Wow.  This is a big topic for an article, there are a lot of really good books available for helping a shy dog, but lets see if we can condense it to a page or two.  If you have a dog that is really shy, I would recommend either finding a trainer to help you out, or get one or two of the positive dog training books available for a more in depth look at this tough issue.

What is shy?  Shy is the dog who wants to hide under the chair at class, hides behind your leg when someone wants to say “hi”, or runs away any time something new is presented.  Shy is the flight part of “fight or flight” response to fear.  Sometimes shy seems to be a breed characteristic, many Italian Greyhounds and Sheltland Sheepdogs can be shy (but I have met many representatives of those breeds who are bold and fearless).  Shy often presents when a dog has been surrendered to rescue and re-homed – seems to be a fear of the unknown and loss of the familiar.  Whatever the reason, if you have a shy dog I bet you know it!  What can you do to help?

First, try really, really hard not to coddle the fear.  Picking the shy dog up and murmuring comforting things teaches the dog that showing fear is a very good thing – not a lesson you want to teach if you’re trying to get Fluffy over her fears!  Instead we want to teach her to be bold, the world won’t hurt her and she can have a lot more fun if she grabs life by the tail!

Before I start attacking fears, I like to teach the dog some simple behaviours at home.  You want your dog to have some things she can do that are easy for her and very rewarding.  I like sit, hand targeting (touch), spin and twist, look at my face... any “stupid pet tricks” you find fun will work.  For purposes of working on shyness, I don’t tend to use “down” or “play dead” – I’ll teach those tricks, but don’t try to use them in stressful situations, they’re too submissive for a dog that is worried about something.

Once my shy dog loves to do two or three behaviours, I’ll go looking for scary things.  There are two schools of thought on how to work around scary things: flooding and desensitization.

Flooding involves forcing the dog to stay smack in the middle of the things that scare it until it stops being overwhelmed and realizes it’s not being hurt.  I’m not a huge fan of this method.  I know, sometimes it works fast.  My experience though is that it tends to overwhelm the dog to the point where they can’t think, their brains shut down and they don’t really learn not to be afraid, they often learn superstition – “I didn’t get hurt by the other dogs because we’re in the training building”.  This doesn’t necessarily transfer over to a different venue or situation.

My preference is desensitization.  Let the dog learn gradually that there is nothing to fear, that they can be right and that they don’t need to be worried.  Take the dog to find the scary thing (might be a group of dogs, might be a road with traffic on it).  Stay far enough away from the action that your dog can watch, but doesn’t freeze or try to bolt.  Depending on the dog, that might be ten feet away, it might be 200 feet away – let the dog tell you.  Let the dog watch for a few minutes, you can reward for looking without bolting (whether or not the dog will take the treat will tell you if you are too close).  When your dog will take treats, ask for some really simple behaviours.  HUGE rewards and happy praise for being able to do things in the presence of scary stuff!  This is how you build your dog’s confidence.  They need to be successful, so make the behaviours you ask for really easy to start with.  Can you sit?  Wow!  Great job!  What a clever, clever dog!  How about a touch?  Look at you, so brave!  Remember, for your dog to do a behaviour for you, she has to be able to take her attention away from the scary thing for a second or two – that takes courage, so reward accordingly!

When the dog can be successful at your starting distance, slowly close the gap.  If you get so close to the scary that the dog can’t work, back off a little.  When she’s successful, you can move a little closer again.  The work is slow to start with, it will seem like you’re not making much progress.  But once your dog starts to gain confidence, she will progress faster and faster until you have a hard time remembering that your dog was once too shy to do anything!

Enjoy this minute!  Laurie

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