# Ep 133 The REAL Reason Your Dog is Scared of Things

An episode of [Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1721245241), 17 Jun 2026, 15 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2287608/episodes/19082112-ep-133-the-real-reason-your-dog-is-scared-of-things.mp3

Is your dog suddenly afraid of totally random things that never used to bother them before? From wheelie bins, to scooters or even people wearing hats, when our dogs suddenly start showing signs that they’re scared of everyday things they used to ignore, it can be incredibly confusing and, at times worrying, for us owners. This week, we’re discussing the hidden reasons why your dog might be showing signs of fear out of the blue. When our dogs’ outward behaviour changes, it might mean that there’s something going on inside their brain or body that they need some extra support with. We’ll consider what these hidden influences might be and, more importantly, explore a few ways we can support them when they aren’t feeling their best! ................ Whether your dog is unpredictable with other dogs or predictably bad… Whether it looks like freezing, barking, lunging or running away… Whether you are just starting out on your dog-owning journey or your dog has been labelled as having a “behaviour problem”… … this episode is for you and is going to give you huge insights! Want to join the Help! My Dog Online HUB? Here's the link: www.helpmydog.com/hub Dr Tom Mitchell is a world-renowned veterinarian, behaviourist and dog trainer and director of the Behavet behaviour clinic (rated Excellent on Trustpilot), which sees over 400 pet behaviour consultations each and every month no matter where you are in the world. In 2023, he founded Help! My Dog, an online dog behaviour learning platform to help even more owners all over the world and show that dog behaviour transformation is not only possible but it's FUN, with the right know-how! Make sure to subscribe/follow the podcast for the free weekly episodes! Useful Links: Follow Help! My Dog on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helpmydogofficial/ Schedule a Consultation with Behavet: https://www.beha.vet/ Follow Behavet on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/behavet

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_00: Help! My dog is suddenly scared of things he used to ignore.
[0:04] SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happened, but my dog has started getting weird about really random things.
[0:09] SPEAKER_00: Before we dive in, a warning.
[0:12] SPEAKER_00: The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners.
[0:17] SPEAKER_00: This is real life, and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic.
[0:22] SPEAKER_00: So listen on at your own peril.
[0:25] SPEAKER_00: As a veterinarian, dog behaviourist, best-selling author and trainer over the past decade, I've had an obsession with transforming the behaviour of dogs.
[0:34] SPEAKER_00: Understanding their brains and creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home.
[0:40] SPEAKER_00: I know all too well when the dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality.
[0:46] SPEAKER_00: In fact, out of the blue, a few months ago, my little dog Gorse was bitten by a dog 20 times her size.
[0:53] SPEAKER_00: And suddenly our life of stress-free walks, a calm and cuddly household, and being teammates was replaced with reactivity, anxiety, and worrying about what's around the next corner.
[1:04] SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
[1:05] SPEAKER_00: Tom.
[1:05] SPEAKER_00: This is the Help My Dog Podcast, and this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you and having a few laughs along the way.
[1:16] SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog Podcast.
[1:19] SPEAKER_00: Today we're doing a listener's question, and it's actually one that we get quite often.
[1:23] SPEAKER_00: So we've we've picked this one.
[1:25] SPEAKER_00: But if you've emailed in a similar one, we've noted it and we are answering you as well.
[1:30] SPEAKER_00: Help! My dog is suddenly scared of things he used to ignore.
[1:34] SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happened, but my dog has started getting weird about really random things: bins that weren't there before, a sign on the pavement, people wearing hats, even a scooter that was just parked up.
[1:46] SPEAKER_00: He never used to be like this.
[1:48] SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
[1:49] SPEAKER_00: Alright, super.
[1:50] SPEAKER_00: So two things probably um two the two main things I see as as going on with these um when this happens.
[2:00] SPEAKER_00: The first one, the um the most straightforward one, is thinking about the stress bucket.
[2:07] SPEAKER_00: Every dog has one of these things called a stress bucket, right?
[2:10] SPEAKER_00: Scary things pay into the stress bucket, exciting things pay into the bucket, sometimes um discomfort or or pain can pay into this stress bucket, itchiness might pay into this stress bucket if you've got a dog with seasonal allergies, gastro challenges pay into this stress bucket.
[2:28] SPEAKER_00: And what happens is the bucket fills and fills and fills, but it can only empty so fast, right?
[2:32] SPEAKER_00: And it and sometimes what can happen is it's filling faster than it can empty, and it can take like a few days to empty in some instances.
