Stay Put: Conquering Anxiety - a podcast by Ty Brown

In this post, I’d like to introduce you to a technique I’ve been doing with certain dogs who have anxiety problems.

Anxiety issues are huge for many dogs. Sometimes they’re big and the dog is terrified of everything. Sometimes they’re small and the dog is just a little bit anxious when he’s around people or other dogs. Regardless of which issue you’re dealing with, this is an exercise that I stumbled upon years ago and found to help quite a bit. In practice it’s very simple, so I’d like to share it with you.

Let me tell the story of how I uncovered this technique. A year ago I was working with a client. I noticed that every time we told the dog to lie down, it would walk over next to the wall or furniture to do so. That dog wanted to be next to something large before it could lie down. The best option would obviously be to lie down next to its owner’s feet, but if we didn’t allow that then the dog would want to lie down near a coffee table or a couch.

I realized that the dog was actually gaining strength from the wall. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but any time that a dog is getting strength from an outside source means that it’s not getting that strength from inside itself. With this particular dog, I practiced a down stay in the middle of the room for 30-45 minutes every day, and it produced marked improvement.

We actually recommend this extended down stay technique to most of our clients, whether their dog is dealing with anxiety or not. But there’s a difference between a regular place command and a place command in the center of a room.

Here’s why: when a dog is on a bed or a mat, they gain strength from that object and doesn't feel vulnerable. But if you ask the dog to go to the middle of the floor (or yard or park), where there’s nothing close to them, then even dogs who previously had great down stays start to get nervous. They don’t know what to do, and might even break the down stay.

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