A Confident Dog - Every Little Helps

Resilience in dogs is achieved in three ways. 

• Genetic inheritance - coming from a strong line of resilient dogs. 
  

• Protection - spending the first few weeks on earth as a protected puppy. 
  

So if you live with a dog who lunges and barks in the street, teaching them to succeed through problem solving will have a subtle effect on that behaviour too. Dogs don’t lunge and bark because they are naughty, they do it because they believe that if the thing they are barking at comes any closer they won’t be able to cope. Or if you clicker train your dog to touch and press his nose onto your hand through targeting, you can offer  your hand to get him past something scary in the street (it’s not that simple but I’ll cover the steps in anther blog – choices have to be built and generalised) 

Learned resilience can occur through succeeding, it will occur through distance control and the more  things you do with your dog that help them to succeed, the more confident they will become. That confidence then ripples into all areas of their life. 

And before you know it, your dog will be more confident, because every little opportunity to succeed helps.