What's Da Buzz?

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In this entry of Family Matters, I am going to cover something that we are doing to help our daughter overcome a small fear but not quite phobia she has.

When we were visiting some friends in a different area, my daughter who was a few years younger reached out to pet a dog someone had. It was a young bulldog who did not want to be petted at that time. The bulldog responded by biting her hand and leaving bite marks but did not break the skin.

Needless to say, that traumatized my little one who became very jumpy around dogs ever since. So how does a parent help their child overcome such an understandable fear?

As we attend our Bible Study group, we have had exposure to 3 different dogs which she has had a variety of reactions to. For all of them, it started off as shying away from any contact.

The first dog is a kind of pitbull dog. Now this dog is far from the nasty dog fighting kind we hear about. He is a very kind dog but you can tell the dog is a he raised around a batch of men. He likes to play rough at times. Since he is only a little over a year old, he is very playful. It took my daughter several months of weekly contact to get the courage up to even pet him. It did not help that petting him triggers his desire to play by catching your hand in his mouth.

So it was back to the drawing board until this past weekend. We stumbled upon the answer though. Visiting a friend’s house introduced us to a friendly poodle. The poodle never bites anyone and loved to play. It did not take long before my daughter and the poodle were chasing each other and playing hide and seek throughout the sizable house. What a relief and a find!

Then a few days later she met the dog of another friend. This dog is a Teddy Bear breed that is only a few months old. Again, the dog and my daughter bonded again and were having fun with the dog playfully chasing my daughter and both had smiles on their faces.

So that is our answer to this fear. Start small and the fear can be broken!

Anah