Welcome back to McCann Dogs. I'm Instructor Robbie.
Do you have a puppy that's sometimes a little bit less than willing to engage
with you or a dog or a puppy that sometimes freezes and isn't sure what to do,
or maybe they get worried about something and then they flee and try to leave
town? Well, that's this puppy right here.
I first met this little puppy Diva who is an 18-week-old Border Collie,
just three days ago. And when I saw her, she was, um,
very unconfident to say the least she was lying flat on her belly and she
was not able to move. She was not willing to move.
She crawled over to me as if to say, save me, save me. She is, um,
a puppy. Who's actually looking for her forever home right now.
She's a leftover puppy from a litter. All the other litter mates have, um,
found homes and are on their way. But, um,
little Diva here has not found her home yet. And I'm sure she will.
But I knew when I saw her that she needed a little bit of help.
So I volunteered to take her and, um,
just give her a little bit of life experience.
And what I wanna do is I wanna help her to build her confidence so that she can
blossom into the wonderful little puppy that I know is living inside there.
I'll bet.
You're thinking that the answer is to get this dog out here and do lots of
socializing with her meeting new people, meeting new dogs,
going to lots of different places,
but that's not necessarily the right thing for this particular dog.
She needs help. And she needs us to build her confidence slowly.
What I don't wanna do is put her in a situation where she's overwhelmed and
create even more feelings of,
of anxiety for her. The first thing I need to do is I need to build trust.
We need trust before we can build confidence.
Once Diva learns that she can trust me, it'll help her to become more confident,
not only in herself, but in, in me as a leader.
I want her to understand that I'm never going to ask more of her than I know
she's able to give me.
I need her to know that she can trust my direction and look to me when she's
unsure about something. When I first brought Diva home three days ago,
she had very little interest in food lures. And um,
for the first couple of days,
we just spent a little bit time getting to know one another and just hanging
out, no pressure.
But now that she's becoming a little bit more comfortable with me,
what I'm doing is I'm starting to work a few exercises with her,
with some food lures to help her learn,
to be confident enough to move in close towards me. So I start just by showing
her a little treat when she's interested in the treat.
I back up a couple of steps. Yes. And that I reward her good girl.
So that way she learns moving toward me is worth her while try her again,
show her a treat, get her attention back up a couple of steps.
Yes. Good girl. Awesome. And just that in itself,
moving towards me, me standing over top of her,
I'm a tall person that can be a little intimidating for a young puppy,
especially a puppy that doesn't have a lot of confidence.
Now that little exercise might look very basic to you,
but it's actually very meaningful.
What it tells me is that she's willing to follow the food lure and she's willing
to take the food. That is a step in the right direction for this little girl.
If she was really worried, food would mean nothing to her. And um,
the fact she's taking the food and she's willing to do something for,
it tells me that we're heading in the right direction.
Once she's comfortable with that,
I can then move on to making it even more challenging. I can show her a treat,
draw her to me with my other hand, take a hold over a collar. Yes.
Good girl.
So she gets used to having a hand coming down and reaching for her, which again,
for a lot of unconfident or worried dogs is something that's very scary.
I want her to learn hands, reach towards you. Something good is gonna happen.
Leadership is often a very misunderstood concept in the dog world.
And to us here at McCann dogs,
leadership is about providing your dog with good information and giving
your dog good direction and helping your dog understand what's expected of them.
This leash is a safety net because I don't know what would happen if Diva
suddenly got spooked or scared. And I don't know that I could call her back to
me. I need to make sure I have control over her at all times.
So I have a collar on her. I have a leash on her and if you have a dog,
we're a puppy like Diva that might suddenly get spooked or scared.
You wanna make sure that you have this control for safety reasons.
I was just out taking Diva for a little walk around the property and I ran into
instructor, Shannon instructor, Shannon, and I do a podcast together. And, um,
I thought two brains are better than one.
So I thought we'll invite Shannon in here.
And we'll chat a little bit about Diva. Diva has, um, not met Shannon yet.
And you can see if she's, um,
she's just kind of quite content to hang out here on my lap. So, Shannon,
what do you think people do in many cases with worry dogs when they're not
sure about greeting someone?
I think the biggest mistake that people make is they try to force themselves on
the puppy versus letting the puppy come around naturally and come to visit them
naturally.
So I've just come and I've sat down and how nice that she has
decided to come and say hello to me on her terms.
And I probably wouldn't have gotten this same response.
Had I come rushing in and tried to feed her or tried to pet her or touch her
right away.
But it's so nice that she's decided that me sitting here beside Robbie is an
inviting thing.
And I think that that's a really important thing is letting the puppy come
around to it naturally versus, you know, sometimes people think, oh,
dogs always love me. Right. And they have well-meaning intentions,
but it can go drastically wrong for the puppy really, really quickly.
Yeah. Puppies have a lot of, um,
a lot of pressure put on them inadvertently by people who, who,
who obviously love dogs and want to help the dog and want to greet the dog.
But I think a lot of people overwhelm the dog. Yeah. And a dog like her,
she would be overwhelmed very easily. And, um,
it would not do much at all in terms of helping build her confidence.
If anything, it'll put her off even more.
Definitely. And what,
what we really need to remember when we're dealing with a little bit of a shy
puppy, is that even though you know me and you know, I'm friendly and you know,
I love dogs and you know, I'm safe in her lot in her mind. Exactly.
