Confidence Boosting for the Cautious Dog

“Pick-up Sticks” - boosts your dog’s confidence and is great for improving your dog’s motor skills, co-ordination, body awareness and proprioception (ability to know where their limbs are in relation to the environment).

Items required - pile of sticks - ideas include plastic poles, broom handles, mop handles, garden stakes, hose, hula hoops,  tree branches

This activity builds perseverance and encourages your dog to think and problem solve, while building confidence from the movement and noise of the balls. Since your dog is sniffing to hunt out the pieces of food it can also be a naturally calming activity once your dog has become confident at playing it. Changing out some of the balls for other items also helps to build mental flexibility.

Items required - plastic kid’s balls, tennis balls or small plastic containers or srunched up newspaper.  A large plastic container, cardboard box or suitcase to put the balls in. 

Calming activities are very important for anxious dogs!  They give your dog an opportunity to calm down and reset to be able to cope better with what life throws at him/her.  Sniffing & chewing are naturally calming activities for dogs, so we look at some enrichment options - stuffed kong, long lasting chews, lick mat and snuffle mat. 

While this is a parkour behaviour, it is also great for building confidence and focus. It helps your dog learn body awareness, and strengthens your dog’s rear limbs. Once you start changing the objects that your dog puts her feet on, it also grows your dog’s mental flexibility.

Items required - small solid object eg. plastic kitchen step, back door step, brick, overturned plant pot, thick book that has been taped closed.

This is a easy and simple enrichment/feeding activity that helps to calm the anxious dog.  This activity can also be done when out and about and your dog needs some 'on the spot' calming.

Items required - None

The goal of this game is for your dog to build confidence, we are also growing your dog’s mental flexibility – same game, different object. This game also helps with your dog’s body awareness, resilience and ability to problem solve.

Items required - a small dog bowl and a small plastic container that your dog's nose can easily fit into  eg. child's play cone, plastic cup, yoghurt pot, thermal/takeaway cup

S.A.T helps your dog to build resilience to things that they find worrying.  It also encourages your dog to reduce their arousal or anxiety level when around scary events or novel things and starts to change your dog’s emotional response to these events to a more positive and confident emotion.

Items required - None

This game is great for growing your dog’s confidence with new and novel items, things that make noise and having items move around them. It also improves your dog’s independence and body awareness.

Items Required - a stable item that your dog can fit under (a chair, table, clothes horse, I used a luggage rack.  Hanging items – I purchased a few baby toys from the local op shop, plastic kitchen measuring spoons, empty plastic milk bottle, plastic cups.

This is a great activity to help grow confidence in your dog, as we are using different & unique items and the items move around while the dog is rummaging through them to find its food. It also encourages your dog to think, problem solve, have perseverance and create independence. Since your dog is sniffing to hunt out the pieces of food it can also be a naturally calming activity once your dog has become confident at playing it.

Items required -  items that you have lying around in your recycling bin inlcuding plastic bottles, milk bottles (remove the lid and ring please), plastic containers, yoghurt pots, cardboard boxes, egg cartons, metal tins (no sharp edges though), metal lids, anything that is in your recycling that is dog safe. No glass and no sharp edges!  A large container, cardboard box or suitcase to put the recycling items in.

Not only is this activity great for growing your dog’s confidence and building independence, but it gives your dog’s brain a workout hunting out their food.  Playing Treasure Chests can also promote focus, ability to disengage from stimulating activities and strengthen your dog’s recall.

Items required - a selection of cardboard boxes or plastic containers, bucket, clothes basket.

This is a super simple exercise that helps to build confidence, by encouraging your dog to push under fabric to move into a darkened area.

Items required - a table or couple of chairs together if you have a small dog and an old sheet, table cloth or blanket tocomplletely cover the table/chairs.

This game is important for a number of reasons and is a foundation game for ‘life skills’! The collar grab game teaches your dog that touching or grabbing its collar is a good thing, so no need to shy away from approaching hands.  There will be times in your dog’s life where you may need to lunge at your dog and grab its collar to keep it safe. Having a dog with a good understanding that grabbing the collar is a good thing, makes an unexpected lunge and grab, less of a concern for your dog.

Items required - none (your dog needs to be wearing a collar though)

Mad Muffins is a home-made, puzzle food dispenser. It helps to boost confidence, develop problem solving skills and builds grit and perseverance. Once your dog is confident and moving onto stage two of this game (which is covered in the second half of the video) it also builds your dog’s mental flexibility – same game, different objects

Items required - muffin tray, plastic balls or tennis balls.  Stage 2 requires the same muffin tray and a variety of muffin cup covers, for example - toys, small plastic containers, pieces of material

Noises like fireworks or thunder and even some everyday noises can be a challenge. Desensitising your dog to the noise needs to be a slow and positive process. The aim of desensitising is to reduce arousal or anxiety from certain sounds. This process helps to grow your dog’s confidence, optimism, resilience, independence and calmness in the face of noise distractions.