[2:39] SPEAKER_00: Um and as the bucket fills, what can then start to happen is that dogs can start to perceive things in a more negative way.
[2:47] SPEAKER_00: They can start to be a little bit more jumpy, a little bit more reactive, um, assume something to be dangerous or bad simply because of all the things that came before it, not the scooter that is harmlessly parked up on the pavement, right?
[3:03] SPEAKER_00: And so I guess what I would do is I would take a step back and I would be thinking about a few different things here.
[3:10] SPEAKER_00: First of all, what has the past week or two weeks looked like for your dog?
[3:14] SPEAKER_00: Okay, and has it been a little bit busier?
[3:18] SPEAKER_00: Have they been spooked by things?
[3:20] SPEAKER_00: Because you can enter this vicious cycle, right?
[3:22] SPEAKER_00: Where every time they react as a result of a full bucket, guess what?
[3:26] SPEAKER_00: That's another pint of water in the stress bucket.
[3:28] SPEAKER_00: So you could end up in like a situation of the bucket's getting filled because the bucket's full, which is, you know, then you you feel like now this is the new normal, this is just your dog, right?
[3:39] SPEAKER_00: But you know, reflect.
[3:41] SPEAKER_00: What did happen?
[3:42] SPEAKER_00: What has happened leading up to this?
[3:44] SPEAKER_00: If you can't explain it by events, by situations, like, you know, for example, often every year, around sort of New Year, early New Year, we'll get a real influx of inquiries into the behavior clinic for behavior that seems to have suddenly escalated, or dogs doing something that they've never done before, like snapping at other dogs or people or something like that.
[4:09] SPEAKER_00: And you think about it, you've had Christmas, you've had Boxing Day, you've had their New Year and New Year's fireworks, and now the bucket really is quite full and it's not had much downtime.
[4:20] SPEAKER_00: And now we're making choices that we didn't previously make.
[4:23] SPEAKER_00: So can it be explained in that way?
[4:25] SPEAKER_00: If it can't be explained in that way, we have to ask ourselves the question: well, is there something paying into my dog's bucket that wasn't paying in before that I might not be able to see or be aware of?
[4:37] SPEAKER_00: For example, could my dog be in pain or discomfort and they're not yet at the stage where they're limping or they're stiff, but you know what?
[4:45] SPEAKER_00: They've got soreness there, and that's filling their bucket.
[4:48] SPEAKER_00: Again, let's, you know, if that might be the case and their behavior change can't be explained through events, let's get them checked out by the vet.
[4:56] SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
[4:57] SPEAKER_00: Being aware that that's probably gonna fill their stress bucket and we're gonna have to account for that, right?
[5:01] SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, failing all those things, let's give them a bucket holiday.
[5:06] SPEAKER_00: Let's make their life really simple for a week and give them loads of downtime, and then let's go.
[5:13] SPEAKER_00: Well, at the end of this bucket holiday, are they responding in a more positive way?
[5:18] SPEAKER_00: Are they less spooky?
[5:19] SPEAKER_00: Are they less reactive?
[5:21] SPEAKER_00: Are they less jumpy?
[5:22] SPEAKER_00: Are they less easily startled?
[5:24] SPEAKER_00: That can give us insight into whether this is a bucket struggle or not.
[5:27] SPEAKER_00: So that will be the first kind of overarching category of why a dog might be behaving this way.
[5:32] SPEAKER_00: The second is um something called judgment bias, okay?
[5:38] SPEAKER_00: And what judgment bias is, is effectively the the quality of whether an individual is optimistic or pessimistic.
[5:46] SPEAKER_00: In other words, when presented with something new or slightly strange or slightly unusual, like for example, this listener says a bin that wasn't there before, right?
[5:57] SPEAKER_00: So that's ambiguous, it's novel.
[6:00] SPEAKER_00: The bin's not normally there.
[6:01] SPEAKER_00: Now it is, right?
[6:03] SPEAKER_00: People wearing hats, people don't normally wear hats.
[6:07] SPEAKER_00: This person is wearing a hat, right?
[6:09] SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a really weird hat, right?
[6:11] SPEAKER_00: A scooter, a scooter is a weird shape.
[6:14] SPEAKER_00: It's parked up on the pavement.
[6:15] SPEAKER_00: You don't normally see scooters on the pavement, potentially.
[6:18] SPEAKER_00: And what this has to do is has to go, what this event has to do, or stimulus has to do, is go through a processing in your dog's brain where they decide, is this a good thing, is this a bad thing, right?
