Nervous, Shy, Anxious Dog Tips 🐶 Dog Pees when Excited Tips
and in this video I’m going to be giving you my top ten tips on helping you’re nervous or shy or highly anxious dog to relax and not be so stressed so let’s jump into this video guys and if you are new here don’t forget to click that subscribe button and make sure that you stay tuned towards the end of this video if you want to learn some actionable tips that I’ve done with my current foster dog Maisie on stopping hurt submissive peeing if you are watching this video and you are just kind of fed up with how to help your nervous dog and all you want all you want is for your anxious dog to just be able to relax and not be so stressed out then this video is for you and I’m pretty confident that you’re gonna find some helpful things in here at first tip is exercise when you exercise their mind by working on basic obedience and tricks and just playing with them you’re helping them focus on something other than what’s scaring them or making them fearful and also a big part of working on obedience is building up their confidence physical play meaning running with them walking with them on leash playing fetch this helps just tire out their body physically think about how you feel after going on a big hike or a big run you’re tired and you can’t spend the energy worrying about things that stress you out you’re generally more relaxed tip number two is make sure that you’re nervous or fearful dog has a safe space for them to retreat to and not only that but make sure you schedule time in their day to have time in that safe splay safe space so that may be a special dog bed amazing that may be a crate and if you have any crate training questions or if your dog is anxious in the crate videos linked up here or down below after this video can go watch that and this next step I wager to bet that this will be the first time or one of the first times that you’ve ever heard of this as a tip to help nervous or anxious dogs and this tip is diet so here BM if you guys know me then you know I am a massive advocate for raw fresh whole food diets for dogs so what I mean by that is not kibble but rather diets that consist of raw meat bone organ and some essential produce to ensure they have their macro in micronutrients so hear me out here if you’re not familiar with what I mean by that I’ll talk about that a little bit later and I have videos linked below but why this is important for a nervous or fearful dog it’s common knowledge that a healthy body is a healthy mind and if you have a diet that’s full of simple carbohydrates and is highly processed which all kibble is regardless of the quality of it you’re not helping to promote a healthy microbiome in their gut and everybody knows I mean this is kind of all the rage right now but it’s not new that a healthy microbiome and healthy gut leads to healthy mind and so think about a dog that’s already stressed for whatever reason they’re already nervous they’re already fearful maybe they were wired that way maybe it’s because of their history or their past and what they experienced but if there are already a stress dog the last thing you want to do is feed them a diet that’s full of ingredients they’re gonna make their body under stress it’s hard when your body doesn’t feel good for your mind to feel good so diet is so so so so important like I said I have videos linked down below on what I mean by that if you want to go and explore it’s also important that when your dog is feeling stressed or anxious about something that you don’t reinforce the behavior or coddle it and that is something that I did way too much with my Labrador Bentley comment when he was a puppy and he was anxious and stressed over whatever it was whether it was me leading or Thunder I was a old poor puppy poor puppy and let me take care of you all don’t be scared don’t be sad and you know what that did that made me feel better as a pet parent because I like I was supporting him and comforting him all that did was tell him hey when I’m stressed about something mom rewards me mom reinforces by loving Amin and coddling me that I should be stressed so I essentially just exasperated his already anxious mood and behavior so definitely watch your behavior when your dog is feeling anxious and try not to reinforce that what I should have done is not brought attention to him if he was seeming scared of a fire hydrant for example and just allow him to approach it in his terms and reward him when he faced his fear it’s why I should have done it’s not what I did that’s okay we’re learning we’re learning together and that leads me to the next tip which is really important and that tip is self-awareness so one thing you need to remember is your dog your dog can feel what you can feel so if you’re stressed in a situation or if you know that every time you get in the car your dog is gonna whine and scream and so leading up to walking to the car getting your dog’s leash on to go put them in the car if you’re already feeling that stress your dog can sense that so you’re gonna actually encourage their stress because they’re gonna be like okay we’re walking to the car and mom is feeling tense she’s holding on to my leash really tight hmm maybe I should be stressed oh my gosh there’s the cop and then they just go into their spiral their spiral self-awareness means pay attention to what you’re doing pay attention to your emotions if you’re feeling stressed about a situation that stresses your dog out maybe wait if you can like let’s say you’re gonna go on a car ride that stresses your dog wait and go on the car ride when you’re not a stress because you don’t want to feed into their anxiety of course you always want to consider working with a positive reinforcement trainer who can help you build confidence in your dog and I would encourage you to look into a trainer or specialist who can help teach you t-touch I’ll have some more information on that link down below it’s essentially a way to massage your dog