Anxious Dog- Fear of Clicker/General Anxiety

[DonnaLandthrip]

Would love some advice on training an anxious dog. Wallace is a 3 year old cockapoo with separation anxiety. He chews the bars on his crate, escapes from the crate, and scratches up the front door. I have tried a blanket over the crate, feeding him in the crate, special toys and treats for when I leave the house, etc and nothing has been successful. The vet prescribed medicine for him but that isn't ideal and hasn't worked very well. I purchased the Brain Training program because Wallace is incredibly smart and I thought increasing his mental stimulation might decrease his nervous energy. Unfortunately, he is terrified of the sound the clicker makes. He ran away shaking the first time I used it with him. Now, even though I have thrown the clicker away and am only using treats and verbal cues, he runs away from me as soon as he senses that I am trying to train him. What this looks like: He gets excited and runs over when I get the bag of treats but after I ask him to sit (a trick he has known for years) or do any trick more than once, he associates this event with the clicker and backs away from me. When I put the treats away and go to sit on the couch, he is comfortable again and comes over to sit next to me. It seems like I have made my dog afraid of training. I would love any advice about working to alleviate this new fear of his as he now seems to be more fearful than he was before. I feel as if I cannot help him if he's afraid to do what I ask because he associates it with a scary sound. 

[Adrienne]

Hello and welcome to the forums,

Some dogs who are anxious about crates and have separation anxiety may struggle with being crated because they associate their crates with being left alone. Now with some dogs, we can countercondition them to love the crate, but this takes time and this may not be feasible if we need to leave eventually when they're still in the early conditioning process. On top of this, we have cases where,  if a dog's anxiety is very high, that they are better off not being enclosed in a crate considering that they may get to the point of harming themselves as they panic trying to escape. 

Since your veterinarian has provided your dog with medication, I am assuming his separation anxiety is quite on the more severe level. These cases generally benefit from medication, but they need to be accompanied by a behavior modification protocol. I am not sure if your vet has mentioned this to you or not, but meds alone will hardly work other than making your dog dopey perhaps. The purpose of the medication though in these cases is to calm the dog enough so that your dog is under threshold which opens the lines for learning, since when a dog is in a panicked state certain types of learning are impaired. Let me know if your vet has not provided you with some behavior modification protocols, or has not suggested for you to work along with a behavior professional. 

Interestingly, research has shown that a large amount of dogs who suffer from separation anxiety, may also be sensitive to noises. A fear of the clicker sound doesn't happen too often, but it does occasionally occur in some sensitive dogs, especially if it's used too close to their ears or in a room that echoes. Dogs who fear beeping sounds like those of a watch or microwave may be prone to noise phobias too. 

 Now, when this happens in classes, we are empowered and at an advantage because we can tell dog owners what to do the moment this occurs as we recognize it at the earliest signs so to prevent the fear from escalating and can nip it in the bud.

What's a bit odd though in your case is that your dog seems fine to do tricks or the sit initially, but then when asked more than once, he backs away. If his fear of the clicker generalized to training, I would expect him to back away right away and not even start performing. However, fear can make dogs do the oddest things at times, so let's go straight to what we can do to remedy this. 

Since you mention that he is comfortable when you are sitting and sits spontaneously next to you, I would take advantage of this using a training method known as "capturing". I would therefore verbally mark the sitting behavior with a verbal marker such as "yes" said in a very gentle tone (or whatever verbal marker you use in lieu of the clicker), and toss a treat to the ground so that your dog has to get up to grab it. If your dog seems intimidated by your verbal marker, you can just stick to praise words (good boy) or whatever you say when your dog does well, and feed treats. 

If the treat is reinforcing enough, you should see some further sits following. Make sure to promptly verbally mark and reward these as they happen, always tossing the treat at a slight distance so that he has to get up to get them. After several reps, you can start adding the verbal cue "sit" right when you think your dog is about to sit. Say it very gently, in a soft tone. Then praise and reward, building up to the point where when you say "sit; and  your dog start to promptly sit in anticipation of the treat. Make sure your dog is super duper comfortable doing this and then try to ask for sits when you are standing, then in other areas of the home. If your dog at any time seems uncomfortable, it means you have progressed too fast and need to take a few steps back.  I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions. 

*Please note, text in blue is clickable and if you click on them it brings you to explanations for the terms used.