brown lab acting funny towards the other lab

Question
I have a 10 year old yellow lab (female) my son has a brown lab (female) who is now 2 years old. The two dogs have always shared everything, now the brown dog will run out of the room when the yellow lab just walks into it. She won't sleep next to her anymore but will take treats next to each other with no problem or will greet others together no problem.

Answer
Hi Gail,

More than likely, some sort of incident precipitated this change in behavior - something traumatic enough to make a lasting impression and scary enough to produce this avoidance reaction. If you don't know what that particular incident might have been (at this point in time), you'll probably never know, so I wouldn't worry about the causative factor behind your dog's fear. At this point, the only thing to do is to deal with the effect.

Whatever set the brown Lab off may never be known - it could have been a very loud noise; it could have been a sudden pain associated with an injury sustained by crashing into the other dog - you'll never know. But you need to keep presenting the brown Lab with similar but less intense situations and allow her to gradually increase her confidence in those circumstances.

The first thing you need to do is to prevent the brown Lab from avoiding her fear. If the dog gets scared, runs away, and doesn't come back, she's done what she's needed to do - avoid the scary situation. I wouldn't overwhelm the dog with the downright scary situation of being near your yellow Lab at first, but start small. Find something that the dog really likes to do (like Frisbee or running after a ball) and use this to your advantage. This will help increase the confidence of the dog and will help to downplay the impact of the scary stimulus. Have the brown Lab on a long line in order to prevent the dog from running away from the situation and avoiding its fear. That way when she turns to run, you can stop her and keep her in the situation. However, instead of making a big deal out of it (never coddle your dog - "Oh Pookie... it's OK... don't worry sweetie... everything will be alright..." - Gag! You get the point) continue to do what you were doing. Continue to play Frisbee and act like nothing has happened. You might also want to try laughing at the situation as this can throw some dogs off too and helps redirect their attention to something else. Start with small stimuli and work your way up. If the dog overreacts, back up in intensity and try again. This is a process known as desensitization and works for most fear-producing situations. The idea is that once the dog realizes that it is still in the scary situation and yet nothing bad is happening, it will relax and begin to accept those situations as normal. Have you ever seen a kid afraid to get an injection? If you distract them enough to where they don't notice the needle going in, once they realize that they went through it and it wasn't that bad, they soon relax and take the whole ordeal as no big deal. This is basically what you're trying to accomplish.

Desensitization and confidence building are slow processes but can be accomplished through persistence and patience.
Be patient, be kind, be liberal with the treats.

Best of luck,
Patti