Hello and welcome to Pupdates with Scott Mills and Steve Mann.

We're tackling your most asked questions and helping new dog owners with our friends at ButtonUp Box. This episode, all about overcoming fear. Ted is in the house

and he absolutely hates the back-end cleaner and runs away. And then we're out and about and he's off the lead. And when another dog comes, he will literally go straight between my legs or Sam's legs. So how do I know if this is just fear, him being nervous or just a dislike?

I guess as a fear or dislike, as a Venn diagram, I suppose there's a lot of overlap there. If he dislikes it, there's a reason and jumps it off. It's fear or anxiety. And I suppose we can separate them by saying with fear, you know exactly what the trigger is. You know, you're faced with something, you're afraid of it, you do something and then the fear is gone. Anxiety is the fear of fear. Something bad might happen. It might be a scary dog round the corner. If you're not sure, look at body language. It's always going to come down to body language. Perhaps body, tail tucked. There's a massive clue there. If he's running to you and going between your legs, he's afraid. He's scared. You know, he's scared. First protocol, I would beg all dog owners to become as expert in body language as he possibly can.

Audra's got in touch and has got a question about her dog, Dotty. Hi, Stephen Scott. It's

Audra and Dotty here from Wellingarden City Hertfordshire. My gorgeous fair baby, Dotty, who is 11 months old now, has always been quite timid. However, she's petrified whenever my partner puts the football rugby on the TV. She runs off and hides behind the sore for curtains or worse inside of his recliner chair. We don't make a big deal of this. But if it's around real time, she won't eat. I've even tried putting her food in a different room, but nothing seems to work. What should I do? Thank you.

OK, so I think choice is super important for Dotty as with all dogs, as with all of us. I think first of all, if Dotty needs to remove herself, make sure she can remove herself. So make sure there's a bit of a bolt hole for her, a bit of a safety area for her, where it's another room, where it's getting in her little den with blankets over the top to soften the noise or whatever. But give her the agency, give her the choice to do something to relieve that stress. Secondly, how is your husband watching TV? So we could break down how literally, how does he watch TV? Does he put on his football shirt? Does he have a beer like I do when I'm watching football? Is it in a particular room? Is it the volume of the TV? So when I look at, let's say, a problem that we need or something that we need to help the dog with, I look at it as a rope and can we tease out each individual strand and work on those individually? Because that's going to be much more effective and it's going to show us where the problem lies. It might not be the sound, it might be the football shirt, it might be the smell of the beer, it might be whatever, whatever, whatever. I'm not painting a good picture of your husband here, am I? So we can find out, put your husband in his football shirt, see if Dotty's happy to play, put your husband in the football shirt, see if Dotty's happy to play with him in the particular TV room, put your husband in the football shirt in the TV room with the TV on, but not the sport. Sooner or later, you're going to come across something where Dotty goes, whoa, hang on a minute, but only the slightest sign, the slightest bit of apprehension in the body language, that's going to tell you what you need to drill down and count the condition. So let's say it's the sound of referee's

whistles, she's

conditioned that she doesn't feel good about it, she doesn't like the sound of a whistle. So counter conditioning means you're going to get the sound of a whistle and play on a really low volume on YouTube and every time she ever to slightly hears it, you're going to give her a treat. So she's being exposed to it, but it's being paired with something good. Over the days, over the weeks, over the months, increase that volume. So it doesn't have to be the whistle, it can be the sound of any sport on TV, but try and work out what the individual trigger is and give it a positive association. Until that's done, until you've thought of it, make sure that she's not putting a situation that she's not comfortable in. So that's where she needs that bolt hole, that's when she needs that. Yeah, take yourself off to the kitchen and have a chew and stuff activity toy or whatever and feel good about yourself over there and let your husband watch there. What's the sport on TV in

peace?