# Going through some fears



## chinchillafuzzy (Feb 11, 2017)

Our sweet baby Luna is going through some weird fears. She is nearly 13 months old right now. I have been counting it as a fear period but after doing a little research on fear periods I see that they are questionable.

The very first fear that she displayed was at probably 4 months old when we went to a parade and she was uncomfortable with some very loud motorcycles (a huge group of them). I was clicking and treating her during that portion of the parade so that it would hopefully not leave a bad impression. I should have done more followup but I really didn’t think much of it, as she was completely stable with big trucks, startling noises (dropping things around the house) and kids making all kinds of screaming noises etc.

Fast forward to about 8 months old, we were at my breeders house to pick something up and her next door neighbor started reving his motorcycle and we were outside. She started to be nervous but I began treating her and she did take the treats but was clearly uncomfortable. That week she remained a little unsure of some things, the garbage truck, etc but then got over it and all seemed fine.

Fast forward again to 11.5 months old. She came into heat and we went up to some UKC shows. She had zero problems with fear at the shows, and did super well at the shows. But on the way up in the car we went through some construction and were forced to cross the rumble strips. She started panting hard, tensing up, would not take food or water, and tried to climb into my lap while I was driving. It was extremely weird since she has ridden in the car with me nearly every day of her life since we got her. It was a 4 hour drive to where we were staying, and 1.5 hours to the show from there for both days, so it ended up being about 14 hours of total driving over that weekend. She was scared the whole time. When we got back we worked with our trainer and she seemed to improve quite a bit and was doing fine around town. We don’t regularly use the freeway for any driving unless we are leaving town so we haven’t been back on.

But then earlier this week we drove to a campground for a church function, and my hubby accidentally hit the rumble strips on the highway halfway there. Then we had to cross a whole bunch of cattle guards (probably 4-5 each way) and she was being nervous again!

Then there was a Utah holiday on the 24th filled with fireworks which freaked her out (she was only mildly worried about them on the 4th) and also there was a thunderstorm yesterday and she was distressed about that.

Where has my rock solid temperament girl gone and what do I do?! I am so worried about all of this, and moreso now that I am questioning whether it could be a fear period. I am so confused as to how this could happen seemingly out of nowhere as we worked with her a whole lot as a puppy to expose her to stimuli. Any suggestions are appreciated!


----------



## zooeysmom (Jan 3, 2014)

Eh, it happens to the best of our pups. Maizie has gone through similar fear periods despite being incredibly well socialized (credit to her breeder). I would try not to worry about it. Luna is still a rock solid girl, probably just going through some developmental periods in her young life


----------



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I am not a subscriber to development fear periods (and neither is Ian Dunbar, he spoke at a workshop about how bad the one tiny experiment which has formed the basis of our tendency to believe in them was).


That said stuff happens. If you read about our Binghamton shows this weekend you will recall that we had a bad interaction with a toller about 10 minutes before Javelin's ring. I was not happy, but I sucked it up and refocused him and he did pretty well. He did do two things that I feel (and my trainer agrees) were demonstrations of concern about where that dog was. First he did a horrible figure 8 with a huge lag where even though I couldn't see what he did I think he was looking outside the ring to see where that dog was. Next he looked away from me out of the ring and gave a big yawn when I was just turning to face him for the recall. Monday I was at my club and spent time while the next renter was working keeping Javelin focused on me and doing simple tasks. Today we kept working on a variety of things with our private trainer while the people and dogs arrived for the class to follow us. He seems to have gotten over much of his concern.


Now how in the world does this help you? One thing you need to do is to shed your worries. And I don't mean smile at Luna with your teeth clenched trying to fake it. Really truly throw the worry away. She will know if you try to fake it.


