I’m a big believer that all dogs / animals deserve to be given space whether they are anxious, over stimulated, unwell, elderly, blind, teenie or any other factor but with the added help of the Yellow attire we can see a dog may be struggling while out of the house. Or maybe while in the house such as when someone visits to sort a plumbing issue or install something!
Have you Heard of Yellow Dogs?
Dogs in Yellow day is all about raising awareness that if you see a dog with a yellow lead, collar, harness, jacket or their owner is wearing lots of yellow that they may need space and understanding.
Yellow is easy to spot from a distance whether that is on a walk, in a training class, at the vets or anywhere else an anxious dog who is weary of something might need to go. The more people who learn about Yellow Dogs the more people can find out!
You may have seen someone trying to calm or help their dog and noticed a yellow sleeve on the dog’s lead but couldn’t see the text – it could say anxious, I need space, in training or other messages. If you aren’t close enough to read it you can ask from distance how you can help or just keep your space whether you have a dog or not as dogs can be anxious of new people too!
I’ve had my own anxious dog, Taylor. At 13 weeks old, while still bonding with me as my new puppy, we left the house and hadn’t even closed the front door. Suddenly two adult Boxer dogs who were known for their aggression towards dogs, cats and people pulled their dog walker over to get to us.
In falling the dog walker let go of both leads. The dogs raced up our driveway and started grabbing at tiny Taylor, using teeth and paws. I let go of my dogs’ leads (Cassie and Taylor) and opened the front door to let them in while grabbing the attacking dogs’ leads. I handed them back to the walker who said nothing.
Back indoors to check on my own dogs and Taylor, being in that sensitive fear imprint stage, was scared. Scared of the dogs, the front door, the outside.
Taylor and I spent the next 7-8 years working on helping build his overall confidence with dogs. Many breeds he was comfortable with as long as they didn’t rush up into his face, jump on him, constantly shove their nose up his bum and just left him alone. But he was a nervous dog. And I was still learning to be a dog behaviour councillor so I accidentally managed to increase his anxiety and introduce his own victim spotlight by having him castrated!
You may wonder what I mean by Taylor having a ‘victim spotlight’ – once castrated he didn’t even have testosterone in his system to help him try and be confident and this is something I’ve regretted for over 20 years. This also meant other dogs who wanted to bully dogs or dogs who were usually the dog receiving unwanted attention soon noticed Taylor was the ultimate underdog and would make a beeline for him, completely ignoring Cassie and eventually when we had Merlin too.
It also meant Taylor expected to be targeted so he was on constant full alert which in turn also attracted other dogs over. Poor Taylor must have been exhausted just waiting to be picked on any time we left the house.
The original incident with the neighbours Boxers was in 2004. I worked full time while training to be a dog trainer and behaviourist so dog walks morning and evening were a daily occurrence. I lived near farm fields so often didn’t meet any other dogs or people but sadly most times we saw dogs were going in or out of our house with the boxers, the off lead gsd over the road who would run ahead of his owner to bark several times in Taylor’s face (literally a few inches face to face), the husky that I believe was playful but who’s owner couldn’t move him so they just stood while he jumped left and right barking very fast including at the end of our drive. So even trying to get to my car to drive my dogs somewhere secluded was met with various dogs that caused Taylor stress.
Oh yes and then we had new next door neighbours who brought with them .. a male boxer! He was lovely but poor Taylor had such a fright the first time he saw him through our chain link garden fence!
Over the years Taylor grew more confident with a lot of dogs that had a more predictable personality but any time he saw a boxer dog he went into panic even if we hadn’t seen them. This progressed to other breeds with more prominent eyes like pugs and even whippets and greyhounds for a few months!
My heart broke daily for my boy; I’d been studying to be a dog trainer and canine behaviourist for a year when the first incident happened so all of the positive socialisation I’d done and had planned with my new puppy suddenly had little importance.
I can clearly recall the moment one of my employers as a dog trainer offered to help with some behaviour consults and use of Bach essences. We started with the typical information gathering and she asked what age Taylor was when o got him. “13 weeks. He was that little bit older as he had a sty in one eye and my breeder requested he kept him until it cleared up”.
She paused in then middle of writing and looked at me quietly. Her words have been the source of so much guilt I’ve had for Taylor even now;
“Oh Joe, I’m so sorry. I assumed he was was rescue dog with a traumatic history from his response to dogs that I’ve seen. I didn’t know you had him from so young”.
Yep, I didn’t protect him. I didn’t prevent him having years of anxiety.
But we started looking at various ways to help Taylor including using the personalised Essences, positive training for focus on me instead of looking for dogs to attract over, play for confidence, agility for confidence and to give him something to enjoy that got his Adrenalin up (agility can be amazing for confidence building) and tricks training to keep his busy mind, erm, busy! I used crystals and had a lady who worked out what he would benefit from and sent them in a special case for dog collars! We used all kinds of holistic therapies too.
Something that additionally helped was when we started Geocaching! This is like a worldwide treasure hunt with containers hidden in thousands of places and coordinates given, and we found great hidden walks while looking for caches. We got Taylor a little backpack for dogs and just kept the little pencil used to log the cache and a spare poo bag. It didn’t look like much but when he put his face through the harness he suddenly looked incredibly happy! Each walk with his back pack on he was confident, ignored other dogs and when dogs came over to him they couldn’t harm his back or neck as the backpack material was in the way!!
Talk about game changer!!
When Taylor was about 8 I took him for laser and hydrotherapy. I’d started studying to become a Certified Professional Canine Fitness Trainer and was more aware of signs of discomfort, including twitching. I’d noticed over the last couple of years that Taylor had a slight twitch in the centre of his back. It wasn’t constant l, only happened for a few seconds then I wouldn’t see it for 6-8 months! As I didn’t know when it would show I was limited on what I could do for him.
I knew of a vet who ran extensive fur analysis testing in Norfolk so I sent some of Taylor’s fur away. The test showed a couple of mild food sensitivities plus indicated an issue in Taylor’s lower thoracic region!!
This lead to vet referral, holistic therapies and more increased interest in helping dogs with discomfort which I’ll cover in another blog, but working on helping Taylor’s discomfort meant he wasn’t in pain when other dogs ran over to him so he didn’t have so much anxiety, could focus on me and getting rewards and he thrived in doing tricks demos at shows, doing agility and hoopers in classes, competing in Heelwork to Music and having amazing dog walks where he was super happy!
More guilt that I didn’t notice / help him sooner but Taylor helped me learn how pain and discomfort can affect behaviour and anxiety as well as how well dogs can and do adjust to get on with things so we don’t spot something has happened until it’s too bad to cope anymore.
This is why I look at dogs’ movement, position changes, fur patterns, ask to handle dogs and ask owners questions as anxiety in dogs and pets isn’t always black and white.
In Taylor’s case we worked on his initial trauma caused by the boxer dogs but we needed to progress to another source of his dog anxiety.
Or perhaps the boxers jumping on him, biting at his back and pawing him when he was 13 weeks old caused the back problem – we’ll never know!
If you have an anxious dog, or if you work with dogs including those who are anxious, look at the bigger picture as anxiety can stem from many places and change over time.
This week included Dogs In Yellow day which is all about raising awareness for anxious dogs and how to help by providing dogs wearing yellow space – although we can learn a lot as dog owners buy gifting all Dogs and owners we see out with some space. Look up Sarah at My Anxious Dog to find out how yellow is helping dogs achieve calmer walks etc.
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