Insecure Dogs can become confident dogs!

Coexistence to the rescue!

Coexistence is the best way to help an insecure dog build his confidence around triggers that worry him. When a dog has been very dog and/or human reactive, I continue to hold him accountable for his polite leash manners during our daily structured leash walks, I also wanted to give him tons and tons of great confidence building experiences around dogs and people who are trained to coexist with him (not touching him, not forcing interaction with him, and not pressuring him in any way). When a dog is genuinely worried about something, like strange humans or other dogs, the worst thing you can do is allow people or dogs to impose their attention/touching/staring/talking on the dog because allowing that unwanted attention only serves to reinforce the dog’s original worries and concerns that these things are scary and then push him to become reactive to protect himself from the unwanted advances. A much better and more successful approach is to firmly advocate for the dog (tell people and other dogs to leave him alone), correct all mental arousal/reactivity, and then spend time coexisting in the presence of the former triggers (sharing space and time but without pressure). Some dogs never become comfortable with other dogs and strange humans, some dogs have a very small circle of friends/family and that is A-OK! They don’t have to like everyone on the planet, but they do have learn to coexist calmly and politely and we handlers must learn to advocate for our insecure dogs at all times... it’s a team effort!