Fear Free Happy Homes
Reading Time: 3 minutes Nemo is one of those gorgeous longhaired cats you just want to pick up and cuddle. Sadly, this has never happened. After 12 years, this fearful cat is still a work in progress. I rescued Nemo as a feral kitten being hunted by hawks and brought him inside to live with me. There were two […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes My first dog was thrilled to go anywhere and meet anyone. Crowds, children, traffic: she was calm in the face of it all. So I could not understand what was wrong with other dogs or, more to the point, their owners. You know the ones I mean: their dogs jumped and barked and were out […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Kristen Levine was on a quest to help her dog, Chilly, during fireworks season and thunderstorms. “The sound of fireworks would send him into a state of panic, and he would leave claw marks on my closet door and pull my dresses right off of the hangers to make himself a pile of clothes to […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes It had been a long day, working with cases back to back of dogs displaying significant fear. One client was angry. Two were in tears. And one couple bickered constantly about the severity of the dog’s problem. As a professional dog trainer, I help dogs overcome fear. But it’s not just the dogs dealing with […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Is it noise aversion? Does your dog run and hide or start panting and shaking when children in the neighborhood set off firecrackers? Has your dog run away during the Fourth of July celebration? If so, your dog likely suffers from noise aversion, also commonly known as noise anxiety or noise phobia. Noise aversion affects […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes You realize your dog is fearful. You want her to get better, but could you also be making the problem worse? Unfortunately, this situation is all too common. Here are five ways you could accidentally be making your dog’s fear worse. Waiting to Treat It You hope your dog will “outgrow” the problem. Fear doesn’t […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Fear is a powerful emotion. It takes a lot to overcome it, in dogs and cats as well as humans, but there are some techniques that can help. I am afraid of spiders. Granted, there are species of spiders than can pose some danger in certain situations, but I live in a big city with […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Does your dog wag her tail and act happy when women and children come close, but crouch down, roll over on her back, and pee whenever a dude greets her? Does she tuck her tail between her legs, pace around the room, or bark, growl, and snarl when a man shows up? If so, perhaps […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes The dog brain is very different from that of wild dogs, so that in some ways puppies are born ready to fit into the human world. But the puppy brain still has a lot of developing to do after birth, and understanding that process is important to raising confident, well-adjusted dogs. It’s now generally believed […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Socialization can go wrong when people don’t recognize a puppy’s signs of fear. Here’s what to look for and how to avoid problems. “We don’t understand where this aggression came from,” the woman said, tears in her eyes. “We took her everywhere as a puppy like you’re supposed to do. She went with us to […]