Don’t bribe your dog into approaching people they’re worried about.

If you have a dog who finds meeting new people a bit stressful, some of the most common advice you’ll receive is “give the person some treats and have them feed them to your dog”.

It makes sense right? Good stuff coming from scary thing, eventually they’ll associate the scary thing with good feelings.

There’s a big issue with this: our dogs will often push through some situations they’re really uncomfortable with in the name of pursuing the stuff they want. Getting that food becomes their focus - especially when it comes to our higher drive working types.

What happens when that food runs out?

Suddenly that dog finds themselves free from the distraction of food, in a situation where they’re closer to the scary thing than they’re actually comfortable with - often tipping into their stress response of fight/flight/freeze/fawn.

This is where we see the cases of “they were all fine and happy, until suddenly they just snapped!” They weren’t fine - they were just distracted until they suddenly woke up in the deep end of the pool without a life jacket and panicked.

So if you have a dog who isn’t super keen to meet other people, stop trying to force it. Ask people to ignore your dog instead. They really don’t need to directly say hi, no matter how much the other person loves dogs. Take the pressure and conflict out of it, and start with just letting the dog adjust. They’ll thank you for it.