Soft dogs

There's a huge difference between coddling, and comforting, a dog. Science has long shown that providing comfort - talking, slow, calm petting, TTouch, can really help calm a fearful or anxious dog. Sometimes, in all honesty, a dog just wants acknowledgement that it is scared or upset, rather than being ignored and pretending nothing is happening. I've seen dogs who get much, much worse when you ignore the fact that they are upset and "business as usual" doesn't always help the dog. Let's put it this way....if I was being held at gunpoint, somebody holding my hand or rubbing my shoulder is not going to make me more scared...and really, I don't think it does for our dogs either. Yes, part of it comes down to energy.....some people do get anxious and upset when their dogs do, and yes, dogs can read that because they can sense the corticosteroids and stress pheromones that we give off. But if you remain calm, and show calm reassurance, it's a totally different ballgame. In many professional/institutional dog circles, a lot of the "coddling a fearful dog" myths have been put to rest. Unfortunately it hasn't gained huge steps yet towards being well known in the public.

Now, about soft dogs in general....most often its due to a dog's temperament. Training can often make things "worse", but generally a soft dog is a soft dog from birth. I also do believe that all dogs, including "soft" (I generally refer to them as sensitive...and different dogs can have generalized sensitivities, or more specific ones) dogs, have a ceiling to their behaviours. In other words, you can have all the training and exposure in the world, but through genetics any being can only get so far.

Which comes to soft dogs....the biggest thing with soft dogs is accepting them for who, and what, they are. Learning how to teach them, how to give them the best you can, how to handle them when they have trouble coping, and to just....accept them. Work on increasing confidence, but at the same time don't make them into something they may never be. It generally leads to frustration and anger on behalf of the person, and it only hinders the relationship you could be forming.

Shimmer is the softest dog I have ever taught, and at the same time, the most difficult dog I have had to learn to teach.  Like some here, even raising your voice to something benign can upset her. Stepping into her space wrong can cause her to roll herself in appeasement....she once fell off the bed and scared herself such that she urinated on herself and on Gaci. Things that most dogs would take in stride, takes her a long time to get used to, or to accept. And it has nothing to do with her previous history, I've had her since birth. I know her genetics through and through, where she came from and why her parents were put together as mates.  She just happened to get the genes, and the development in the womb, to make her more sensitive than her littermates. It happens, and can happen in any litter, at any time. It's the same way three siblings from the same parents can all be totally and utterly different from each other.

 There are things about her I will never change, and I have totally accepted who she is. We do lots of confidence building exercises, lots of short, fun training, and lots of patience, but there are certain things she will always face in predictable ways, and even with a good relationship there are occasions where she will react a little excessively to benign things. It's just who she is. Once you accept it, you learn to live with it and find less frustration in it.

Kim_MacMillan

Which comes to soft dogs....the biggest thing with soft dogs is accepting them for who, and what, they are. Learning how to teach them, how to give them the best you can, how to handle them when they have trouble coping, and to just....accept them. Work on increasing confidence, but at the same time don't make them into something they may never be. It generally leads to frustration and anger on behalf of the person, and it only hinders the relationship you could be forming.

Very well put and a very good point. 

 And it is soooo individual. With Bean, I distract her with a game. She looves to play, and I generally don't carry a toy (though I've been trying), so I'll cue her "Let's PLAY!", smack her in the side, and run away. Half a second later, she's over whatever was bothering her. Before I learned that, she had a melt down in the rally ring, when a leaf stuck to her foot. She still actively dodges leaves, if she's thinking about her feet.

Kim_MacMillan

There's a huge difference between coddling, and comforting, a dog. Science has long shown that providing comfort - talking, slow, calm petting, TTouch, can really help calm a fearful or anxious dog. Sometimes, in all honesty, a dog just wants acknowledgement that it is scared or upset, rather than being ignored and pretending nothing is happening. I've seen dogs who get much, much worse when you ignore the fact that they are upset and "business as usual" doesn't always help the dog. Let's put it this way....if I was being held at gunpoint, somebody holding my hand or rubbing my shoulder is not going to make me more scared...and really, I don't think it does for our dogs either. Yes, part of it comes down to energy.....some people do get anxious and upset when their dogs do, and yes, dogs can read that because they can sense the corticosteroids and stress pheromones that we give off. But if you remain calm, and show calm reassurance, it's a totally different ballgame. In many professional/institutional dog circles, a lot of the "coddling a fearful dog" myths have been put to rest. Unfortunately it hasn't gained huge steps yet towards being well known in the public.

