Building Confidence – Curing and Preventing Anxiety

By Alex Peacock.

As a dog trainer specializing in anxious and nervous dogs, one of the most important things I’ve learned is this- confidence is a complete opposite of anxiety, and curiosity is anxiety’s mentally healthy cousin. This is essential to know for anyone who wants to help a dog with existing anxiety, or prevent a dog from developing anxiety.

Today we’ll be discussing several ways you can work on building your dog’s confidence. Before we get started, please remember to exercise good judgement and work with a professional wherever necessary, particularly if your dog’s behavior is very intense.

Tip #1 – Try New Things

Once fantastic way to build a dog’s confidence is to frequently introduce new places, objects, smells, and activities to them. For many dogs this can be as simple as taking them to a store or location they haven’t been to before or introducing new toys, particularly ones with interesting movements, textures or sounds. For dogs that are ready for something more advanced you can introduce new activities or tricks. For example, if your dog knows the ‘place’ command, you could have them ‘place’ on a surface with an odd texture (maybe covered in bubble wrap) or something that feels slightly unstable (like a wood pallet or a low, flat shopping cart at home improvement stores).

The key is to make sure that whatever you’re introducing is just a little out of your dog’s comfort level, is safe, and that they end on a good experience with it that involves them intentionally interacting with the activity. Here’s an interesting tidbit as well- when your dog does these activities successfully, they’re not actually becoming less afraid, they’re becoming more brave and confident. This means that they’ll be even more ready to tackle the next challenge that comes their way.

Tip #2 – Teach ‘Structure’ Behaviors

Frequently for your dog a large part of the stress of a situation is due to simply not being sure how to handle it. One thing you can do to help this is to give your dog a specific behavior to do. The other benefit to this is it also gives your dog something to focus on so that they aren’t solely focused on the thing that is causing them stress.

For example, if your dog is nervous out in public, having a really good ‘heel’ command can be helpful. This is where the dog walks with a relaxed leash right next to you. When you stop, turn, speed up, or slow down, they stick right with you. This can help give a sense of security, as well as of course the added benefit of having your dog close, making stressful situations easier to work through!

For stressful situations that occur in the house, like having house guests, you might teach a ‘place’ command. For example you can have the dog ‘place’ on a dog bed in the corner of the room so that they have a bit of distance from the guests but are still close enough to hear and see them. This can help the dog stay involved in the situation and get more comfortable in it without being so close that they become overwhelmed.

These are only a couple examples of these types of behaviors, so feel free to experiment and find what works best for your dog!

Tip #3 – Stable Social Structure

One major factor to confidence is security, and one of the best ways to help a dog feel safe and secure is to provide what I like to refer to as the ‘Stable Social Structure’. This means that the dog needs to understand what is expected of them, what they can expect of you and their other caretakers, and that they feel confident in your ability to protect and provide for them (one quick clarifier, this does not mean that your dog won’t protect you also, it just means that they don’t have to be ‘head of security’ so to speak).

One major aspect of this is making sure that rules are clearly and consistently enforced. I always recommend that you sit down with any other caretakers of the dog and agree on a list of rules and behavioral boundaries that you want your dog to follow. Then, work to implement this until you have consistency in these behaviors. This provides a lot of mental security for a dog, and can help with their overall confidence.

Another aspect of this is helping to make sure that your dog is not acting ‘possessive’ of you, as this is a symptom of insecurity in the dog. I recommend working with a competent trainer to pinpoint if this is an issue for your dog, and if so, how to address it. Feel free to check out my website below for more on this as well.

The more stability your dog has in the family/social setting, the more relaxed and confident they will be able to be. This is something that I think we can all relate to!

Conclusion

Helping a dog gain confidence takes time and dedication, but results will begin very quickly! Keep practicing and learning, and remember that the payoff is well worth it. If you have any follow up questions on this article, feel free to reach out, you can find my website below. Happy training!

Alex Peacock is a dog trainer specializing in anxiety related behaviors. He believes that a lot of typical anxiety training does not adequately address the root of the issues, and he is continually working on refining his knowledge and techniques to fully and quickly resolve anxiety related behaviors.