The fear is real in her mind. So if I overwhelmed her,
that's just going to rehearse that fear versus letting her decide to check me
out and, uh, work on her terms. Hey girl, oh my goodness. You're a cutie.
Pie. Now,
one of the things I noticed right off the bat when I first met Diva three days
ago, is that she, um, tends to be a bit of a submissive pee'r.
So when she's unsure about something, especially if she's greeting someone,
she'll get really low to the ground and she'll pee.
And a lot of people think that it's a house training issue when it's not,
it's not something that she can control. It.
It's an unconscious thing on her part. She's just basically saying,
I'm not looking for any trouble here when puppies greet Shannon, what do you,
what do you find a lot of people do that causes the submissive elimination in
puppies.
They come into the puppy space too much,
and that becomes overwhelming in terms of pressure.
And they lean over top of the puppy.
And that will often cause the admissive elimination.
So what Robbie and I have set up here is the ability for her to come over and
rehearse saying hello, without any of that stuff happening.
So we're sitting down low. I'm making sure that my interactions with her,
I'm not leaning over top of her.
And I'm trying to moderate the volume of my voice as well. So that,
that doesn't startle her.
You need to be your puppies advocate and this might lead to some unpleasant
situations or uncomfortable situations with certain people. I was, um,
at the park yesterday with Diva,
I took her there just for a little bit of exposure, not to walk her,
but just to hang out,
close to the car so that she had an opportunity to see a new environment. And,
um, as I was hanging out with her,
some people walked by and they asked if they could come and see her.
And as soon as they approached her, without my permission,
she started to get a little worried. She got load of the ground.
She put her ears back, she tucked her tail and she started to move away,
which clearly told me she wasn't comfortable with the person approaching or the
people approaching.
So I had to just ask them just to stop and give her some space. Now,
luckily for me, they were quite content to do that.
And they just stood from a distance, talked to us for a little while.
And then after a while,
I could see that uncertainty start to turn into curiosity and I can see the ears
start to come up. I can see her looking towards them.
I can see the tail starting to wag it was still a little low.
It was still a little worried, but after a couple of minutes,
I could see her getting braver and braver. And then in the end,
she chose to go visit them.
So it was a great situation for her where she wasn't overwhelmed by people
coming over into her space and hovering over her and making her more worried.
Now, even if Diva hadn't gone to visit those people,
it still would've been a great socialization opportunity for her.
Many people think that when we're socializing dogs, there has to be interaction.
And that's not necessarily the case.
Sometimes all there needs to be is exposure. Just her,
seeing those people and realizing that life is good.
Even when those people are nearby. When we're dealing with building puppies,
confidence, there is no schedule. I.
Think that people need to be very,
very careful to go at the puppies pace to make sure that they're not
overwhelming the puppy and recognize that there's no formula for this.
There's no two plus two equals four, each puppy,
and each dog is gonna be different when it comes to building competence.
Absolutely. And so when I'm working with her, I I'm,
I'm looking for those little green lights.
I'm looking for those signs that tells me she's getting more confident.
And then I know as we progress,
I can ask a little more and a little more and a little more because she's gonna
learn to trust in my guidance because she'll understand that I'm a leader.
And again,
I'm not gonna put her in a situation that's going to cause harm to her.
So she'll learn to trust me. It'll help give herself confidence as well.
We're walking a fine line here. While,
we don't want to push the dog into a situation that they're uncomfortable with.
There are going to be times in your dog's life where we have to help them
through something. And a perfect example, I think of this would be the vet,
right? Absolutely. I mean, how many dogs do you know love going to the vet?
Sure. There may, there may be some. Yeah, but I,
I'm going to guess at the vast majority of dogs or puppies, um,
are a little unsure at the vet. And so Shannon, you know,
what would you say about that in terms of helping the dog?
Yeah. And it, it, it,
this whole process is about reading the dog and knowing when to push a little
bit when to make process progress and when to sort of step back.
But at some point we're gonna need to say, you must, and we do it in a kind way,
but for things like the vet chances are,
she's gonna be overwhelmed by her first trip to the vet, but it's part of life.
She needs to have an examination. We need to make sure she's healthy.
So we're gonna bring along lots of coping mechanisms. Hopefully by that point,
she's really eager to eat food and we can bring along her favorite treats and
make it a really pleasant experience for her.
And we can also talk to the vet and say, look, this puppy is overwhelmed.
Can you be easy with this puppy? And just, you know,
warn them beforehand to make sure that she has a nice pleasant experience.
We want to soothe and help the dog through it.
And sometimes we can create a,
a bigger issue for the dog by coddling them and babying them,
and basically reinforcing that fear. So if the, if the dog's worried,
what we don't wanna do is,
is soothe them and praise them and tell 'em what a great job they're doing,
being worried. We wanna let them know we've got your back,
but you're gonna be okay. And again, that goes back to the leadership issue.
Yeah. We want the dogs to know that we're, um, you know, we're there for them.
We're gonna help them through it,
and we're gonna do the best thing we can for them.
We talked a lot about some challenging situations with puppies in terms of
building their confidence.
And if you'd like some help that's specific to your own puppy,
join us in our Puppy Essentials program. If you'd like more information,
click the link below. We talked a lot about leadership today.
And if you'd like some more tips on how to be a good leader for your puppy,
click that video right there. And on that note, I'm instructor Robbie,
this is Diva happy training.