Stella's Story Part 2: The Fearful Dog

Stella's noise phobias were evident from the time she came home, but I took her to puppy classes hoping they would help her conquer her fears. She did fine in her first class, where the dogs were tethered to the wall to keep them spaced well apart from each other, and where they were interacting primarily with their owners. She was a quick study, and I had high hopes for her next class.

When we moved up, dogs were working at various levels of obedience training. One of my friends, who was teaching a retrieve for her Rottie, tossed his very large wooden dumbbell across the room, and it landed with a huge thud. At that moment, Stella decided that she was finished with class. Miserable and afraid, she ran for her crate. I tried to work with her in quieter corners of the room, but she shut down, refused food, and exhibited her most unpleasant (for humans) expression of fear, nervous defecation. With her anxiety seeming to increase rather than decrease, I abandoned the project. I was not willing to subject her to repeated fearful experiences without any signs that she might recover enough to learn, and she was really too afraid to learn.

We waited out the long winter months, and Stella's first spring in Maine came around. In April was time for Douce to train outdoors in agility. We train at a beautiful farm in North Yarmouth, and I brought Stella along for the scenery. There was a pair of secretive bitterns nesting in the pond and the tadpoles were still small. Stella walked the grassy areas of the drive and explored the tall grasses left from winter, but when it was time for instruction, she stayed in her crate where she seemed comfortable.

After 6 weeks of classes, Stella was positively moaning about being confined to her crate, when all the fun was happening out in the agility ring. A classmate accused her of making "baby noises"--she does have quite a vocal range. So she emerged from her crate like a nestling, and seemed to adore agility training. I enrolled her in foundations class, and she worked very nicely at her own pace. While she was leery of many obstacles at first, in the past two summers, she has mastered the Buja board, the big tunnels with their scary change of footing, the chute with its scary enclosure of fabric, a full height A frame. She was even conquering the teeter by this past June. Victory! Until winter came . . .

The indoor training space we moved to is large and echoing. Stella felt pressured by the closer proximity of dogs, and she really hated the sound of the metal teeter banging. When it was her turn to practice, she couldn't even take a jump, and ran for the safety of her crate. I have let her seek the comfort of her crate, but she has never asked to come out and practice they way she did outdoors. It’s been a disappointment, because I think that agility training is a great confidence builder for her.