Is your confident puppy suddenly afraid of things? Fear periods are a natural part of canine development during puppyhood, but they can be stressful for dogs and people.
While your puppy is experiencing a fear period it’s important to have a thoughtful training plan to support them. Here are tips for structuring your puppy’s training during a fear period.
What Are Fear Periods?
Fear periods are a naturally occurring part of development for puppies when they’re more sensitive to the world around them. Puppies typically go through two fear periods. The first fear period is between 8–11 weeks, and the second generally when dogs are between 6 and 14 months of age.
Fear periods are especially important to be aware of when it comes to training your puppy, because not only are puppies more cautious during this period of their life, but they are also more impressionable. Puppies and adolescent dogs who have negative experiences during a fear period may not bounce back as quickly. A negative experience during a fear period, can have life-long consequences for a dog’s temperament and behavior. For this reason, it’s important to approach training during these fear periods intentionally and carefully.
Readjusting Training Expectations
When puppies go through fear periods, they’re not likely to respond to stimuli, the environment, and training situations in the same way as they have before. Specifically, they are likely to be more cautious and sensitive. Something that didn’t bother your puppy last week, might be frightening when they enter a fear period.
Just as you want to be particularly thoughtful about your training plans during a puppy’s critical socialization period, the same is true for puppies going through fear periods. It’s ok for your puppy to be afraid, it doesn’t mean they will always be fearful or that you have done anything wrong as an owner. The best thing you can do to help your fearful puppy is to keep your training sessions short and fun. You’re going to want to lower your training criteria so that they can be successful. Also, try not to panic yourself. It can be destabilizing to see your puppy acting differently than you’re used to, but by staying calm you can help your puppy work through their fear.
Lower the Criteria for Success
We want to always keep our training sessions fun, fluid, and dynamic, adjusting to how our dog is feeling on any given day. One week your puppy might have been confidently getting on a wobble board, but by the next, they could be terrified to put even a foot on it. Instead of trying to force your puppy on the wobble board, shift your criteria for success. Reward your puppy for stepping toward the wobble board but not getting on, or reward your puppy for doing a simple cued skill like a sit or down near but not on the wobble board, praise, treat, and end your training session there on a positive note.
Lowering the training criteria and ending the session with your dog being successful is more beneficial than attempting to push your puppy through their fear to achieve the higher level of success you might be used to.
Help Your Puppy Gain Confidence
While it can be tempting for some dog owners to keep pushing their puppy to work through the fear, this generally doesn’t lead to success. If you are afraid of spiders, someone telling you that they can’t hurt you likely won’t make you feel better about letting a bunch of spiders crawl onto you. In the same way, we might know that something isn’t dangerous. But if our puppy is suddenly afraid of it, we need to honor their fear and not try to force them to engage.
Watching your confident and outgoing puppy go through a fear period can be stressful and overwhelming. Some owners worry that not pushing them to work past the fear can feel like coddling or giving into fear. In reality, we are being developmentally appropriate for our puppies. Lowering the criteria helps puppies build confidence when they are having an emotional regression. Letting your puppy have an “easier” success and ending a training session during a fear period will go further than continuing to train and trying to push or force your puppy to work through fear.
Selecting Appropriate Training Locations
We always want to be thoughtful about where we take our puppies to train. This is especially true if your puppy is going through a fear period. Puppy training classes are great at this age, if you can find one run by trainers who understand puppy development and how to support a puppy and owner through a fear period. Before enrolling in a class, be sure to ask about their training methods, such as if they use positive reinforcement techniques, and how they handle interactions between puppies.
The training experiences and what we expose our puppies to at this age can have life-long impacts. When your puppy or adolescent dog is going through a fear period, avoid over-stimulating and busy training outings. A crowded pet supply store can be a great location to practice training around distractions and proof obedience skills. However, that busy store might be too much for a puppy, especially a puppy in a fear period.
Even if your puppy has been calm, focused, and confident in a variety of settings in the past, they are going to be more environmentally sensitive when going through a fear period. Sometimes the locations where we want to take our dogs aren’t the best match for their emotional state. If you get somewhere, and it is busier than you anticipated, or if your puppy seems nervous or stressed, there is nothing wrong with heading home or taking your training session elsewhere.
Finding the Right Balance With Rewards
Utilizing positive reinforcement training techniques is the most effective way to teach new skills to our puppies. This is going to look like using lots of treats and praise to reward our puppies as they learn new skills. However, we want to be careful not to use treats to accidentally push our fearful puppies into situations they cannot handle.
It’s a careful balance of pairing treats with things our puppies are worried about to help desensitize and create positive associations without pushing them into situations they aren’t emotionally prepared for. Using treats to lure puppies into getting closer to something they are afraid of can lead to them to feeling overwhelmed and trigger stacked being so close to the source of their fear. The result will likely be a bigger fear response. Instead, we want to use rewards when puppies are being curious about a stressor or being calm at a distance from something they’re worried about.
When to Look for Support
Fear periods can appear suddenly, cause a quick change in a puppy’s behavior for a short amount of time (generally no more than two weeks). While some amount of fear is normal for a dog, if your puppy continues to be fearful of new situations, this may be a fear or anxiety issue that extends beyond a developmentally normal fear period.
Working with an experienced professional dog trainer specializing in fear issues can be beneficial. You’ll also want to make an appointment with your dog’s veterinarian to rule out any underlying health conditions. Getting professional support early can help give you and your puppy or dog the support necessary to help your puppy gain confidence and be less fearful.
The post How to Train Your Puppy Through Fear Periods appeared first on American Kennel Club.