Next I would work on counter conditioning for those things that have been upsetting to her. Go in baby steps as you need to. First make sure she is happy to be in your vehicle. Then take short trips and make sure she is happy. As long as she is relaxed and happy reward that behavior. Up the ante by getting on the highway for one exit and get off and give her a chance to recover if she needs to. Then get back on and go home. As she regains her confidence make the trips longer and drive over speed bumps and other low obstacles making sure she stays relaxed and reward the relaxed responses. Do the same with noise. You can get CDs with obedience show noise, agility show noise and thunder, etc. Start with short duration and low volume exposures and try to keep her playing games while the noises are happening. Reward remaining connected to you and being relaxed. You can help her through this and it isn't a disaster. No worries. Happy training.


----------



## chinchillafuzzy (Feb 11, 2017)

Thank you both Zm and lily cd re for the reassurance. I did read about Javvys toller incident and that was helpful for you to relate it. I am going to begin trying some desensitization things - thanks for the ideas there. 

I guess my only remaining question is what do I do if we find ourselves in a situation where she gets nervous and we are unable to get out of it (I.e. a motorcycle drives by, thunder, fireworks, etc.) She has been coming to me when it happens, and I, not knowing what to do, am petting her and reassuring her. Could this be inadvertently reinforcing the behavior? Or should I continue? If I am able I usually try to do some easy click and treat review training to take her mind off of it, but in the case of the thunderstorm it was lasting for quite awhile so I ended up putting her in her crate to try and force her to settle since she is crate trained. She doesn’t whine or do anything bad when she is scared, she just kind of runs around with her tail down and keeps coming to me. It makes me feel so bad!


----------



## zooeysmom (Jan 3, 2014)

I firmly believe in supporting our babies through crises. I don't think you're reinforcing the fear behavior, but rather telling Luna she can count on you to protect her.


----------



## Mysticrealm (Jan 31, 2016)

I think that I wouldn't click then treat. If you want to give her some treats to reassure and say it's not bad that's ok, but clicking I would leave out for a couple reasons.
Clicking tells the dog 'yes that's what I want', but you don't want her to be nervous and worried.
You could turn her off the clicker if she associates it with the scary event.
If you can get her to do easy commands you could click and treat, but I wouldn't just click and treat to try to reassure her.


----------



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I agree that reassuring Luna during rough moments is not reinforcing the reaction to the thunder or motorcycle or whatever and I also agree with Mysticrealm that you should put your clicker away. You don't want to tell her yes I think it is good you are upset, just reassure her that you have her back. Further by taking the clicker out of it you won't have her thinking that she is training on something and worrying about being wrong or disappointing you. Under those circumstances you also just want to be able gauge how she is feeling by whether she is willing to take a treat or not.


----------



## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

Keep in mind that a loud motorcycle could actually be physically painful to Luna's ears. I sometimes have a very weird medical condition called hyperacusis. It's caused by myasthenia gravis weakening the wee muscles inside my ears. Hyperacusis causes normal sounds to physically hurt my ears like someone shoved a Q-tip directly into my eardrums with force. When it acts up, the ticking sound of a computer keyboard is as loud as a jackhammer. And it hurts, a lot. Every sound hurts. Even my own heartbeat is too loud. Dogs have incredibly sensitive hearing. Motorcycle noise might not be fear but pain.

You cannot reinforce fear. Myth of reinforcing fear | Fearful Dogs You can reinforce your relationship. If your dog is scared and coming to you for help and reassurance, help and reassure your dog. Is this loud sound painful to my dog's ears? If so, let's go somewhere else together. Is this a loud startling noise that won't repeat? If it is a one off surprise, laugh. Just cuddle your dog and laugh. "Oh, what was that? Did that scare you? Boom!" 

Pretty much what I would do with a frightened three-year-old, I do with my dog. I'm here, I'm strong, I'm in control, and yes that was a scary noise. Let's make a scary noise together right back at it. BOOM! I respect my dog's right to be afraid. Fear is an emotion, not a behavior problem. Fear is protective and has survival value. Fear is what tells you not to poke the alligator with a stick, or jump off a high balcony. My dog has every right to feel afraid. My job is to assess whether her fear is something to stay afraid of, or not. If her fear is irrational, that's my signal to get silly with her.

