Ways to help your dog overcome food issues and noise fears
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
COLUMN: Pawsability by Anna Patfield
The trouble with living with our dogs’ and puppies’ problems, is that they can frequently just creep up on us.
On a day to day basis we’re troubled by one thing or another, and we simply don’t notice other issues arising. Later, we can’t seem to figure out the cause of these new problems.
Perhaps from time to time then, it would help to just stop and take a step back, to reflect on our dog’s behaviour, both good and bad, and consider if we should think differently.
Here are some examples:
Puppy toilet training – Puppies are going to have accidents and we can plan ahead for this by giving them lots of opportunity to be outside and rewarding toileting in the right place.
When toilet training seems to go on for too long or prove exceeding difficult, have a word with your vet, especially if your puppy is peeing a lot or the poo just doesn’t look right.
Fireworks and noise fears – It’s very common for dogs who are scared of fireworks to become scared of similar noises such as gun shots, crow scarers, doors banging and so on.
Left untreated, this can become a serious problem where the dog becomes incapable of coping with any bangs, crashes on unexpected noises.
They may even begin to react to people coming to the house in an effort to keep things quiet. They really don’t know where the fearful noise is going to come from next, so best be safe!
This, generalised anxiety, takes times and patience to fix. The best thing to do, is to start early and teach our puppies, through careful exposure to be able to cope with noise.
Food fussy dogs – The usual story here is that one day, we notice that our dogs seem to lose interest in eating. Most often our immediate thought is that they’ve just gone off a particular variety of food. So, we buy something different, and that seems to work – for a while.
Several months later, we’re still chopping and changing trying to get them to eat. Interestingly though, the most frequent cause of fussy eating has nothing to do with the actual food; rather, it’s the eating situation.
Changing the location, their bowl to a tray and sitting calmly whilst they eat can all help.
There is more detail on Pawsability.co.uk for help with each of these issues. Or, for personal help with this or any other aspects of behaviour or training then please have a look at Pawsability.co.uk or email anna@pawsability.co.uk.
Anna Patfield, Ardgay, is a dog behaviourist and trainer.
