09/30/2025
As hard as it is, if you truly want to help your nervous, insecure, fearful dog, you’ll choose to push their comfort zones rather than honor them.
I’ve trained an awful lot of dogs with serious confidence issues — including our own cattle dog Billie — and without exception, guided exposure has opened up their worlds and reduced their stress/anxiety massively.
But just to be clear, I did say “guided exposure.” Which is very different than chucking your dog into a dog park or daycare and hoping for the best. Or taking your untrained chaotic dog for a walk, using tools which give you no ability to properly communicate, and hoping that just seeing things they’re afraid of while in a state of overwhelm and panic will be beneficial. And of course, it also doesn’t mean that you allow your dog to be pressured by strangers or even familiar guests that they’re afraid of.
It means first, you find the best tools which help you communicate, and then you apply reality-based training to create a foundation of communication, patterned behavior, and obedience commands you can use to strategically expose them to that which they struggle with, and ensure they listen to the training rather than the panic, and that you control the degree of pressure and challenge they experience.
With a foundation of quality training onboard, you can very smartly, and safely push your dog’s comfort zones, and show them with repeated “guided exposure” that their fears/worries/concerns are unfounded.
Of course if this sounds to you like a lot of work, you’d be 100% correct. It is indeed. But living with a dog who continuously struggles because we aren’t prepared to do the necessary physical and emotional labor means a lifetime of stress, anxiety, and limitations for both species.
So as they say, choose your hard. Just remember that one feels like it’s kind and caring, and is anything but, and the other feels difficult and harsh, and is anything but.
