As I have stated many times before, I have a pretty solid case of social anxiety. It affects me on many levels in ways that never occurred to me that were even likely. But there is another, important member of my family that also suffers from anxiety, my son’s dog Cory. Today I want to talk about him and the ways in which we have tried to ease his anxiety.

We got Cory as a six month old puppy, and right away, we could tell something wasn’t quite right. Most puppies are more outgoing, and Cory was very reserved. He did love to chew things, but he wasn’t very big on other puppy games such as fetch or tug-of-war. He didn’t seem to care about running around the yard, he just preferred to stay in one spot and ‘observe.’ The lady who rescued him and sold him to us said that he had been found in a construction yard. He was okay around children, but timid around adults and tended to avoid men, especially. We figured he would ‘get over it’ eventually once he saw that he had a nice stable home with loving people who cared about him. This was not so.

• Guests in Our Home:
  Early on, we had a few friends over who chased our dog around our apartment trying to grab hold of him so they could ‘prove they were nice people.’ This was a bit of a setback. Cory saw the chasing as an act of aggression. He grew even more afraid of adults. We started requesting that the people coming over leave Cory alone. As time went by and he could see that they were not threatening him, Cory would eventually come out of hiding and sniff at them, curiously. As Cory got older, the time he needed to warm up between the arrival of a guest and when he felt comfortable enough to ‘announce his presence’ diminished, though it took longer for him to warm up to those friends of ours that had originally chased him around. He now comes right up to anyone who visits our home regularly, including family members living outside the home and close friends. He still needs time to warm up to guests he is unfamiliar with, but is less timid. He usually approaches children first.

• Walks:
  Cory was afraid of the cars that would pass by on our walks, so we stuck to the commons of our apartment complex. We were glad that we had that area at the time so that Cory could get used to going on walks without fear of traffic passing by. Once he was walking well on a leash, we started walking him around the parking lot where the cars were traveling by at a much less frequent and slower pace to get him used to the idea that, though the cars were big and sometimes loud, they were not chasing him and posed no real danger. He eventually started ignoring the cars and we took our first walk down the actual street. He backtracked a little, but did quite well, and in the end, learned that the cars were simply passing by and not actually threatening him.

• Our Loud Family:
  When we had our daughter, who is a screamer, our family got quite a bit louder. Not right away, of course– though Lili started screaming straight out of the womb, her tiny lungs were not strong enough to produce a lot of sound and she sounded quite like what I imagine to be a tiny pterodactyl. As she grew, though, and she and my son interacted with each other, our living areas got a whole lot more noisy and more scary for Cory. He started hiding out in either my bedroom or my son’s a lot and at first, I thought going in there and trying to soothe him would be helpful, but that turned out to be incorrect.
  As it turns out, when you try and soothe a dog while he/she is displaying anxious behavior, you are actually rewarding that behavior rather than helping them to calm down. I started keeping bunches of treats in my pockets and whenever Cory would come into the common areas, I would offer him a treat. I also got the kids to shower him with treats whenever he was in the common areas. This taught him that being in the same areas as the rest of the family was a rewarding experience and eventually his fear started to dissipate. The other thing we started doing was letting him be alone when he disappeared into another room. That way, not only were we not rewarding anxious behavior, but we were also not increasing his anxiety by following him into another room when he was trying to escape.

• The New Dog:
  Once we got more time and space, we decided to invest in a second dog. I was hopeful that the new puppy would help Cory to be more outgoing, but this was also not so. At least not right away. Cory felt threatened by the new puppy, who wanted to play and play and never stop. The puppy was extremely interested in Cory as she saw him as a playmate, but Cory saw her as a burden. So once again, out came the treats. We gave both Cory and the new dog treats, but for different reasons. Cory got treats for being able to be in increasingly close proximity to the other dog without growling or running away. The new puppy got treats for ignoring Cory. It took a very long time for the two to acclimate, but now they can sit in the same room, even next to each other, with little problem and sometimes they even (gasp!) play together. Cory sometimes still gets overwhelmed by the new dog’s presence (she is a very active dog and Cory is much more laid back) but these times he feels the need to hide himself away are growing fewer and further between and he can spend more time in the same room, even if it’s just in a small corner.

Cory’s vet says she is very impressed with Cory’s improvement in behavior. He still has some issues, but he is a much calmer dog and a little more outgoing than he used to be. It is only with love and patience that he has come so far. And I, for one, am very proud of him as he currently sits, unwavering, about a meter away from my daughter, who is currently jumping up and down on bubble wrap as I type this. He will never be a confident dog, but he is our dog, and he is truly the goodest of boys.