My Confident Puppy is Cowering

Navigating Fear Periods

Fear periods are something that we sometimes hear vague references to, but they aren’t often really discussed in detail. I hear them casually mentioned, “oh she’s in a fear period”, when a puppy is acting nervous or timid. But a nervous or timid moment doesn’t always equate to a true fear period, so I wanted to take the time to really sit down and DISCUSS fear periods and what they can look like as well as my experiences navigating them.

Icelandic Sheepdogs should be very confident, lively, and social dogs. When a new icie puppy heads off to its new home, it should be adventurous and relatively fearless. I send my puppies home between 10 and 11 weeks, to make sure they are nicely adjusted and ready for their new life. The “first” fear period that is often mentioned, occurs around 8-10 weeks of age. It’s something that I watch for closely in my litter, and then reduce the likelihood of fear-inducing activities if any of the puppies are acting off. I don’t start first vaccines until the puppies are close to 9 weeks old and I observe them closely to make sure they are confident for their vet visit because I don’t want to trigger any intense fear responses to veterinary care by transporting, examining, and vaccinating during a vulnerable moment.

Fear periods in young dogs are usually relatively short-lived, sometimes lasting several weeks to a month, and are moments of intense, emotional fear responses to normally non-fear-inducing things. A puppy in a fear period will be overly sensitive to his/her environment and less sociable. They will seek to hide and are less interested in interacting with things, whereas previously they would be running around the room. They may want to be held and cuddled instead of on the floor. They may even respond intensely to stimuli at home – running and hiding when startled instead of seeking out the source of the sound. It’s also common that they will avoid strangers rather than wanting to interact. Fear periods may present themselves throughout puppyhood and into adolescence, sometimes as late in life as 18-20 months of age. Most commonly there are two fear periods with the first occurring around 8-10 weeks and the second in late adolescence between 6 and 18 months of age. Fear periods can also vary in their intensity and length.

Because Icelandic Sheepdogs are usually very confident and engaging dogs, it can be easier to notice the start of a fear period. Just be sure to pay close attention to your puppy’s normal behavior and note anything that seems OFF, especially a fear response that seems exaggerated and/or a lot of avoidance behaviors. It can look like – not wanting to visit new people, not wanting to stray far from you outside in the yard and preferring to stick close to the door, jumpy and exaggerated fear responses to sounds or something falling, an extreme startle at something “appearing” that the puppy wasn’t expecting like a dog or person coming around the corner.

It's human nature to want to work through or “fix” something that seems off, so when our puppies are acting overly afraid or nervous, we like to try to push them to show them that things are okay. I would encourage you NOT to do this. A fear period is such an intense and vulnerable time for a young to teenage dog and pushing them too far can actually cause the fear to become worse and tarnish your bond as the safety net they have come to know from you. The biggest risk of trying to push or train through a fear period is an episode of single event learning. Single event learning is an instance of intense, permanent emotional reaction to a trigger. Puppies are most vulnerable to moments of single event learning when they are in the midst of a fear period and, therefore, more likely to have very strong feelings of terror and fear. If you attempt to work through the fear, and something happens beyond your control and startles your puppy or causes pain – they have the potential to blame the fear-inducing trigger for the rest of their lives. If your puppy is acting overly fearful, in my experience, the absolute best thing to do is take A LOT of steps back.

If my puppy is in an intense fear period, I keep them home. I completely avoid any possibility for a moment of single event learning which can trigger an intense fear response that the puppy may never recover from. It is in these moments that it is absolutely okay to coddle your puppy. Keep them home and safe, let them just play and be a puppy. Don’t take them out to force socialization, don’t take them around other dogs to play, don’t take them to training classes. Just keep them safe and give them time. Fear periods are so intense and so emotional, that time is the best treatment I have found. It isn’t something to work though… it’s just something that needs time to resolve.

When the fear period has passed, you will start to see a change in your puppy as their confidence returns. One thing that can help this process is to note something at home that the puppy previously loved that they decided to avoid during the fear period. A puppy owner of mine used a wobble board. Her puppy had always LOVED to get on the wobble board and rock and slam it around for treats, but during the fear period the puppy would avoid the wobble board and did not want to interact with it. So, every few days, she would ask the puppy if they wanted to play on the wobble board… and after a couple of weeks the puppy did! Then they started branching out going on hikes again and back to training class, and she says the puppy was just as confident as prior to the fear period.

Fear periods do not affect every puppy, but they can be intense moments that alter the emotional state of any dog and make them much more vulnerable. I feel they are important to understand so that we can all watch our puppies a little more closely as they develop and try to discuss anything that seems “off” with your breeder. Not everything is something we have to push through and it’s okay to just step back and remove some of the pressure from our puppies and ourselves and let time do its job. Fear periods are a normal part of development, and we can help our puppies through them by just giving them a little space to keep growing up.