[6:31] SPEAKER_00: And depending on how they answer is determined by this process called judgment bias.
[6:39] SPEAKER_00: And we all have you know different judgment biases, don't we?
[6:43] SPEAKER_00: I could say to you, um, I took my dog Bruno to the vet to get his growth measured.
[6:50] SPEAKER_00: And some of you will think, ooh, Bruno is growing and he's a puppy, and it's super positive.
[6:56] SPEAKER_00: And some of you will think Bruno is obese and we're worried he's put on more weight.
[7:00] SPEAKER_00: And some of you will be thinking, Bruno's got a tumour, and we're getting it measured to see how long he's got left, right?
[7:07] SPEAKER_00: And there's the very extreme.
[7:08] SPEAKER_00: And and this isn't judgment bias, it's not a static characteristic.
[7:14] SPEAKER_00: Judgment bias is influenced by things that are happening all the time.
[7:18] SPEAKER_00: Think about, you know, you you've had a bad day, yeah?
[7:22] SPEAKER_00: You've had a bad day where I don't know, um you you got told off at work.
[7:30] SPEAKER_00: I don't know if people I don't know if people get told off at work, but anyway, you get told off at work, and then you walked out to your car and you had a parking ticket because you know you were running 10 minutes late, um, and then you went to open your car door and you'd seen someone had scratched down the side of your car, and you drive home, and you open the door, and there's mail on the doormat, and you pick up the you know the letter, and it's in a brown envelope, and you go, Oh god, this is gonna be bad, right?
[8:02] SPEAKER_00: And that's purely because of all the things that happened before it that set you up to have a more pessimistic judgment bias about that ambiguous situation that was is it a good thing or a bad thing in the letter?
[8:13] SPEAKER_00: And it's exactly the same with our dogs.
[8:17] SPEAKER_00: And so it might be that your dog's gone into a bit of what we call a blip, right?
[8:23] SPEAKER_00: Where they got spooked by something and that it shifted their judgment bias a little bit towards the negative.
[8:31] SPEAKER_00: Then they saw a dog in the distance and the dog kind of moved in a novel way or did an ambiguous signal like stopped and stared at them and stalked them, and they perceived that to be something to worry about.
[8:43] SPEAKER_00: That's gonna maybe push them even more towards a negative judgment bias.
[8:47] SPEAKER_00: Then a car backfired as you were walking along the street, and that shifted them more into a negative judgment bias.
[8:54] SPEAKER_00: And now they're starting to perceive very mundane, novel, ambiguous things as something to worry about because they've been shifted towards pessimism as a result of just a sequence of events, right?
[9:05] SPEAKER_00: We call it a blip, yeah?
[9:07] SPEAKER_00: Now what do we do about it?
[9:08] SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, I just want to take a moment to answer a question that has been coming in in literally 10 emails a day, and that is how can we help you with your dog's behavior struggle, whether that be reactivity, separation, anxiety, resource guarding, maybe you've got a multi-dog household struggle right now, maybe your dog's just so over aroused on a walk that they just can't listen to you and they're chasing everything in sight.
[9:31] SPEAKER_00: Like, can I get Tom's help?
[9:34] SPEAKER_00: Um, and the answer is that actually you can, and you can do that by booking a behavet behavior consultation.
[9:41] SPEAKER_00: That's where literally my team give you the plan on how to transform your struggle and get you to that dream that made you get a dog in the first place, right?
[9:52] SPEAKER_00: Your world's got smaller and smaller and smaller, and actually it doesn't need to be that way.
[9:56] SPEAKER_00: You just need to reach out for help.
[9:58] SPEAKER_00: Now, a couple of things to say on that.
[9:59] SPEAKER_00: First of all, if you're insured, if your dog's insured with Pet Plan, Kennel Club, Agria, or many pets, we actually do direct claims with them, which means that that's covered by your insurance.
[10:10] SPEAKER_00: So you don't pay out of your pocket, your insurance covers that.
[10:14] SPEAKER_00: Um and the second thing to say is that we have loads of options if you're insured with another provider, or if your dog's not insured at all, that's also totally fine.
[10:22] SPEAKER_00: We have loads of options that we've developed to make this so accessible for you.
[10:27] SPEAKER_00: And because we're aware that you've already invested a load of time and a load of money in getting your dog, looking after your dog, caring for your dog.
[10:33] SPEAKER_00: But the last thing we want is for you to have done all that and still not be living the life that you deserve with your dog.
[10:38] SPEAKER_00: And we know we can get you there.
