This Labrador Puppy Needs A Confidence Boost! Here’s How We Fixed It!

Hazel is a super confident, athletic, and outgoing Labrador Retriever puppy. She loves obedience, agility, climbing obstacles, jumping in boats and ATVs, and her proprioception work is progressing beautifully outdoors. But the second we ask her to get into the grooming tub — something far less physically demanding — she freezes and shows clear anxiety.

00:00 - Introduction
00:38 - Confidence Building Strategy
07:33 - Does Our Strategy Work?

In this video I show the exact strategy we used: I introduced a folding set of steps into her outdoor obstacle and agility work so she built strong positive associations with climbing them. Then we simply moved those same steps inside and used them to help her enter the grooming tub. This is a practical example of counterconditioning and stimulus generalization in action — taking something the dog already loves and transferring that positive feeling to something she finds scary.

If your dog is confident in one context but falls apart in another (grooming, vet, car, etc.), this approach can be a game-changer.

Follow along as we turn Hazel’s outdoor motivation into indoor cooperation.

If you would like more information about our services, heres a link to our website: http://kentuckycanine.com/

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