Another thing I did with Noelle when she was young and afraid of random things, was running away from them together. Noelle was terrified of garbage trucks. They were loud, and went bang, they had a motorized arm that popped out and grabbed cans, and holy cow did garbage trucks scare Noelle. So, I decided the best thing to do was run away from garbage trucks with my dog. Ahh! Noelle, that's a poodle eater, run!

I cannot tell you how many garbage trucks I ran away from screaming in mock fear, half yelling and half laughing. Run away! Look at that scary thing, oh my goodness, Noelle, does that eat poodles? Let's go see. One step closer. Ahhh! Run away from the poodle eater! That was a close one, Noelle. Let's see if it's safe now. Can we go two steps closer? Three steps closer... And then we fled together from the scary thing. Always laughing. Always. Because Noelle knows that my laughter means absolutely nothing is wrong. If I'm laughing, all is well. I rely on my relationship with my dog to calm her when she's upset. And now I miss running away from garbage trucks. That was so much fun. 

I love running away with my dog when she's upset. Because it honors her desire to get away from whatever is scaring her, and also honors my desire to show her that I'm with Noelle in everything. In her scary moments, happy moments, content moments, I'm with her in everything.


----------



## Mfmst (Jun 18, 2014)

Poodles have the capacity for the vocabulary of a toddler, so I always named the fearful thing and was happy and not fearful of it. “Yay, it’s the garbage truck!” became garbage truck, then “yeah, it’s a truck”. The house next door, was razed and rebuilt over the first three years of Buck’s life, all the noises and all the trades were reduced to “working”. As luck would have it the new neighbors have a super annoying, barking Australian Shepherd. After a couple of interactions, “loud dog” is a meh.


----------



## Johanna (Jun 21, 2017)

Many dogs seem to go through a fearful stage around 9 to 12 months. Unless they have been through serious trauma, it seems to resolve. Zoe was awful at our spring shows - did not want judges to touch her. Now she is back to being friendly and outgoing - maybe too much so at times!. Hang in there.


----------



## chinchillafuzzy (Feb 11, 2017)

Thank you all so much for the input. All of your ideas and suggestions are absolutely brilliant and I will now know how to react better in these situations!

We actually did have a good evening tonight - we went to the park where there was a lot going on and she was fine with all the kids running and screaming and playing soccer. Two trainers came because Luna will be doing a beginner novice obedience demo for an event in September so we are preparing her for that. I was so proud, she did so well and it was our first time practicing it. 

At the end of our practice fireworks started going off as we were leaving. Me and the other two trainers started saying Yay Fireworks!! And she was tail tucking but seemed to recover quickly after they stopped - faster than normal! Then we were talking near our cars and Luna laid on the sidewalk. A loud dirt bike type bike ride past and I glanced down and Luna and she didn’t seem to react at all. So I was happy about that. We will keep working, you guys have given us the keys that we need!


----------



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Good job, your attitude is a big important support system for her.


----------



## snow0160 (Sep 20, 2016)

I don't know how I missed this thread but I have some positive encouragement. Lucky was a huge scaredy cat and I documented on video this in my training thread a month ago. I left to visit San Francisco for a week and came back to a different dog. My parents live very close to my home and my dad walked them while I was gone. My dad loves to play rough with the dogs loves touch of war or tag. In general my dad is a very charismatic and positive person, so somehow Lucky is now super confident. His trainer was shocked and said he has completely changed. I think they must have gone feral although every dog seems to love my dad.


----------



## chinchillafuzzy (Feb 11, 2017)

Wow snow that is super interesting! I will have to find that thread to watch the video. Do you plan to do another video with him soon to show the difference? I need to leave Luna with your dad for a week!


----------



## snow0160 (Sep 20, 2016)

chinchillafuzzy said:


> Wow snow that is super interesting! I will have to find that thread to watch the video. Do you plan to do another video with him soon to show the difference? I need to leave Luna with your dad for a week!




Oh that is a good idea. My schedule is pretty jammed packed between work, 3 dog classes, and volunteering but I will post a new video when I have some free time. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


----------