[10:40] SPEAKER_00: So all you need to do is go to the Behave Vet website.
[10:43] SPEAKER_00: And the way to do that is go B-E-H-A.V-E-T.
[10:49] SPEAKER_00: That's behot vet, and it will take you there.
[10:53] SPEAKER_00: Or just Google Behave Vet, right?
[10:56] SPEAKER_00: Um, and you can get scheduled in and we can literally get you booked in for a consultation as soon as possible.
[11:02] SPEAKER_00: We normally can accommodate it within a week, right?
[11:05] SPEAKER_00: So that you can be getting to your dream ASAP.
[11:08] SPEAKER_00: Now, what do we do about it?
[11:09] SPEAKER_00: Well, the bucket holiday is really gonna help, isn't it?
[11:12] SPEAKER_00: The less we expose them to, the less they can perceive things to be something to worry about.
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: That's gonna then hopefully shift them more towards optimism.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that we can do is we can help them answer that question of is of whether something's good or bad.
[11:26] SPEAKER_00: As things happen, as they spot things, as things appear in the environment, as noises happen, what we can do is we can keep some of their daily food allowance to one side in these periods and we can hand them some of their daily food allowance.
[11:39] SPEAKER_00: In other words, car back fires, here's a positive outcome.
[11:42] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a bin on the street in a place that it isn't normally there.
[11:46] SPEAKER_00: Is it good or is it bad?
[11:48] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm gonna tell you it's good because I'm gonna give you a piece of food, right?
[11:51] SPEAKER_00: Um there's a knock at the door, is it good or is it bad?
[11:54] SPEAKER_00: Piece of food.
[11:55] SPEAKER_00: Um, dog stares at you in distance, is it good or is it bad?
[11:58] SPEAKER_00: Here's a piece of food.
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: And what that does is shifts them towards a positive judgment bias.
[12:04] SPEAKER_00: And you'll start to see that they're then more able to answer, is it good or is it bad?
[12:08] SPEAKER_00: as it's good, it's all fine, because you've started to shift them and given the momentum in a different direction.
[12:15] SPEAKER_00: The stress bucket and judgment bias are the two most kind of common, often interacting reasons as to why a dog might suddenly become scared of things that they used to ignore.
[12:26] SPEAKER_00: And this is a really common challenge, and it can happen at any age of dog.
[12:30] SPEAKER_00: It can happen to puppies, it can happen to adolescent dogs, it can happen to adult dogs.
[12:35] SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, and especially it can happen in senior dogs because senior dogs have an extra disadvantage or an extra challenge with this.
[12:44] SPEAKER_00: Their senses are reducing, their hearing is getting worse, their eyesight is getting worse, right?
[12:50] SPEAKER_00: All their senses are getting worse.
[12:52] SPEAKER_00: Um, and with that, how they process stimuli, how they process visual stimuli, visual events, how they process noises, that's gonna change.
[13:01] SPEAKER_00: So things are gonna be more novel for them, things are gonna be more ambiguous for them, and therefore it's gonna be more of a test of their judgment bias, and therefore they can often go into these blips.
[13:11] SPEAKER_00: You know, I remember um my wonderful, um, uh wonderful dog Peggy, she she actually lived till she was 18 years old, and and um and when she was 17, she became scared of me sneezing, right?
[13:23] SPEAKER_00: And that's probably because her hearing had deteriorated.
[13:28] SPEAKER_00: Probably what that meant is that she couldn't hear a lot of things, but she could sure hear me sneeze, right?
[13:33] SPEAKER_00: I I'm a quite loud sneezer, I'm an obnoxious sneezer, I can't help it, I can't control it.
[13:39] SPEAKER_00: Um, and she became worried about that, and it happened just randomly on a walk one day where I sneezed and she just started running, and I had to like get her from out under a bush, the poor thing.
[13:49] SPEAKER_00: And from that point on, like from for the next week, I was noticing she was reacting to a lot of novel and ambiguous things.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: So, what did I do?
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: Exactly what I've told you guys to do, which is let's start pairing novelty and just any event with a positive outcome and let's shift it more towards a positive judgment bias.
[14:07] SPEAKER_00: In turn, they start to answer that question of is it good or is it bad for themselves in the right way, as it is good.
[14:14] SPEAKER_00: So, guys, hope you got value from this.
[14:16] SPEAKER_00: If you think this episode is going to be useful for anyone, please share it with them because I think the more understanding we have around this, the better.
[14:23] SPEAKER_00: And I will see you next time.

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