Anxiety, can it be helped?

Anxiety. A natural or learned behaviour?

Simba is a lovely fox red Labrador who is anxious, nervous and barks at people when out on a walk and when people come into the home.

He barked at me when I arrived at the home and he was clearly a very worried dog. What is he worried about?

Like a lot of other dogs, he is not a fan of people coming up to him and fussing him. The problem is, when we are out socialising our puppies, we tend to let people come up to our dogs and fuss them because we think, indeed we are told, that is the correct thing to do yet this is not the case with every dog.

Some dogs can interpret this as an unwanted intrusion and they are wondering why it is allowed to repeatedly happen and this will go on until the dog is around 6-8 months old when he is able to speak up and show his owners what he is feeling.

So, when he does show his feelings, people tend to be very shocked and surprised and they react badly to this sudden outburst of unwanted behaviour that some people might also interpret as aggression.

Dogs are great communicators, we are very bad at spotting their early attempts to communicate because they are subtle and non verbal, so our dog is forced to shout.

Did you know it is only domesticated dogs who bark? Only dogs who live with people have learned to bark. Does that suggest we have forgotten how to observe and understand our dogs?

Dogs need space and to have their needs taken into consideration and to understand they can trust people to respect their space and leave them alone.

The photograph you can see I took after 35 minutes into the visit after I had endured the barking and the stress and proved that neither affected or changed my behaviour so he could relax and be praised for being relaxed. His owners were very surprised that he calmed down so quickly, he even came over for a good sniff and a little tickle under his chin, all nice and calm and controlled so he could trust me not to force my attention upon him.

Trust, a very important aspect that we can weaken with the best intentions because we think we are doing the right thing. This is why generic advice or reading on the internet can easily confuse you and therefore your dog.