Navigating Fears and Phobias in Working Dogs

In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses:

Timing the puppy training early and with a directed purpose, and handling the fear periods in dogs.

Habituation, spontaneous recovery, sensitization, and learned irrelevance.

When to reorient and when to address fears.

Understanding your dog's phobias to learn how to solve the problem.

Common fears and phobias seen in police and sport dogs.

Key Takeaways:

Too many people restrict social and experiential learning in puppies during the critical stages of development out of fear.

As a decoy, as a handler, as anyone working with a young dog, you need to be attentive to what you're doing and always be surveying your environment to avoid unintended consequences.

Avoid creating a problem that doesn't already exist. Take a systematic approach to expose your dog to everything they need to be exposed to.

Generally, fear periods are short-lived. Take your dog into more familiar places, more natural spaces, where it's not going to encounter a lot of things that are going to be super unusual or might provoke a fearful response.

"I have a phobia about creating phobias. I don't want to create a phobia in my dog, because the road is going to be super long to try and systematically desensitize to any type of stimuli that's been created as an avoidance response." —  Jerry Bradshaw