DD and sudden crippling fear of dogs, help!

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DD is 6 and over the last couple of months has developed a complete phobia of dogs after one unexpectedly jumped up at her while we were at the bus stop. The dog was completely harmless and just excited but since then she becomes paralysed with fear whenever a dog comes anywhere near her. We live semi-rurally too and dogs are EVERYWHERE, so it makes going out for walks and to the playground quite difficult as she gets very upset and shouty/panicked when one gets close to her. She is SEN and is currently in the process of diagnosis for possible Autism so her emotional responses to things can be quite unpredictable. We recently had to bring her home from the park as she had a complete screaming meltdown when a ran in off of it's lead.

We can't get a dog to desensitize her and I feel like we really need to tackle it before it gets worse, what do I do?

Dog owner here. Maybe you could link in with an assistance or therapy dog for kids and watch from a big distance away and slowly move closer over a few times? You need a super stable and very quiet dog to do this.

find a friendly dog owner with a well behaved dog and ask if you can bring your DD over?

teach your DD what to do. stand stock still, arms crossed hands under armpits. look boring.

Watch a few films where dogs are gentle and friendly, like Lassie, Beethoven, Homeward Bound, Because of Winn Dixie, Benji etc…

@ThisisMax

Dog owner here. Maybe you could link in with an assistance or therapy dog for kids and watch from a big distance away and slowly move closer over a few times? You need a super stable and very quiet dog to do this.

This is a great idea, sometimes a therapy/assistance dog comes to our school, he's very calm and quiet, the DC love him. Maybe some work with somebody like that with a very slow gentle approach might work.

Spending time with a calm dog worked for us.
Recently we dropped in past a relative we've never visited before and forgot she has a dog, by the end of the visit DD wanted to take him home and loves to go and visit. She's noticeably calmer around other dogs now although she's still a bit wary (not necessarily a bad thing).

We had this op - it started after lockdown with ds aged 5.5. He has a sibling with ASd and some traits himself (he also has ADHD).

Basically we did desensitisation. We started by talking about how dogs only hurt children if they don’t keep to the safe dog handling rules. I know this isn’t true but I don’t think there’s any other way we could have helped ds. Then we taught the safe dog handling rules - just in theory with no dogs present. We emphasised never touching a dog without permission keeps you safe.

Then we ‘happened’ to read some books about dogs - the vet series by Helen Peters are lovely to read out to this age group.

We then commented from a distance on dogs walking a distance away. Oh he looks friendly, you can see he’s kind. Look at his waggy tail. So cute etc etc.

After this we finally embarked on very carefully introducing actual dog contact, starting with other family members petting a puppy. Now he’s almost 100% other it, but it took months.

I hope this helps at least a little

Over it not other it