Fear periods and other such bumps in the road

So, the trainer I so very much admire, Susan Ailsby, has been having a small amount of trouble with her 5 month old Portuguese Water Dog pup, Syn. For no reason at all, Syn suddenly became irrationally scared of her, wouldn't obey her 'come' cue, and would actually run away. She followed a more 'traditional' dog training idea at first to help Syn, which wasn't helpful, but then realised what she was doing wasn't helping and used a more positive, helpful idea to help Syn overcome her sudden fear.

This brings us to fear periods. I am not talking about the fear of a woman's hormones either. ;) During their life, many dogs go through periods of time, which can be quite short or can last for months, when they become unable to deal with their own fear. It isn't that they just become scared all the time, because all puppies become scared. A happy and well adjusted puppy will soon be able to conquer their fear and investigate whatever it is that made them scared, like say, a flapping plastic bag. One going through a fear period will stay petrified of that evil unpredictable scary scary bag. So much so, it may take the pup months to get over a fear of bags after that - only because he met that bag during a fear period.

Trainers and behaviourists come up with all sorts of ages for fear periods, but they seem to vary widely. Some of the most common ones I've read are four weeks, eight weeks, four months, seven-eight months, a year, 16-18 months and sometimes 32 months. The important thing is, as dog owners and dog lovers, that we are aware of the existence of these fear periods. You should never force your dog to confront his fears when he is obviously going through a stage of being unable to conquer his fear - it will make it worse. You need to show him a way out of the box he has built for himself, and so here are some ways to do so!