 

A very very important point. I regarded it as far more important to get my dog in a state where he body wasn't rigid with hormones associated with stress than bothering on one hand as to whether what i was doing was molly coddling, or the other hand whether it could be considerd as R-. :)

Being a little more candid, I also needed to learn to be less anxious with her in some trial situations. I also learnt that in some situations, there were Judges that were so bizarre in their rulings that the anger would start as i set foot in the ring. I avoid them.For example one judge would ping me 6 points for every flip finish that my dog did despite them being legal, another really crowded her, and once got her to sit in a puddle on a recall, then recently stopped her in full flight on a seekback. Avoidance is best.

I figure that if they can't judge as well as she trials, then they don't deserve to see her in action.

She shuts down if i am anxious or angry.

 I really strongly agree with Kim. There is a huge difference, as I kind of hinted at before. I find myself feeling bad for dogs whose owners are intent on ignoring them when they are having a quiet freak out. I used to do it to Penny, but I swear she dealt with things much better if I just acknowledged her aroused state. Like, hugely better. I have made a point with Kivi to comfort him whenever he has wanted it. I did stop picking him up and cuddling him when he was coming crying to me a couple of times a day, but I didn't stop comforting him. I just did it with him on the ground. After 18 months of ALWAYS comforting him when he was worried about something, I now have a dog that often comes to me looking for a hug when he is feeling anxious. I give him one, tell him he's a wuss and he will be fine, and he goes on his way. He's such a mummy's boy.

espencer

Totally agree, a dog does not want be scared, aggressive, anxious, etc. BUT by giving affection at the wrong behavior you are promoting the behavior to return every time the thing or situation that causes it appears again

I guess this still makes little sense to me.  The behavior is a direct result of her emotional state.  She's not acting in some way that's totally separate from that.  Calm the emotional state (fear) and you change the behavior (ears back, laying down, nervous body language).  She thinks she's done something wrong, that whatever she was doing caused me to punish her.  Ignoring her at that point seems to ME like it might make things worse.  I mean, we use ignoring a dog as a sort of "punishment" (technically negative reinforcement, I believe) so wouldn't the possibility be there that I might accidentally reinforce whatever she thinks she did wrong was actually wrong?

corvus

However, I am a great advocate of the right kind of attention during stress. If my dog is stressed you can bet I go over and talk to him and give him a pat. It serves only to make him feel reassured, i.e. less stressed. Next time that thing that made him stressed before is around, he is not as worried by it. Now if when he was stressed I came over and lavished attention on him and made baby noises and cuddled him and so on, well, I imagine I would not be helping his stress level. All that excessive noise and attention would probably serve to convince him that he was right about being stressed in the first place.

I'm not one for making baby noises and cooing and whatnot.  It's just not my style.  I'm not a coddler in that sense.  I sit with her and pet her, stroke her head, talk to her, make silly noises at her sometimes and try to distract her with a squeaky toy. 

Liesje

The problem with a neurotic pr anxious dog is that unless the dog is sedated or sleeping, she is never completely relaxed mentally.  But, that's Kenya, not necessarily Dahlia....

In most cases, Dahlia is a very confident dog.  She's generally very relaxed (sometimes too relaxed...she's a really mellow dog), though she doesn't like loud noises or thunderstorms.  The problem really only occurs when it's something physical that she seems to see as punishment: running into her when she's not in a playful mood, accidentally hitting her when your hand swings out further than intended and collides with her, stepping on her tail (or even the hair on the end of her tail), etc.  Her reaction seems to say "Oh no I did something wrong please don't hurt me!"

When she's playful you can run into her all you want, push her face around, pet her roughly on the sides, and she interprets it all as playtime fun.  But when she's not playing, she seems to see it as some sort of physical punishment for something (and is no doubt confused as to what she's being "punished" for).

And that's a great thing to do with a soft dog who is going through a tough period. As Espencer said, a dog does not want to be stressed or anxious, and a dog will not choose to be. It will not make the erroneous association "Everytime I'm anxious mama pets me. Therefore petting me will make me anxious more often and next time this situation occurs I will get anxious again so I will get  petted". Unfortunately, classical trumps operant and it doesn't work that way. Therefore, comforting a dog will not cause it to become more anxious the next time. It will either do nothing at all or it will help in some way.

In the end, look at how the behaviour is affected, and go from there. If it helps, keep doing it. If it does nothing, there's no harm either way. And if it makes the anxiety increase, then don't do it. Seems pretty simple (although not always easy!!).

Kim_MacMillan

Now, about soft dogs in general....most often its due to a dog's temperament. Training can often make things "worse", but generally a soft dog is a soft dog from birth. I also do believe that all dogs, including "soft" (I generally refer to them as sensitive...and different dogs can have generalized sensitivities, or more specific ones) dogs, have a ceiling to their behaviours. In other words, you can have all the training and exposure in the world, but through genetics any being can only get so far.

