For a skateboard, for example, I might hold it still and pat it invitingly, offering a really good treat. If a puppy spooked, we’d react cheerfully, going up to the scary thing and touching it or interacting with it in some way that made it engaging to the puppy. In these cases, the stimuli were things that a dog might encounter in everyday life and that there was no reason to fear. We - the volunteers and I - also exposed them to lots of things in the puppy “nursery.” We’d put on hats and Halloween wigs or masks, play weird noises, show them movies, run the vacuum cleaner, open umbrellas, play with skateboards, walkers, bikes, toy cars, Christmas decorations … you name it, it showed up in the nursery at some point. I carefully selected destinations, and with the youngest puppies (8-10 weeks old), I only took them in groups with volunteer handlers. One thing I was looking for was whether a puppy showed fear and if so, to what. When I trained service dog puppies, a huge part of the training was getting them out in public and exposing them to various stimuli. But it depends on the dog’s age and on the trigger for the fear response. No, I am not avoiding answering the question.

So what to do when a dog shows fear or apprehension … That depends. Thousands of years of living and working together have taught dogs to pay close attention to humans’ responses to things and to our emotions. Here’s what I would suggest.įirst of all, I do think that dogs are capable of the kind of abstract thought that you describe. This is a great question, and if you ask a dozen dog trainers, you are likely to get about a dozen different responses.

Are dogs capable of that kind of thought? What should I do if my dog gets spooked?

People say you should ignore your dog when they get spooked by something, the reason being that if you comfort them, they will think that, since you are comforting them, there must really be something to be afraid of, or else you wouldn’t be comforting them. This worried puppy might need comforting, or he might need you to let him know there’s no reason to be afraid.

Method spookied still playing