Big win with a nervous dog: The power of a Bootcamp Program
Odie came to us a super nervous guy. He was often too frightened to walk into unfamiliar places or even get into the car on his own - he’d ‘put on the brakes’ and refuse to walk. Fortunately for his owner, he’s small, so she was able to pick him up in most situations. (I know many of you with larger dogs aren’t so lucky…)
It’s easy to feel bad for a dog like Odie. What must he have been through in his former life, you may think, that would make him so fearful? But way more often than not, dogs who come to us like this have not been abused, nor have they faced any sort of trauma; that’s just naturally how they are. Dogs have different personalities, just like humans, and some are more naturally nervous than others. Feeling bad for them only keeps them stuck and prevents them from growing. It’s up to us to be compassionate through strength and show our dogs that the world isn’t so scary.
When Odie joined us for Bootcamp, we got to work right away on our basic leadership and obedience protocols. (You can grab a free copy of our Leadership Quickstart, here.) These aren’t fancy, but they provide an essential foundation for every dog in our program and set the tone from Day 1.
With Odie, I started using the e-collar earlier than I would for a more confident dog, because he was ‘putting on the brakes’ and hesitant to move forward when I was using the leash alone. Rather than drag him along, I added the smallest level e-collar to ‘unlock’ his brain in those moments and got him moving forward on his own. He quickly became more comfortable in certain areas (the main training area, the hallways around the corner), so a large focus of our daily sessions was dedicated to finding new areas he felt uncomfortable in (the building lobby, the hallway to the gym, etc.) so he could continue making progress working through his fears.
By the end of the first week, Odie’s owner mentioned he had started jumping into the car on his own. Mind you, this was before she had started using any new tools with him, and before our first Owner Coaching Session. This was awesome to hear, and it’s just one example of why bootcamp-style programs like ours can be so powerful. It’s not that it takes a week to get a dog to jump into a car (we can do that in one session) - it’s that jumping into the car wasn’t something we worked on with him directly in any of our sessions. What we had worked on was changing his response when he felt uncertain. Whereas before his reaction was to ‘put on the brakes', we were ‘reprogramming’ his brain to move forward in those situations instead and take guidance from his handler.
Our week of training with Odie was having more of an impact on him than just getting him up to speed on his basic commands. He was learning to overcome his fears and gaining confidence in other aspects in his life, outside of the traditional training environment. We want dogs to be obedient, of course, but we use obedience, leadership exercises, and other protocols to ultimately get dogs in a better frame of mind. For nervous dogs, a better frame of mind means choosing calmness over anxiety, confidence over insecurity, and thoughtfulness over fear-based reactions. Training nervous dogs is a journey, and there was still much more training ahead of us - but we loved to see this stuff starting to happen with Odie before the end of even our first week!