Which comes to soft dogs....the biggest thing with soft dogs is accepting them for who, and what, they are. Learning how to teach them, how to give them the best you can, how to handle them when they have trouble coping, and to just....accept them. Work on increasing confidence, but at the same time don't make them into something they may never be. It generally leads to frustration and anger on behalf of the person, and it only hinders the relationship you could be forming.

[...]

 There are things about her I will never change, and I have totally accepted who she is. We do lots of confidence building exercises, lots of short, fun training, and lots of patience, but there are certain things she will always face in predictable ways, and even with a good relationship there are occasions where she will react a little excessively to benign things. It's just who she is. Once you accept it, you learn to live with it and find less frustration in it.

Completely agree.

This took me a long time, and I see people who don't have to deal with a dog like this struggle with the concept.  Well if you have a really high energy dog do you really think you can "train away" all that energy?  No, you exercise your dog more.  It's the same with a sensitive dog, that is their temperament and *you* have to learn to adjust because you will not be able to change it.  I'm not just talking about a dog that startles here or there, or a dog that is more aloof.  To me, a "sensitive" dog is a dog that not only reacts in a way that shows a lack of confidence/security but does not recover like another dog would.  Coke sometimes startles too, but the difference is that he recovers instantly.  I might trip and knock him hard by accident and he will jump and look at me like I did a mean thing, but 2 seconds later I can be feeding him treats or running around playing like nothing ever happened.  With a really sensitive dog that may not be the case.  I might accidentally startle Kenya and she will need half an hour to cool off before she is comfortable again.  If I feel like I can distract her or redirect her successfully, I will, otherwise I do not react to her reaction and let her be.

What's funny is that all my friends and family say I am crazy when I describe Kenya is nervous, neurotic, and overly sensitive.  They say "but she is always so happy, calm, and well-behaved!"  She is the favorite dog of most of them because she has impecable manners.  What they don't know is how much I manage every situation.  They don't see the nervous neurotic side because I don't let them.  If I think we are in a situation where the dog will start getting unsettled, I remove the dog or somehow redirect the person from interacting with the dog.  Everyone I know thinks that Kenya likes them, lol.  That's because I allow maybe 5 seconds of interaction and if I see her start to look uncomfortable (visual cues that a non-dog person would never notice) I call her back to me and put her away or do something else.  If I think there is a person that she will be afraid of, I discreetly block interactions with that person.  For us it really comes down to management.  Knowing the dog's comfort level and thresholds and when to intervene in a way that keeps the dog safe and doesn't offend the people.  Ironically, the worse people are always the ones that say "Oh I LOVE dogs!  I know she will LOVE me!" because their approach is too direct, trying to win over the dog with excessive praise and physical touch.  The truth is that besides me and her breeder, Kenya's favorite people are my friends who have no interest in dogs, because they leave her alone and only pet her if she comes to them first.

Kim_MacMillan

In many professional/institutional dog circles, a lot of the "coddling a fearful dog" myths have been put to rest. Unfortunately it hasn't gained huge steps yet towards being well known in the public.

 Thank you!  You say things much more eloquently than I do.  That was what I was trying to state.  From what I understand, FEAR can make a dog more fearful (Mommy is scared and so there must be reason to!) just as aggression in a human can bring out aggression in a dog, etc.  So petting, calmly talking to a dog, comforting the dog, and paying attention to her can't make her more fearful because I'm not afraid and showing signs of being afraid.  Your analogy is much like the one I use -- I'm afraid of arachnids.  If one showed up and someone came over to hug me, I wouldn't become more afraid of them over time.  But if someone started freaking out the same way I was, it would really intensify the fear I was already feeling.   I KNOW dogs are not humans, but emotions work very much the same way across the board.

Kim_MacMillan

Once you accept it, you learn to live with it and find less frustration in it.

I'm really not frustrated with Dahlia.  I love her and I do accept her as she is.  I just wondered if there was some way to help her with it so that she didn't overreact to simple things that can't be avoided (she WILL be run into from time to time, no matter how hard we try not to!).  She's really a fantastic dog and she's not hugely neurotic by any means.  She's generally very calm, incredibly mellow, and just very sweet.  She's done well with standard training classes (we've taken 3) and passed her CGC.  She loves to learn and she did fantastically in all the classes (our first trainer told us she was the poster child for rescue dogs).  We did an agility class too and she enjoyed some of it.  She did great with the jumps (she LOVES to jump, which was why I signed up for the class...she had great fun all winter sailing over 3 foot snowbanks) and the tunnel, ok with the weaves, but couldn't deal with the teeter.  She's too mellow and not driven enough to be a real agility dog (honestly my only "disappointment" with her...I really want to get involved in agility!), but she had fun nonetheless.  So she can definitely handle a lot.  It's just when you accidentally hurt her (even in a tiny little way like bumping into her) she seems to think the world has ended.  Poor girl.  I can't honestly say if it's just her personality (it's quite possible it is) or if it's from earlier experiences.  She was somewhere around 2 to 2 1/2 when we got her, so who knows what her early life was like.

