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Originally Posted by DJDB  I'm a big fan of Cesar, so try to make sure my body language and energy are always calm and assertive. When Oz gets scared of something, rather than pick him up or try to baby talk to him ("it's ok baby" kind of thing), I will purposefully bring him to the thing scaring him and stand and wait for him to accept it. This has worked on garbage cans and many other things. The new thing he's scared of is posters. We hung one over where his playpen was, and it fell into his playpen and onto him. Now I think I will have to get an old poster and make him walk on it. Sometimes, you just have to calmy lead them through the thing that scares them, and once they realize it isn't hurting them, they learn not to fear it.
I remember a Cesar episode where there was some sort of poodle that had run into a screen door and it was terrified of the sound of the screen door after that. In about 10 or 15 minutes Cesar had the dog going through the door like a pro. Remember that the dog's fear is often OUR fear projected. We get afraid FOR the dog, and they pick up on that. I think this is especially true for small dog owners. Calm assertiveness is the only way to tackle these things! |
Caser too, he is amazing!! Even Dh thinks he is amazing!! Thank you for the advise, I am starting to work on him with his issues.