Fred and Judy progess, Fred's Phobia !

Hi all, We adopted fred and Judy as rescue dogs from Karlin about two months ago, they're doing well Freds lost a bit of weight and could be an olympic jumper , and judy has found some her little hips no longer stick out, i'll post some before and after pics soon. However our fred has an awful phobia of the sweeping brush. Not even when its necessarily being used, he'll eyeball it when its stood against a wall and keep away from it . and when the kitchen floor has to be swept he gets very upset and runs away from it and whimpers. We're guessing it's a bad past experience that's triggering this. We've tried to get him used to it by placing it beside him and rubbing him by lightly with it to get rid of this fear . does anyone have some suggestions , or should we just hide the brush for ever ? Thanks all

Hi Sibeal! Glad they are doing well! :flwr:

Dogs have phobias of things for lots of reasons, sometimes a bad experience and sometimes no apparent reason at all.

I'd not force him to touch or be touched by anything. Instead, when it is leaning against the wall, try casually tossing some treats over by the brush now and then. Praise him cheerfully for going to get them. If he won;t go near, then try to find the distance from the brush where he will go to, and slowly over time toss the treats closer, slowly move him forward closer to it. He should get pretty used to the brush after a while as it will only have good associations.

Beyond that, I don't think there's any real reason why he needs to be comfortable around it when it is being used. I'd just let him take off to wherever he wants when you are sweeping (lots of dogs do this around brooms or vacuums). When you finish, give him some treats as well so he associates cleaning periods with something good at the end.

Oh yeah, and looking forward to some pics of the two.

I have a rescue boy who is uncomfortable around brooms/sweeping brushes, and is TERRIFIED of the hose pipe.

With him, I think I can attribute it to his past though

ouch I hope you can work it out..

Our Qwebble is afraid of the garbage bin.. Don't ask why, cause we have no clue.. it's not like anything ever happened to her, but when she sees one, she acts strange.. What we do is don't pay attention to her behaviour or go to it together with her and show her that it's nothing to be afraid of.. When she gets there we do reward her..

It has started to go better but I think it'll take more time.. it's actually quite funny to see though

Thanks for the advice everyone ! Will definitely try him with treats Karlin..i'll just have to make sure they're light and that judy can't get to them first. Talk soon, and i'll get those photos up asap.