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How to help a dog with OCD – SOS!

dog with old reactive dog

Helping a dog with OCD

Dogs with OCD behaviour can pose very challenging problem for both themselves and their humans.

Dogs can present a wide range fo OCD behaviour such as :

  • Excessive licking
  • Excessive barking
  • Digging
  • Self mutilation
  • Shadow and/or light chasing
  • Pacing
  • Spinning
  • Tail chasing
  • Flank sucking
  • Paw licking

Odin and his people came out for a consultation towards the end of 2023 and then enrolled him in Family K9 Dog Training’s Board and Train Program. 

What was evident to me from our consult is that Odin was a joyful, engaging dog who wanted to connect with me (or anyone really!) and had a lot of drive. This is typical of many OCD dog’s. Drive.  It is a living organism and unless you’ve lived with a highly driven dog you just can’t imagine how powerful it is.  

Odin had a serious problem chasing light, reflections of light and shadows.

This all started when his owners would play with him as a youngster with a laser pointer.

What started as a fun pastime quickly turned into an obsession and spiralled out of control.

Behavioural strategy for a dog with OCD

The strategy for many OCD dogs is actually very simple.

Replace the unhealthy with the healthy.

It’s a fool errand to get caught up in trying to simply stop a dog from doing something it is obsessed with. This is exactly like playing whack-a-mole with your dog 24/7.

 

Does my dog need to be medicated

In some instances medication can be helpful, but in my experience, it is largely overprescribed, overused, and done so before we have exhausted, behavioural intervention options.

The first action we should take is to evaluate the dogs behavior, assess the level (if any) of training and create a plan of action for such a dog that includes training, a healthy outlet for the dogs drive, and lots of mental and physical stimulation to give all that energy, a healthy direction to flow into.

for ore information on OCD check out the AKC website

Hi Nick, 
 
I want to thank you for all that you’ve done for Odin, he is truly a man’s best friend that just wants to play all day everyday.
His favorite game nowadays is fetch! We bought these RuffDawg toys and they are seriously his favorite thing in the world. It’s his new “shadow” obsession. The great thing is he calms down and relaxes once we take it away. 
Wishing you the very best and more doggos to train! 
dog training laval behavioural problems
Seham, Cj, Reuben and mostly Odin!

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Dog Training Videos

Empower your dog to overcome noise sensitivity & fear FAST!

Helping a bulldog puppy who is scared of noise

Noise sensitive dogs – More common than you think

Our K9 companions bring boundless joy into our lives, but for some, loud noises can turn their world upside down. Whether it’s thunderstorms, fireworks, or even the clang of pots and pans in the kitchen, noise sensitivity can cause distress and anxiety in our beloved pets.  Today, we embark on a journey to understand and assist our canine companions in overcoming their noise-related woes.

Your Dog’s Self Motivation and Self Discovery

(Family K9 Dog Training has published a detailed video on how fear and avoidance can ruin a dog’s quality of life on YouTube – click here to go to the video)

We want to help the dog by utilizing their own motivation and their own discovery.

That means that we need to find something that motivates the dog to hang around whatever it perceives as a potential threat.

The motivation must come from within the dog.

What this does is, it will allow the dog to discover for itself that there is no monster lurking under the bed through the process of self discovery.

This is the most powerful way for a dog to learn anything.

It is the truest form of Learning, which comes directly from the dog, and has the deepest and longest lasting most durable affect in dog training.

 

Raise thresholds

You want to start well inside your dogs comfort zone.

What that means is if your dog could tolerate the noise at its lowest level or at a distance of let’s say 50 feet away then that’s where you want to start.

You want to set up your dog to win and have success easily and immediately.

This will encourage your dog to push forward and push through when things get a little more challenging, because the dog has already achieved success.

By doing this, we will gradually raise the dogs threshold and tolerance to the stress of the noise in a way that is not likely to push the dog into any form of avoidance.

Form positive associations with various noise and sound sources

If every time I start the mixer, I give my dog some food immediately (within one second ideally) then the dog is going to learn to associate the starting of the mixer with something very rewarding.

Eventually, the sound of the mixer will be very exciting and meaningful to my dog.

If I have followed the above recipe by respecting his threshold, and not pushing him into avoidance, using high value rewards and having good timing and practising frequently, all of this leads to the opportunity to reshape my dogs, thinking about the noise he previously found stressful.

 

With love and woofs,

Nick Zevgolis

Family K9 Dog Training

Montreal’s best dog training for over 30 years.

www.familyK9.com

 

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