Muzzle Bonking
Dogs have many different reactions to fear- some cower, some attack. For years, we had the kind of dog that reacted to her fear by attacking- and she had a bottomless well of fear and anxiety. Liver was a muscular, hyper Dalmatian who came into the world with faulty wiring in her nervous system- constantly tense and anxious and overstimulated. She also was a dog that really wanted to be good. We never went out in public without having her leashed and muzzled, just to keep the world safe from her fear and anxiety. She did learn to overcome some of her fears with training, which we did extensively.
When we first started to train Liver, we took her out of her comfort zone by letting our dog trainer take the leash. She would constantly check in with us by nudging our legs with her muzzle- we called this “muzzle-bonking.” We would pet her and say “It’s okay,” and she learned to trust the trainer more. We noticed that muzzle-bonking happened in any new situation- it seemed to be her way of asking us, “Is this safe? Are we okay?” This was a very good sign in her training, because she found an alternative to going into attack mode when in an unfamiliar situation. Checking in with her humans made her calmer. She learned that the humans would keep her safe, so that she no longer had to try to hold the whole confusing world together with her vigilance.
Sometimes, we react to our own anxiety just as automatically as a scared animal. We may cower, or lash out, or bark like crazy when we get frightened. Imagine that this part of ourselves is like an untrained, scared animal just reacting out of fear. Now, imagine that we also have a calm and centered human inside of ourselves that knows how to handle the situation. If we can pause before letting fear take us over, we can find our inner calm human, then we can muzzle-bonk this human, checking in to see how to handle the situation. If this is too difficult to do on your own, therapy can be a very helpful way to learn how to muzzle-bonk. If your therapist can be calm in the midst of your anxiety, you will learn what that feels and looks like, and soon, you will learn how to do it for yourself.