014 Why You Need to Stop the Sky Falling on Your Dog’s Head

This week we’re going to be looking at how we can make the world a less scary place for your dog. And why that matters so much to him, to you, and your training. We’ll look at why training stalls if you can’t protect your dog from his panic. And we’ll talk about how you can find ways not to leave your dog, even if that seems impossible right now.   Last week I went to a seminar presented by leading vet behaviourist, Dr. Karen Overall.. One statement she made really struck me: “the first thing we need to do with an anxious dog is stop the sky falling on their head.” I totally agree. While we can never exactly know what a dog is thinking or feeling, we can learn a lot from their body language. With dogs who are fearful of being home alone, I often wonder do they think the world is about to end, that they are in imminent danger. It certainly looks grave based on their body language. There are 2 reasons we need to make our home alone dogs feel safer. Welfare Training efficacy 1 Welfare We didn't give the dogs the option of being in our home. They have no choice but to stay and remain in a state of morbid fear when we leave. I think once you get your head round that it becomes really difficult to leave your dog at home alone to panic. I believe we owe it to our dogs to let them live a life free of fear. And that's why I think it is a welfare issue to stop them thinking that the sky is falling on their head. 2  Training efficacy When we change how a dog feels about something that it's frightened of we need to give them lots and lots of new positive none scary experiences to outweigh the scary experiences that they've had in the past. With a separation anxiety dog that means we have to give them lots of new experiences of you going out but not leaving them for longer than they can cope with. We are trying to send a message to our dogs that there's a new way of doing things That may be in the past when you left it was scary it would be frightening.   But that now when you go and when you do these shorts safe practice absences, everything's going to be okay. II like to talk about a bank account of experiences. On one side of the balance we've got a ton of historic previously scary alone time. Then you start separation anxiety training and add positives experiences to the other side of the bank balance. But you need to get a ton of positive non scary experiences to balance the books. So can you see why it can be so tricky if not impossible to have success with desensitization training if you have a dog who you are still forced to leave. But even if you want to how do you stop the sky from falling on your dog’s head when you have work to go to, bills to pay. Well, I know it can be tough, and I’ve been there. But what I do know is that even though it starts out feeling impossible it can be done. You’ll find lots of ideas in my free Facebook group: subthresholdraining.com/group. And also I’ve now started up a brand new network where you can connect to other separation anxiety  dog owners near you. It’s a small but growing community. You really need to join! subthresholtraining.com/network Hope this podcast helped you understand why stopping your dog’s fear is essential.And motivated you to at least try to stop the sky falling on your dog’s head. Topics: [00:45] Reporting back from seminar with Dr. Karen Overall [01:54] We can never know what's going on inside our dog's head but how body language helps us [03:15] 2 reasons why we need to stop our dogs from thinking the sky is falling on their heads- Dog's welfare - Training effectiveness [03:51] When our dogs panic at home alone, they really don't have much choice about that situation [06:01] We owe it to our dogs to let them live a life that’s free from fear [06:55] We really can't implement separation anxiety training when our dogs are in that state [07:07] With separation anxiety training is we are trying change how they feel about being home alone [08:44] A bank account of positive and negative experiences for the dog [09:17] Adding positive experiences and starting to balance things out [09:53] Just like us, dogs are more likely to have negativity bias [11:29] In order to get your dog over separation anxiety, you have to stop leaving your dog [13:03] But even though that seems impossible it’s not   Links: Facebook groups Episode 14 show notes