Clearly happy to be at the beach…but not for long.
I put his harness on, loaded him into the car, hooked him up to the seat belt and headed to the beach. Since Riggs had a big scare at the park several weeks ago he has exhibited more and more fear. I could say it’s for no reason because nothing happened to him on that day that he was sent into an extreme fearful response; but to him something did happen. Even though nothing physically happened to him; he got a scare that is lasting far longer than I thought it would.
What initially scared him was a large man skateboarding down the road and holding a fishing pole. The guy tripped off of his board several times and was obviously a newbie in the skateboard department. This all happened while we were walking around the lake. At the time it clearly scared the crap out of Riggs. Right after this happened a man was walking too close behind us, staring at Riggs. He called out to me that Riggs was giving him the stink eye.
Once he passed by I made the conscious decision to make our walk longer so that Riggs could shake off his scare and to not leave with his tail between his legs. After a few minutes as we continued our walk he calmed down, came around and we then head towards the car. I thought the incident might leave an impression, I was right.
What I didn’t realize was that it was going to leave me with a ton of work to do. The skateboard incident has left Riggs with a big memory fear. He’s always been a fearful kind of guy but no where near what is now going on. This is a common thing in dogs so I want to share our journey through it all for anyone dealing with the same sort of thing. Of course I’m sure that not too many of you have dogs who got a scare from a large skateboarding fisherman (lmao).
The same thing can happen from literally anything. A garbage can, a lawnmower back firing, a cat hissing at your dog, a balloon popping. The list goes on and on for what can scare our dogs and leave a lasting impression. So as I walk through all of this I hope to share some help with fear response triggers.
When we got to the beach today he was great. He has a lot of wonderful memories from the beach, no bad memories at all. He was running in the water, jumping around the beach and really happy to be there. Then he saw a lady and her miniature schnauzer coming our way behind us. That was it. All he could see was this woman and her dog coming our way. After they were out of sight it went from one person to another as he hyper scanned the area.
So what did I do? I slipped into my super chill mode, showing Riggs that I was just having fun and had absolutely no concern about these people around. The worst thing I could have done then was to leave. If I let Riggs drag me to our car it would have fueled his fear. So we walked and we walked and moved and moved. When he gets focused on something it is important to keep moving.
After walking a ton, I decided that we would just sit and watch the world go by. When we did that, it gave him the experience of people coming towards him and nothing happening as they continued to walk by. After that we walked some more and even hit the boardwalk which was scary but he did it.
I’m actually shocked to see what this one incident has left us with. But it is all about resilience. Some dogs have it, others do not; and there is a whole spectrum of different levels of resilience within us all.
The ability of a person/dog to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes, etc.
Our story continues………….