triggers is like putting rocks in a paper bag. The bag might stand up to the weight of one rock, maybe two, possibly even three. But the more rocks you put into the bag, the bigger the risk the bag will rip apart.

Misty is afraid of men, loud machinery, and strangers who reach towards her head. Misty could easily bite if a strange man tried to pat her on the head just as a noisy street cleaning machine was passing by.

Besides stacking several fear triggers together, another set up for a dog bite is to present a single trigger at a sufficiently high intensity. This is like “growing” the rock into a boulder and putting it in the paper bag. The bag may very well break. In the case of Sam who guards his bones from humans, Sam is fine if a human is 6 feet away while he’s gnawing on a bone. Put the human 4 feet away from Sam and he growls. Put the human 1 foot from Sam and it’s boulder time — Sam bites.

To avoid bites, take the time to “learn” your dog. Identify her fear triggers and pay attention to her body language and warning signals. Avoid putting her in scary upsetting situations in general, and avoid pushing her beyond her bite threshold at all costs. If your dog is showing signs of fear, listen to what she’s saying and get her out of the scary situation as quickly as you can.

Getting a dog out of an upsetting situation may calm the dog in the moment but doesn’t resolve the problem. Fears don’t dissipate on their own. Without positive training interventions, fear-based behavior often gets worse. An experienced positive reinforcement trainer — along with an owner’s diligent follow-through on training instructions — should improve the dog’s emotional response to and behavior around the trigger.

I’m opposed to punishment-based training, period. But I can’t emphasize this enough: punishment-based methods should never be used with a fearful dog, or to address fearful behavior. Punishment-based training will most likely to escalate the dog’s underlying fear and the resultant behavior.

Some excellent resources to address fearful dog behavior include:

• Help For Your Fearful Dog, by Nicole Wilde
• Click to Calm, by Emma Parsons
• Debbie Jacobs’ Fearful Dog Blog