Why Fear Exists in the First Place
To understand why fear can be so deeply ingrained, it helps to understand its role in survival.
In the wild, fear is evolutionarily advantageous, up to a point. Fear helps animals avoid injury, disease, and death. When something is unfamiliar, caution is often the safer option. Making the wrong decision can be fatal.
As long as an animal’s level of fear does not prevent them from surviving, mating, or obtaining food, that fear has served its evolutionary purpose. Those individuals live long enough to reproduce and pass on their genes. Over many generations, this process of natural selection favors animals that are fearful enough to survive, but not so fearful that they cannot function.
Animals that are too fearful to eat or mate die off. Animals that are not fearful enough also die off. What remains is a balance point, and fear becomes part of the genetic package.
Fear is the easiest thing to condition in dogs and the hardest to resolve, so it’s important to understand where fear comes from so we can work to prevent it or try to help dogs overcome it.
