People, like all animals, learn about their environment by creating associations. 

Knowing that one event is reliably associated with another helps us differentiate between the “good” things in life and the “bad” ones, and in so doing, learn about the things in the environment to seek out, and the ones to avoid.

For the most part, when we create healthy associations, this mechanism is incredibly helpful in keeping us safe, secure, and happy.

Take spiders, for example.

For some of us, the mere sight of a spider can cause someone to go into a full-scale panic, due to some negative association they might’ve created at one time with spiders (perhaps they got bitten by one as a child).

If a healthy association was created, however, the experience may have contributed to someone learning about which spiders were dangerous, and thus avoid, and the ones that, while “weird/scary” looking, were nothing to be scared about.

On the other hand, if an unhealthy association was created, the same experience may have contributed to someone avoiding the sight, or mere mention, of spiders for the duration of their life, regardless of whether a spider is potentially dangerous or not.

In other words, when a healthy negative association is made, it can make you more discerning about things in the environment, whereas when an unhealthy negative association is made, it can make you generalize too broadly.
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Our dogs are exactly the same.

Take a dog that is scared of the sight and sound of a skateboard (or a person riding a skateboard), for example. 

If a healthy negative association was made (perhaps a skateboarder ran over his tail on accident), it may have contributed to the dog having a negative emotional reaction every time he/she saw that same skateboard (or skateboarder) while out on walks from that point forward.

On the other hand, if an unhealthy negative association was made, it may have contributed to him/her having a negative emotional reaction to EVERY skateboard that he/she comes into contact with.

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This is usually when my clients come to me for help, as it’s not the emotional reaction from the negative association that is the problem, but the manifestation of those emotional reactions, in the form of behaviors the dog exhibits, that makes living with the dog more difficult/unpleasant.

Therefore, when I start working on these cases, managing, reducing and changing these behaviors via training is often aimed at creating a new (more positive) association with something that may currently be associated as being scary, stressful, or both.

But if you’re unable to tell your dog with words that skateboards are things that he/she shouldn’t worry about, in general, and especially in your presence, how in the world are you supposed to communicate that to your dog?

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I’m glad you asked.

Simply put, in order to stop an undesirable behavior, and create long-lasting positive behavior change, we need to change how the dog feels about the thing in the environment and then teach the dog a different set of skills/behaviors that she/he can perform around the trigger.
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There are the 4 main ways to create behavioral change in dogs (and other animals) around things in the environment that make them feel stressed/anxious/uncomfortable:

1. Habituation: Exposure To The Scary Thing

This means that we expose the dog to the scary thing in the environment, and after several of these exposures, the dog begins to have less of a negative response. 

For example, you sit with your dog near a skateboard park and let the dog simply observe people riding skateboards and hear the sounds that they make. After a few sessions, your dog may no longer appear to be stressed by the to skateboards passing by, by simply exposing your dog to the scary thing.

That said, the research on habituation shows that it can have a TEMPORARY EFFECT, and if time passes with little to no exposure to the stimulus, the “undesirable” response may return to its previous level. 

For dogs that are fearful or easily scared, habituation must be an ongoing, frequent process to ensure behaviors will be maintained. 

2. Systematic Desensitization: Gradual & Multidimensional Increase Of Exposure

This means that we change the emotional response through gradual exposure to a trigger, by controlling for the distance, duration and intensity that the subject is exposed to the trigger.

Let’s revisit the example of the dog and skateboards. 

A sample 10-step systematic desensitization program to address fear of skateboards might include: 

1. A skateboard was placed 15 feet away from the dog.

2. A skateboard was moved 6 feet away from the dog.

3. A skateboard was moved 3 feet away from the dog.

4. The dog was taken on a leash to approach the stationary skateboard. 

5. A person moved the skateboard slowly back and forth 10 feet away from the dog. 

6. The dog was taken on a leash to the person on the skateboard and given a treat. 

7. The person moved the skateboard back and forth towards the dog from 10 feet away. 

8. The person moved the skateboard back and forth towards the dog from 5 feet away. 

9. The person moved the skateboard back and forth towards the dog from 2 feet away.

10. The person moved the skateboard past the dog. 

Desensitization is pretty much always combined with counterconditioning in order to both create the exposure in a safe way and help the dog associate the “scary” thing with something positive.

3. Counterconditioning: Creating New Associations

This means that we undo the effects of an earlier experience that has created a negative association. 

In 1924, Mary Cover Jones was the first therapist to use counterconditioning. She worked with several children to investigate the best ways to remove fear responses in children, one of whom was a 3 yo boy named Peter who had developed an intense fear of rabbits. You can find additional information regarding the study here.

These counterconditioning sessions involved Jones presenting a rabbit at some distance away as she gave Peter some milk and crackers. 

Essentially, the negative association that was created around the rabbit was paired with something (milk and crackers) that was intrinsically/innately rewarding to the boy.  And in doing so, the conditioned response to the rabbit (fear) was changed to something more positive (joy).

Think about it like this: if you are scared of spiders, like in the example at the beginning of the post, but someone started giving you a million dollars every time you interacted with a spider, it’s very possible that your feelings toward the spider, and potentially towards all spiders, might change in a positive way (eager anticipation).

4. Flooding: Sink or Swim 

Flooding is almost the opposite of systematic desensitization. Systematic desensitization involves overcoming fears gradually and ensuring that the dog is comfortable at each level of the fear hierarchy before proceeding to the next.

In flooding, the feared stimuli are presented all at once. For example, the dog who’s afraid of skateboards is taken to the middle of the skateboard park and held there using a leash. 

The idea behind flooding is that if high levels of fear and anxiety are being elicited quickly, the extinction of fear will also occur quickly. Flooding is a “let’s get this over with quick” technique. 

Remember the show called “Fear Factor” where contestants afraid of rats, snakes and spiders were being locked in glass boxes with countless numbers of the creatures crawling all over them? The winner was the one who stayed the longest… I always wondered if the contestants conquered their fears or if they made them worse.

Even though flooding has been recommended by traditional dog trainers as a way of dealing with fearful dogs for quite some time now, we believe that systematic desensitization is a much more humane method of dealing with fear in dogs. 

Flooding can result in overwhelming anxiety and distress. Dogs subjected to flooding often become so traumatized that they lose control of their bladder and bowels. Some dogs resist flooding so intensely that they become aggressive and dangerous.

Finally flooding teaches no positive adaptive behaviors, and it can easily make a problem worse. Softer, more sensitive dogs can develop serious behavior problems as a result of intensive procedures like flooding.

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Even though there are different ways to achieve behavior change, to create different associations, and to overcome fears and anxieties, it is important to remember that it’s a process and it takes time. 

Behavior change is never a linear process and it consists of many ups and downs. Consistency of practice and empathy for the learner play key roles for success. Understanding how our dogs communicate and the body signals they display when they are uncomfortable will help you ensure you are not pushing past your dog’s threshold. (Here, here and here are a few of our articles on dog body language you might benefit from.) 

It’s a partnership and a team effort between you and your dog and allowing her/him to feel safe and secure will help you make the fastest progress along your journey! 

Happy training!