hi! We have a 1 yeah old male lab and he is very timid. He barks when he meets new people so we tell them to just ignore him and then eventually he goes up to them when he feels more “safe” and is really loving. He is also enrolled in training and is VERY confident there. He just is insecure when he is around new people, on hikes, or in new places. We have found if we bring my friends confident dog with us he doesn’t bark at anyone because she doesn’t. Does anyone know what we can do to build up his confidence??
HI there and welcome. I've been through the same sort of issues with my older dog, Poppy. We just taught her to come to heel whenever anybody came up to us, and she got lots of cheese treats for staying by us and remaining calm. The result is that now, whenever she sees anyone ahead, she is very relaxed and either walks up to them to say hello, or comes straight to us for treats for being good
Kona is the same way, her fearfulness is a consequence of hypothyroism. We do a lot of sniffing games, hide and seek, small training sessions on daily walks. At the moment I am reading B.A.T 2.0 by G. Stewat - so far so good.
You can train confidence to new things a bit. I do a bit of basic doggy parkour with mine, getting them to jump on things, over things, crawl under things, put their feet up, jump from one rock to another etc etc. It's great fun and definitely builds one type of confidence. But there are other sorts of confidence, too. I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently. It sounds like he is a bit like my Shadow, who is very confident when given a task to do (such as at training) but isn't socially confident. So, I just make really strong behaviours that he is confident in and ask him to do those when he gets a bit unsure. I have no evidence to support this, and we're too remote for it to be something I can test in my own dogs, but my feeling is that if you can make him feel confident (by giving him strongly conditioned tasks to perform) in a situation where he was finding difficult then, in time, the confidence will transfer to the situation. It's a hypothesis that might be worth a go, anyway
It is not uncommon for a dog, or a human, to be unsure when placed in a new environment or situation or with new people. What does your boy do, as that can provide more information on ways to help him. Barking at new people can be overcome with a 'Look at me' training scheme based upon BAT where the dog gets rewarded for remaining calm, in this case not barking, when he sees new people. Gradually new people become linked with treats so are a welcome sight. You can also have strangers toss him a treat from a distance - never close, until he is happy with their presence.
On hikes if someone startled him (like comes up a path from the side) he will bark and back up. Or if we are hiking and he hasn’t seen anyone in awhile he will do that. If the hike is really crowded he doesn’t care. At our house if he hears a sound upstairs he will run up barking. If visitors come over he barks and backs up then we just have them ignore him and within a couple minutes he is wagging his tail kissing them. The worst is camping... if he hears any sound from outside the tent he does the same bark and is in high alert the whole night. We really want him to be a camping dog because we go all the time but if he is insecure in our house I can’t see him getting over that in a tent.
I’ve done a couple different things. He loves loves the command “touch” so I have done that but it is usually short lived. He will touch then start barking again. On hikes if I see someone I call him back to me and leash him. If he is leashed he does not bark. In the house I try to put him in a “place”. It doesn’t always work. He will place then when I think he is calm I let him up- usually at that point he runs in the other room, throws a few barks out then calms down. For camping I just left. I tried doing tricks in the tent but he was so amped up I just packed up and went home.