Liesje

Ironically, the worse people are always the ones that say "Oh I LOVE dogs!  I know she will LOVE me!" because their approach is too direct, trying to win over the dog with excessive praise and physical touch.  The truth is that besides me and her breeder, Kenya's favorite people are my friends who have no interest in dogs, because they leave her alone and only pet her if she comes to them first.

You're not kidding there!  I've seen dogs bowled over by those sorts of people.  Their approach is head-on, quick, and usually right over the head.  All things that will make many dogs nervous and a dog who tends to be nervous around people SERIOUSLY nervous.  I know I was sort of one of those people in my teens, but I must have been slightly different as I usually squatted down in front of the dog and held out a hand to sniff.  But I sure did use the "oh dogs love me!" thing and I'm sure it irritated some people, looking back.

Luckily I now have a dog who can deal with those folks and who isn't fazed by head-on approaches.  In fact, she doesn't seem interested in sniffing a hand and offers her head for a scratch.  She's an odd dog in many ways.  The sensitivity to pain and perceived physical punishment is just one small thing, really, in a whole lot of other great things.  It's strange that she's such a confident dog -- loves people, dogs, kids.  She even lets kids crawl over her and pull themselves up by her fur and she simply noses them.  I don't think she's freaked out because she doesn't back away from the child, though she does show minor stress signals (licking the lips).  I disengage the child and let her get away but she goes right back, silly dog.  So she has a huge amount of confidence and is really relaxed most of the time.

Kim_MacMillan

Therefore, comforting a dog will not cause it to become more anxious the next time.

I agree, comforting the dog will not cause it to become more anxious the next time. The dog chooses the level and the human comforting agrees with the level displayed

It wont make it worse but it will make it come back every time. At the end the owner will just choose to accept it because "it's the dog personality". The owner never chooses to stop doing it because "at least is not making it worse". The human has the need of coddeling, therefore the human is looking on satisfiying his/her need first instead of helping the dog by not doing it.

espencer

I agree, comforting the dog will not cause it to become more anxious the next time. The dog chooses the level and the human comforting agrees with the level displayed

It wont make it worse but it will make it come back every time. At the end the owner will just choose to accept it because "it's the dog personality". The owner never chooses to stop doing it because "at least is not making it worse". The human has the need of coddeling, therefore the human is looking on satisfiying his/her need first instead of helping the dog by not doing it.

I have to disagree with this.  From my readings, animal behaviorists disagree with this as well.  Studies have shown that petting a dog during a storm neither makes them calmer nor more stressed.  In other words, it has no effect on the dog one way or the other, so it can't make it worse OR better in those cases (though anecdotal evidence from even people like Patricia McConnell has said that it has calmed their dogs down).  It will not "make it" come back every time.  It MAY come back every time but that's because of the dog's emotional state.  I really don't think ignoring a dog is 100% the way to go.  The times that has been suggested with my dog she has simply gotten confused and more upset.  She trails after me with her body slumped and her ears back.  Usually if I sit down with her and pet her softly, she relaxes.  Not always, but often.  So from my experiences, generally comforting her and petting her makes her feel better.

Would you ignore a child who had hurt itself and was crying?  Step aside from it and tell it to buck up and deal?  Let the kid get itself together?  Or would you say "oh look, you hurt yourself!  Let me see...aww mommy will kiss it and make it all better."  Usually kids respond well to that.  And while I don't think my dog is the same as a child, I do think their reactions are often similar (and people tend to compare to the other side in this case with coddling children too much, etc.).

I think it's been the common wisdom for so long with dogs -- don't comfort them, they'll see it as reason to be scared -- that people always resort to it.  If ignoring works with your dogs, that's great.  But it wouldn't work with my dog and while I don't "coddle" her, I will continue to comfort her when she's scared.  I do what works for my dog, not what works for me, so don't think I'm doing it for selfish reasons.  I would love nothing more than to say continue on my way and let her keep going with no problems.  But when she shuts down, I do what is right for her...and in most cases, that's sitting down and petting her.  This has nothing to do with MY needs, but with my DOG'S needs.

espencer

It wont make it worse but it will make it come back every time.

Except....when it doesn't.

espencer

At the end the owner will just choose to accept it because "it's the dog personality".

Because you know....sometimes it is just the dog's personality.

The principle of parsimony. When you hear hoofbeats...think horses, not zebras.

(Sorry....not gonna join your war. Some of us actually do have experiences with these types of dogs.)