[yorkietalkjilly]

P. S. A lot of small dogs such as Yorkie & Chi's have this type of reaction to their owners as young dogs after they have lived with us a while. Our hands are at them frequently and after a few weeks of living around us, they have seen those hands slam the door, drop a glass that shatters on the floor, run the vacuum cleaner, hold the phone as we chew the customer service clerk out in a loud voice, get out the dog shampoo, clippers, treats and fill their bowls with good food. Sometimes when we pick them up, it might hurt a little or we swoop them up fast, kind of scary and sometimes our hands plunge them into water and pour more over their head and other times we use them with tools that pull their hair or hurt their toenails.

Tiny animals that they are living in our big world and seeing all that they do of how we live life - our good sides and our bad, they are bound to have some conflicts and trust issues with these big human creatures they live with, especially the first year. While they love our caressing hands and the hands that feed them treats, they sure witness & experience those hands in all kinds of situations. Over time and living with us, they eventually do come to accept our hands without running backward or moving away usually anyway but if you want to accelerate that process, the distancing method with treatdropping can work pretty fast to help teach them you are not always the aggressor, after them, and that they learn to self-approach.

Bigger dogs can have hands approach issues, too, though. With many rescues, it is because they have come to distrust human hands due to pain. That is why it is good to realize dogs can have some trust issues with humans since they see us or other humans do so many things they can't understand and yet have to depend on us for their very lives. So to understand that sometimes they have issues with us after they have experienced living with humans a while is to understand they sometimes feel truly torn when we approach them.

That's why when I see a dog running backward or not staying still when I approach him, I back off and let them see me in a different way for a couple of weeks, drops those treats at times of nearness and allow them to do all of the approaching over that time. It works to settle them down and teaches them that I am not the overpowering bugger they can sometimes see us as at certain times when we're reaching out to them for the bath, the toenail clipping, the grooming session, the vet trip, the heartworm pilling, the topknot tying, dressing, etc. The distancing method, treatdropping allows them to grow to want your touch, your hands, to need your touch and to come looking for it. It hurries teaching dogs I rescue or my own that the reaching of my hands toward them or my walking toward them is something they should always, always, always trust and want.

Something else you might do is to reach for your baby and don't pick her up, just give her a loving rub, a nice treat and walk off, to let her know your reaching hands don't always mean getting picked up and whisked off to who knows what. When she's sitting beside you, reach over as if to get her but just scratch her, give a little praise. It can work to teach your dog your hands are always to be trusted and never to be run from and they aren't always reaching for her to do something to her.