Items required - a recording of the types of noises that your dog is sensitive to

“Tip toe through the tulips” is another game that boosts your dog’s confidence. It is also great for improving your dog’s motor skills, co-ordination, body awareness and proprioception (ability to know where their limbs are in relation to the environment). All of which are important skills for your dog. The idea of the game is for your dog to be aware of their foot placements while moving through a maze of tulips (plastic bottles). This game is best played in a narrow space, like a hallway, to limit the option of your dog walking around the outside of the maze.

Items required - a pile of ‘tulips’ - plastic milk bottles, water bottles, drink bottles, plastic bottles of any shape, tins stacked on top of each other, small children's plastic cones. I partially filled the bottles to increase their stability.

Hand targeting is one of the most useful behaviours your dog can learn. The hand target is where your dog touches your hand with his nose. It is an excellent foundation skill and is a behaviour that builds focus and confidence in your dog. The hand target gives you the ability to manoeuvre your dog without having to touch, push or pull your dog which make your dog more nervous.  If you need to distract your dog from a passing dog, jogger, bike etc. Ask him/her to target your hand as you hold it in the opposite direction to the distraction. The hand target can be used at the vets, while your dog is being weighed, vaccinated or examined.

Items required - none

This challenge is building on the '2 paws on' behaviour that we taught our dogs in week one. Encouraging your dog to place its two front feet on a milk bottle is really growing its confidence with novelty. It also improves mental flexibility and body awareness. Like the standard 2 paws on, it helps to strengthen rear limb muscles too.

Items required - a milk bottle with the lid that is half filled with water

Teaching your dog to walk along a plank is great for growing confidence, optimism and independence. It also improves your dog’s balance and body awareness.  Always start this training with the plank on the ground, so that if your dog steps off, falls off or misplaces a foot, it easily touches the ground without impacting on your dog's confidence confidence.

Itesm required - a plank, old door, piece of board, anything that is long and narrow that can support your dog's weight.

The noise tray is a very good activity to help grow confidence for dogs that are cautious with noise. It also helps to build your dog’s independence, resilience and perseverance.

Items required - plastic cutlery tray and some spoons (can be plastic or metal or a combination of both)

Teaching you dog to go through gaps and tunnels helps to increase their confidence. This includes going through a gap between 2 objects (for example two chairs near each other), a small hula hoop, a car tyre or a pool noodle with the ends taped together to form a circle. If you are using two chairs, you can place a blanket over the seats to create the visual effect of a tunnel once your dog is comfortable going through the gap. As your dog’s confidence increases you can move onto kids play tunnels, agility type tunnels and environmental tunnels, like gaps between buildings and fences, gaps between the two forks of a tree trunk, or large concrete pipes.

The ladder walk is building on from the plank work that we started last week. Again, walking in the gaps between each ladder run is great for growing confidence and optimism in your dog. It also improves your dog’s balance and body awareness. This is another exercise where slowness is confidence.

Items required - a ladder (or you could use poles, garden stakes, hula hoops, a curled up hose etc)

A wobble surface is great for building core strength, improving your dog’s balance, co-ordination and body awareness as well as building confidence. Remember to start off with easier objects and increase the ‘wobble’ factor as your dog’s confidence increases.

Items required - unstable surface (for example - curved bin lid, sofa cushion, board on a cushion, board with a tennis ball underneath, airbed)

This is a fun challenge for building and growing your dog’s confidence.  In this challenge, we are encouraging our dog lift the lid of a suitcase, step inside and lie down so the lid closes over the top of our dog. Ends up being a cool trick to show our friends too. Please note – these training steps will most likely need to be done over multiple sessions. It is not important to achieve the whole behaviour in one session. Work at the level of your dog’s confidence.

Items required - a suitcase that your dog can easily fit in

This is a really fun activity that you can do with your dog at home, inside or outside. The concept of this game is for your dog to build confidence interacting with new, novel objects. It is a great game for developing your dog’s motor skills, co-ordination and body awarenesss. Walking along a confidence path helps your dog learn to focus and encourages resilience. The objects that you use for the confidence path can be anything that your dog can walk on.

Item ideas - cushions, a large container with plastic balls in it, a large container with plastic milk bottles in it, paw pods, wobble cushions, wobble board, rubbish bin lid (flat on the ground or upside down), a piece of bubble wrap, plastic tarp, a board sitting on cushions, overlapping hula hoops, kids tunnel either to go through or lying flat on the ground to step over, skateboard, yoga block, large plastic boxes, a rolled up yoga mat and small kitchen step. Your imagination is the only limit to the objects you can use.

This process helps grow your dog’s confidence in general as well as with water.  It also improves their mental flexibility when we change from no water in the container to having different levels of water in the container. Growing your dog’s water confidence increases their grit and ability to overcome challenging obstacles, with an end goal of your dog being able to swim.

Items required - plastic container that your dog can easily step in or child's addling pool

Well done on completing this course and starting to boost your dog’s confidence. In this final wrap up I cover how to build your dog's layers of success to work towards having a dog that is mor confident out in the real world.  I also briefly talk a bit more about dog parkour.