The Fear of Dogs: Cynophobia
The fear of dogs, or cynophobia, is a common and often debilitating animal phobia. Despite dogs being celebrated as ‘man’s best friend’, for those with cynophobia, encountering a dog is far more likely to trigger intense fear and panic than the joy of companionship.
Suffering from a phobia of dogs significantly impacts daily life, and given just how prevalent dogs are in society it’s an almost constant struggle. After all, there are an estimated 12 million dogs in UK alone, with around 35% of all households owning a dog. If you are one of, frankly, millions of people who suffer from a fear of dogs, then, this article is for you!
Overcome Your Fear with Creature Courage
How Dog Phobias Are Formed
Cynophobia often originates from a traumatic experience with a dog during childhood. Incidents such as being bitten, barked or growled at, or being accidentally knocked over by an overly affectionate and enthusiastic dog can create a fear trigger.
More commonly, animal phobias are learned behaviours. A child may develop a fear of dogs by observing a parent or sibling’s fearful reaction. Children naturally look to their parents to understand what is safe and what is not. Therefore, if a parent displays fear around dogs, a child may subconsciously learn to view dogs as a threat and, consequently, develop that fear in themselves.
Think about your fear of dogs, can you pinpoint where it springs from?
Our brain’s rapid formation of fear responses to perceived danger is a survival mechanism, but it can be maladaptive in the modern world – dogs no longer pose the same threat as their wild ancestors used to. A lot has changed and dogs are now our beloved pets and are found in parks, in shops, walking merrily down the street, basically, everywhere. Therefore, when we make the conscious decision to avoid encountering dogs it will realistically limit our way of living and interacting in what is considered to be a normal and healthy life.
The Impact of Having a Fear of Dogs
As mentioned, a dog phobia can be particularly challenging due to the sheer number of dogs likely to be encountered on any given day. I’m sure you can imagine just going for a walk around your local neighbourhood, maybe the park or along the main road, and thinking about whether you could do that without a dog crossing your path? It’s probably quite a challenge. For those with a fear of dogs, it is very difficult and can ultimately lead to heightened anxiety and avoidance behaviours before even setting foot outside the front door. This can significantly affect mental health and overall well-being.
How to Overcome a Fear of Dogs
At Creature Courage, we offer specialised treatments for animal phobias. Our approach helps clients overcome their fear of dogs with tailored one-on-one therapy. The great majority of them have either taken huge strides or overcome their fear within a single-day!
Overcome Your Fear of Dogs in a Single Day
We’ve adapted our successful methods from our internationally famous Spider Courage Experience, endorsed by the British Tarantula Society, for its fast and sustained success in curing arachnophobia. Creature Courage can help those with other animal phobias, including cynophobia, with the same life changing methods.
We are the only service that provides a full range of proven phobia fighting techniques within one session. It’s this unique blend of neuroscience techniques that gives us our incredible success rate.
Therapeutic Techniques to Overcome the Fear of Dogs
- Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT): CBT helps individuals identify and challenge irrational fears and develop healthier thought patterns. Specific cognitive-behavioural therapy research into overcoming dog phobia in children has pointed to the fact that lasting results can be found in just one therapy session, and we can whole-heartedly vouch for that – and so can our clients.
- Exposure Therapy: Gradual, controlled exposure to dogs helps desensitise individuals to their fear. Understanding dogs and their behaviours can foster a sense of fascination and help to reduce fear. At Creature Courage, we strongly recommend exposure therapy, which allows you to interact with the animals in a controlled environment. You will always be supported by expert animal phobia specialists to help you face your fears in a gentle yet empowering way. The therapy is always led by you and is in your control at all times.
- Hypnotherapy: This helps our clients to rewire their brains at a subconscious level. Hypnotherapy also helps our clients to have calmer and more effective exposure therapy.
- NLP (Neuro-Linguistic programming): Helps to create understanding around how we think and speak. NLP gives us tools to change the stories we tell ourselves, to create new positive mindsets. We teach NLP techniques to condition your mind to be able access these powerful positive emotions.
- Art Therapy: We can use imagination techniques and then make them more real through creating art. This extra cognitive step helps the mind make the memory of the meditation more vivid and lasting.
- Knowledge: This one isn’t a funky psychological technique learned and perfected over years. It’s classroom stuff that we have come to realise gives an improved understanding about dogs, which in turn, allows you to begin building compassion and fascination. Believe when we say this step cannot be missed out if you truly want an end to your phobia. What’s the adage: ‘knowledge is power’, and here it will most definitely be one of your most important tools in defeating fear.
All these techniques are combined together into one highly powerful session.
Interesting Dog Facts to Help Alleviate Fear
Fear and fascination are processed in the same part of our brains so you can understand how easy it can be to switch fear into fascination. Also, being able to see an animal as vulnerable, useful, and capable of feeling fear itself really does change your perspective on fear. When you appreciate an animal and focus on their fear instead of your own, it makes the animal far less terrifying. Building fascination and compassion are incredibly powerful tools we use to transform your fear into Creature Courage.
Here are Some Intriguing Facts About Dogs
- How Our Lives Became Entwined: We began to train and domesticate wolves over 15,000 years ago, but research suggests that dog domestication came about by accident – rather than to help us hunt, as is often believed. However, after this, dogs adjusted much as we did to become specifically adapted to live life in relationship with us.
