Confidence: an essential life characteristic

An article inspired by planning out and background reading for starting writing the follow up to 'Fight or Fright?'

What is the most important thing that a dog can be taught?

There are so many articles around telling us the cues or commands (on the maybe less enlightened sites) that every dog MUST know. I did it myself, on my last entry stressing the importance of installing a strong recall in every dog from a very early age. There are a number of cues that, for the sake of safety, responsibility and common sense, every dog should know and respond to well. This important thing is not a cue, a command, a request, or any kind of definitive action that either you or your dog will perform.

A good heel always impresses, however!

The most important thing you can instil in any dog that you bring in to your family is confidence.

One of the words most commonly heard in the dog world is socialisation. This is the process of (ideally careful and sympathetic) introductions of the different kinds of people, animals and things that the dog is likely to encounter throughout their lifetime. The amount of time available to do this in a way that will stay with the dog for the rest of their lives and keep them happy and confident in their world is short - up until the age of approximately 14 weeks. The urge to rush socialisation is easy to understand, as more must be better, right?

The opposite is true. While we want our puppies to experience as much life as possible, confidence will only result from giving them positive experiences. Forcing interactions on an uncomfortable, scared puppy will have the opposing result, and set the young dog up for a life of being unsure of new experiences, and a lack of trust in their humans to look after them and keep them safe. Letting puppies explore new situations in safety and in their own time means that they will not in any way associate the experience with any negative emotions or consequences. If everything that a puppy meets is introduced with care and thought, the end result will be a happy, confident dog that meets further new things later on expecting everything to be fine.

A confident dog goes through life with a feeling of optimism. Anything that they have not seen before is initially assumed to be harmless, because new things have never had bad consequences, have never scared or hurt them, or pushed themselves in closer ignoring the dog’s body language. These are the dogs that can be taken anywhere, and get along with everyone. This is the ideal we pretty much have all pictured or wished for when imagining a dog in the family.

What if this process hasn’t occurred in this wonderful, positive way however? Or the happy, well socialised dog has an seriously upsetting or scary experience that then stays with them (single event learning - where one very bad encounter remains with the dog and can create a major issue for the dog with whatever the trigger may be and lead to displaying reactive behaviours such as growling, barking and lunging). Does this mean that we are stuck for the rest of the dog’s lifetime with a dog that finds life hard?

There are no absolute answers to these questions. Yes, there are methods that can be employed to help show the dog that the world is not the scary place they imagine it to be. Counter-conditioning and desensitisation, for example, can both be used to change the dog’s emotional response to the fear causing stimuli that make them feel they need to defend themselves. As the emotions prompted by the sight of a trigger switch from fear and panic to the anticipation of something really good, like a tasty scrap of sausage for example, the scared dog’s space that they need to protect can start to shrink. The longer the process continues, the closer the triggers can be encountered. The lovely tasty treats come, nothing bad happens, the dog’s confidence grows.

How then can we help our dogs to gain more confidence if they find the world a bit scary and threatening?

Make sure your bond with your dog is good. One of the best ways to encourage confidence in your dog is to ensure they are confident in their humans to look out for them and make sure they are safe. A dog that will look to you when they are unsure trusts you to read their signals and spot what is worrying them. They can give you a heads up that something they aren’t comfortable with is approaching, before it comes close enough to cause a real problem. A dog that trusts his human to assess the problem and get them away from it if necessary is going to have a little more confidence in situations - if Mum says it’s safe right now, then it must be safe!

Working on training cues at home, some of the trick training for example, can be a lot of fun and really lead to a close fun bond. Anything that leads to the dog having success and getting things right increases confidence. Using coaching techniques, letting the dog offer ideas and solutions to solve a problem or work out how to complete a task really boosts confidence as the dog learns that they can some up with solutions on their own. Clicker training allows you to develop a coaching style, as it allows precise marking of the behaviours you are looking for so that the dog is left in no doubt that they’ve got it right.

Teaching your dog to focus on you is incredibly helpful. When they have started to become more resilient and able to cope with some exposure to their triggers, and can manage to listen to us in their vicinity, a cued focus can be useful. Your dog is the one thing in every environment that you should be able to have some control over. In an ideal world, everything that could scare a dog will be under close control and not able to interact with your dog without invitation, such as another dog that is off lead. In reality, this is not going to happen, so we need to work on having as much influence as we can on our own dogs. If you can get your dog to focus on you and not interact with the other dog, then employ a bright and breezy version of 'Let's go!' taking your dog away calmly and quietly, the situation is defused with as little stress as possible all around. It may seem like this is a long way off in the beginning, but it's a great thing to be able to work towards.

Offering choice is a major boost to confidence. A dog that knows they have the ability to choose whether to move towards or away from something and that their humans will respect that choice is going to be much more confident in situations.

Learn your dog’s body language in as many situations as possible. There are websites that show examples of different body language and explain what they mean, and a number of places now offer courses. It is important to have an understanding of these signals and what they mean, and even more important to learn what stress, fear, relaxation and happiness look like on your own dog. Remember that every dog is an individual, a combination of their genetics and experiences in their life. Different breeds may hold their tails differently, drop ears function differently to prick ears. The individuality in personalities between dogs mean they will all express themselves slightly differently, so there is no substitute for getting to know your own dog. When your dog knows that they can communicate their feelings to you, and that you will understand and heed their signals, their confidence in you will grow.

Be aware of the effect that you have on your dog when you are out. When you are walking a dog on a lead, there is a physical connection between the two of you. Any tension in your body is likely to result in a tense grip on that lead, which your dog will feel. It is important to leave tension and worry at home, as difficult as that may be sometimes. Learn to trust in yourself, in your ability to be aware of your surroundings and potential escape routes. The more confident you are in yourself, the more confident your dog will be in you. If you feel like you’re worried about going out for a walk, find something else to do instead, like enrichment games and exercises at home, or go somewhere different like a secure field for instance. Before starting to work on confidence outside the home, especially if your dog is one that shows reactive behaviours, a few days’ break from walking, to let the stress hormones dissipate from in their body is a good idea. It means you can start from a slightly easier spot, with a dog that is a little more relaxed than if you try to carry on with the daily walk despite any reactions.

One thing that should be avoided at all costs is the use of any kind of aversive training methods or equipment, or any form of punishment. Methods that rely on using fear or pain are not going to have a positive effect on the dog's confidence levels, and can only harm the bond between canine and human, which we need to strengthen to improve the situation. This is particularly true if your dog is fearful or anxious, as these methods will only make the problem worse.

It may be that you will never have that relaxed, go anywhere and meet anyone dog that you pictured, but working on confidence together with your dog can expand your horizons.