08/10/2025
Question???
How do you think dogs have ended up becoming anxious?
Some believe it’s inherited from the parents of the dog?
Many believe it’s through and after a negative experience from the dogs point of view?
Some believe it’s through lack of socialisation?
Perhaps it’s a change of routine like a new member of the family staying?
Maybe it’s due to environmental triggers suchas loud noises or unfamiliar people or places?
And even being seperated from their owners for long periods of time?
The truth is they are all true. Not every dog gets anxious over the same things, same as people.
In fact dogs are very similar to humans in terms of basic learning capabilities. Not every dog learns the same way, same as people.
Sadly in extreme rare cases it may not be possible to rectify the anxious behaviour.
The fact is that dogs live in a human world and it’s no surprise that anxiety appears to be in a lot of dogs and is quite a common and normal emotion but can become a disorder, causing behaviours like excessive barking, destructive chewing or in some cases house soiling.
One of the worst things to do in these type of situations is to use any negative reinforcement methods such as shouting, hitting, or causing any pain or discomfort using products like prong collars or e-collars as it just makes an anxious dog even more anxious.
I have travelled around the world from Australia, UK and now Canada. We may change countries but our methods stay the same as we have a very high success rate even though every case is very different from eachother because it’s YOUR dog.
Now I could give you every answer we have to the above questions but this is supposed to be a post not a book 😂. So it’ll be a lot easier to answer individual questions.
Look forward to ALL your questions.
Happy dog training 😁
Roger Blackstone
ATR Dog Training and Behaviourist
