Empower your dog to overcome noise sensitivity & fear FAST!
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
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
