Reduce Anxiety and Grow Your Dog's Confidence with These Pro Dog Training Tips #79
Shaped by Dog with Susan Garrett
DogsThat
4.8 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Visit us at shapedbydog.com
The best thing we can do for our dogs is to protect and grow confidence. But what does that really mean? What is a dog who is worried, or fearful, or growling, or showing aggression telling us? Why do our dogs change depending on where they are and what is around them? When we have a baseline and know what our dog is saying to us, we can start confidence building exercises to help our dog in all situations.
In the episode you'll hear:
• What my friend Greg Louganis taught me about confidence in different situations.
• How your dog's body language can tell you a lot about how they are feeling.
• Why to observe your dog's baseline confidence in your home with no distractions.
• Confidence factors including breed, genetics, and socialization.
• The dangers of putting a label on your dog or puppy and confirmation bias.
• How every dog has the potential to express a lack of confidence by growling.
• The two ways to desensitize dogs to help grow confidence.
• What I'm doing to grow confidence for my puppy, This! around water.
• Why flooding a dog who is fearful seldom works.
• How distance will help grow your dog's confidence.
• About using cues to mean "something amazing is going to happen".
• Why motion stimulates arousal and can help your dog be more confident.
• The reason we want to prevent our dog from going over threshold.
• How to keep a journal to help your dog.
• How to grow your dog's confidence in stages easily.
Resources:
• Podcast Episode 4: T.E.M.P. (Tail, Eyes/Ears, Mouth, Posture) - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/4/
• Podcast Episode 8: Get Your Dog in the Belief Loop of Awesome - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/8/
• Podcast Episode 29: Understanding and Preventing Reactivity and Aggression in Your Dog - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/29/
• Podcast Episode 38: 3 Keys to a Confident Dog - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/38/
• Video Blog: Vlog: Understanding Your Dog's Triggers - https://susangarrettdogagility.com/2019/01/understanding-your-dogs-triggers/
• Podcast Episode 71: Pro Dog Trainer's Secret to Help Your Naughty Dog - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/71/
• Podcast Episode 66: Resource Guarding: Dog vs Dog Aggression - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/66/
• Podcast Episode 70: Critical Info for Your Puppy's First Day and Night at Home - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/70/
• Podcast Episode 78: How to Train a Rescue Dog with Behavior Problems - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/78/
• Watch this Episode of Shaped by Dog on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NzqJgT4dYB0
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | If you're a regular listener to this podcast, shout out to you. |
| 0:13.1 | If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you have heard me say over and over and over again. |
| 0:18.7 | The best thing that we can do for our dogs is to protect and grow |
| 0:24.0 | their confidence. Well, recently, I got a letter from a listener who asked, what does that look like, |
| 0:30.2 | Susan? Hi, I'm Susan Garrett. And if you are watching this on YouTube, go ahead and hit the |
| 0:36.1 | like button right now while I |
| 0:37.6 | read to you the letter that I received from Christine H. She wrote, I feel like I still don't |
| 0:44.8 | know precisely what confidence is in a dog. This has some great tips for owners who have |
| 0:49.9 | identified or suspected their dog of being less confident, but I'd love to hear more on how to |
| 0:55.1 | gauge a dog's confidence and assess when you're succeeding in building or maintaining your |
| 1:00.0 | dog's confidence. Okay, great question. Let me just say, just like people, the answer is it |
| 1:06.4 | depends. I'm going to tell you a couple of little stories. First one is about a dear friend of mine, |
| 1:11.1 | Greg Luganis. Now, if that's a name you recognize, it's because Greg has won, I believe, |
| 1:17.3 | five Olympic medals, four of which were gold. So let's just say, he's the greatest diver of all |
| 1:22.4 | time. Okay? We'll just leave it at that. So what do you think that man's competence is? Yeah, it's like through |
| 1:29.9 | the roof when he's on a diving board. Now, Greg's a little bit older than me. So it's not like he gets |
| 1:35.3 | on many diving boards these days, but he has gotten on a couple. Now, a few years back, Greg has |
| 1:41.5 | been a longtime student of mine and he was running one of his dogs in |
| 1:47.2 | agility, and he got to the national finals of the American Kennel Club's agility championships. |
| 1:55.6 | And I was talking to him throughout the weekend by phone. I was here at home. And just before the last event, he's going into the |
| 2:03.4 | finals, he's one of the top 10 dogs in all of America. And I'm talking to them before and I say, Greg, |
| 2:09.6 | Greg, you sound nervous. I'm petrified. I'm petrified. I said, Greg, you've got five Olympic medals. |
... |
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