- Intelligence: The average dog is as intelligent as a two-year-old child and can understand up to 250 words, but mercifully won’t pick up a pen and draw all over the walls! Just to put our beautful children under pressure, a Border Collie named Chaser recognised 1,022 words!
- Hearing: Did you know that a dogs’ hearing is four times better than our own? This allows them to hear at frequencies we can’t even begin to imagine (or hear, more to the point!).
- Sense of Smell: Even more impressive is a dog’s sense of smell, which is anywhere between 1,000 to 10-million times more sensitive than that of humans – and yet they seem to get on with babies just fine!
- Dogs can smell your feelings! Dogs really can detect changes in human emotions through scent alone. This is all made possible by their olfactory cortex (the part of the brain associated with smell) being 40x larger than that of our own. To give you an idea of how dog’s make use of this: when we’re afraid we breathe faster, while our sweat rate increases, too, changing the scent we give off. This is how dogs detect certain medical conditions and problems such as seizures, or hypoglyceamia in diabetes.
- Health Benefits: Interacting with dogs has been shown to lower our blood pressure and reduce stress. Furthermore, this research suggests that a man is 3x more likely to receive a positive response from a woman if they have a dog in tow! Remember that a dog is for life, not just for finding a girlfriend.
- Science Fact: Did you know that dogs poo in alignment with the Earth’s magnetic field? (No, of course you didn’t. I’d be a little worried if you did!)
- Science Fiction: And finally, George Lucas modelled the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi after his family dog, and who doesn’t think the Ewoks are cute and cuddly?
Myths About Dogs
Dispelling common myths is vitally important in helping to alleviate a fear of dogs. For instance, understanding that dogs are not naturally aggressive but actually naturally friendly can change people’s perceptions. Dogs have been bred to adapt their entire lives around us. All they want to do is bond and please humans.
Many people believe that certain dog breeds are dangerous and aggressive but this is not actually true. Every dog is an individual, regardless of breed, and it is how dogs are trained and cared for that determines behaviour more than anything else.
It is also believed that some dog breeds, such as Pit Bull Terriers and Rottweilers, have locking jaws. This means they will not let go if they bite you but this is also not true. No dog has jaws that can lock. Strong jaws, certainly, but not a physical capacity to ‘lock on’.
Many of these dog breeds, such as XL Bullies, are also falsely accused of being overly aggressive. Yet, studies show that Pit Bull Terriers are affectionate companions and good family dogs, even, ranking higher in calmness and gentleness in tests than popular breeds such as Golden Retrievers, Corgis, and Beagles.
Find Out How You Can Change Your Perspective on Dogs
How Dogs Are Helping Humans
This list is long when it comes to the ways that dogs are helping humans in positive ways. Some of the most common are the following:
- Medical Research
- Helping Soldiers on the Battlefield
- Autism Assistance Dogs
- Search and Rescue Dogs
- Guard Dogs: in a professional capacity and protective family pets providing protection from intruders and other threats
- Guide Dogs for the Blind
- Hearing Dogs for the Deaf
- Mobility Assistance Dogs
- Therapy Dogs
- Diabetes Alert Dogs
- Seizure Alert Dogs
- Mental Health Assistance Dogs/ Military Service Dogs
- Police and Firefighter Dogs
Creature Courage: The Expert Dog Phobia Specialists
Overcoming a fear of dogs (cynophobia) is possible with the right support and techniques. At Creature Courage, we will help you transform your fear into fascination and even build an affection for dogs, unlikely as that might seem. Uniquely, we use a range of different phobia-fighting techniques. Our holistic phobia treatment will not only help you overcome a fear of dogs but also help you improve your overall mental health, giving you improved confidence – and possibly a better chance with the opposite sex, of course!
We coach all of our clients to build better habits around all anxiety triggers for lasting results and a better quality of life.
The best news is, it doesn’t take weeks of expensive treatments to cure a phobia of dogs. In fact, most clients get over their fear of dogs in just one day using our powerful neuroscience based therapies.
If you’re struggling with a dog phobia, please, get in touch and learn more about our therapeutic options. A life free from the fear of dogs is only one phone call away: 0800-970-4417
FAQs About the Fear of Dogs
What is Cynophobia?
Cynophobia is the irrational fear of dogs. It can cause intense anxiety and panic at the sight or thought of a dog, significantly affecting someone’s daily life.
What causes Cynophobia?
A fear of dogs often stems from a traumatic experience with a dog, such as being bitten or knocked over. It can also develop from observing a family member’s fear of dogs – children often learn what is safe from how their parents react.
How common are dog phobias?
Dogs are one of the most popular pets on earth, however, the paradox is that due to this prevalence the likelihood of developing a fear due to frequent encounters can increase.
How can Cynophobia be treated?
Having a fear fo dogs does not need to last forever, it can be treated through cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, and support groups – all of which we can provide you with at Creature Courage. These methods help individuals challenge irrational fears, gradually desensitise to the fear of dogs, and provide you with emotional support.
Can learning about dogs help reduce my fear?
Without doubt. Learning about dogs helps to reduce fear by fostering fascination and understanding. Knowledge about dogs’ behaviour, intelligence, and their benefits to humans can shift perceptions from fear to curiosity and appreciation.