almost like acupressure where you’re giving them gentle massage to your dog to help physically calm them down I do a lot of this on Finnegan I don’t really know what I’m doing I just do my best of a few I’ve been to one session on it and I find it to be highly effective so this is something I would definitely encourage you guys to explore so do you work a lot because if you’re gone from home for eight to ten hours a day think about what that might do to their anxiety if you already have a nervous dog or an anxious dog and you’re at work for eight to ten hours a day and they don’t have a break think about think about what that can do to their mind they spiral they start worrying about things is my owner ever gonna come home so if you do have an especially nervous dog I do find it beneficial if you can work out with your family or your spouse or your parents to come home and let the dog out let the dog have some time with people throughout the day not just in the morning and at night and in addition to that if you allow their mind to wander think about if you’re feeling stressed about something or you’re worrying about something and your mind starts wandering and catastrophizing your dogs can do the same thing especially a nervous dog so keeping them busy we talked about exercise before mental and physical well another way to do that is to train them because if you could teach them some basic commands think sit think down think stay think go in your place like like getting on their dog bed and staying there that builds their confidence if you give them tools they can work on and they improve on and they see that oh wow like with my human I learned to sit I learned to stay I learned the you know touch on the hand command and every time I do that my owner rewards me with play or praise or treats wow I must be doing something right and what you do is you start creating a cycle of building their confidence and that’s what a lot of cases that I’ve seen fearful or nervous dogs is that they’re not confident and so it’s your job as their pet parent to help build that confidence in one of the most effective ways that I have ever seen to do that is to work with them what you’re doing again is you’re kind of building this foundation and you’re showing the dog through action and through regular consistent exercise and activity that hey they are smart they are valuable they are important to their society which is their pack or their family because you’re giving them a job my foster dog Maisie when we first got her had some issues with submissive peeing when she would get excited or nervous so a couple of the things that we did to help with that again overall was building her confidence she would mostly get nervous with my husband Mikey when he would come home from work she would get so excited she just wanted to please him and be near him but she would get overexcited to where she would sometimes urinate inside which we don’t want it’s not a wanted behavior so what we did to start was when he would come home we would actually have her outside that way if she had an accident she was outside and what this did was they don’t really do anything for her but for us because you know I’m a compassionate person but I still have frustrated when a dog goes the bathroom inside it’s like ah and even if you don’t show it the dog can feel it in the beginning we started outside and when and when she calmed down we would all come inside and just go through our normal activities then we slowly over time built up to when he would come home we would actually have her in her crate her crate is her safe space she loves being in there she feels comfortable he would approach her calmly when she was in the crate and when she calmed down she he would let her out and just almost ignore her and sometimes she would urinate on how much she wouldn’t but what that would do was show her okay he’s not super excited he’s not super energetic we should be fine and he would just go on as normal activity allow her kind of to approach him get that initial ball of energy and excitement out without urinating and then eventually calm down and know that okay he’s here he is calm mom’s calm my brother my foster brothers are calm and eventually over time and just over practice and experience she didn’t have the issue anymore so what is so comment below what do you think the key thing of what I just explained the key tip of what I just explained around submissive peeing is time you guys are gonna hear that over and over as a theme in my video is my tip videos when it comes to dogs it just took time she had to just get used to having him around and practicing and that’s the same thing with your nervous or excited overly excited anxious dog whether they submissive urinate or not all of these things get better with time as long as you’re consistently and regularly working with them in slow and progressive ways time is the x-factor and so you have to have patience and some dogs go at a much slower pace than others and that’s okay if you’re watching this video that means that you are committed to making your dog feel happy and confident and I am proud of you so do not feel discouraged reach out for support and help from professionals if you need it and never never give up your dog was put into your life for a reason don’t give up on him or her you guys are a dream team and you’re gonna figure it out hey you guys I want to jump into comment of the day or my bark remark and this comment was on a recent video I did on how to survive your first day home with a new dog or a new puppy the comment goes to Meg who said this video was perfect for me because I’m getting my first ever new puppy next week on Saturday and I could not be more excited watching your videos really helps me call myself and realize how much joy I’ll get from having a dog so a huge thank you heart emoji meg you are so welcome thank you for being part of our mission to save all the damn dogs and I hope that you have a beautiful day [Music]
