Dogs Trust launch new campaign to help children with their confidence around dogs

By Kim O'Leary

Dogs Trust, Ireland’s largest dog welfare charity has today launched ‘Be Dog Confident’, an initiative within their successful ‘Be Dog Smart’ campaign, which aims to help children and families build confidence around dogs and manage low level anxiety around them.

Research commissioned by the charity found that 17% of children under the age of 13 are very anxious while 32% are a little anxious around dogs, which highlights the need to introduce confidence building around dogs from a young age if possible.

Meanwhile, 27% of parents think a larger dog affects their child’s confidence around dogs, while 50% think their child may not know how to appropriately react to an approaching dog. As part of the campaign, Dogs Trust is offering free workshops and resources which contain helpful advice and handy tips to acknowledge and address anxiety around dogs and how you can help your child cope.

The charity recommends the following top tips to help children become confident in the presence of dogs: Remember to be CALM:

•  Create a positive dog experience with your child by exposing them to books and films with good, fun or helpful dog characters.
• Acknowledge your child’s discomfort of dogs. Anxiety is a normal feeling and by acknowledging our anxiety, we can often learn to deal with or overcome it.
• Let your child meet appropriate dogs in a safe and controlled environment.If they are still not feeling confident, teach them how to do slow breathing – breathe in for 5 seconds and out for 5 seconds.
• Make believe with toy dogs and talk through behaviours that dogs might exhibit. Explain what these might mean and that dogs have thoughts and feelings just like people do.

Although these tips can help children to build their confidence around dogs, some children may need extra help to overcome stronger anxieties they might have in the presence of dogs.

Fiona Gregan, Education and Community Manager at Dogs Trust explains; “We often meet people in our Be Dog Smart safety workshops that need that a little extra help building their confidence around dogs so we decided to launch the Be Dog Confident extension to our Be Dog Smart campaign. With over 36% of Irish households owning a dog, coming into contact with dogs can be an everyday occurrence, so we want to help educate people on how to be safe and confident around dogs. We also hope this campaign will help families with dogs who have visiting children.”

Primary Schools and adults can book a FREE workshop, learn more tips and advice, or download a FREE Be Dog Confident leaflet at www.BeDogConfident.ie