Pet guardians: To pet or not to pet frightened animals

Revised July 2026.

As I updated this blog post, I recorded it. So, you can either watch it, or read the whole thing below the video!

Let’s say there’s a thunderstorm, and your dog creeps up to you, pressing against you, seeking comfort.

Should you pet him?

The hundred-dollar question.

Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a vastly different answer to the question of whether it’s a good idea to pet and comfort an animal when they’re scared.

Many people recommend not comforting them, saying that petting fearful animals inadvertently reinforces the fear.

Others say that that’s nonsense, and that you should absolutely offer comfort to your animal companion when they’re scared. This group might say that petting doesn’t reinforce fear, it reduces it.

So which is it? Could both sides have a point?

I would say yes they do – and they’re both wrong, but not for the reason you might think.

My verdict: please offer comfort (including petting*) to your animal when they’re fearful, but be observant: there’s three different mechanisms that might make their fear worse (just not through the process of reinforcement).

*assuming the animal knows you and they enjoy being petted under normal conditions

Let’s start with terminology.

Reinforcement.

Does petting reinforce fear?

And, perhaps more importantly, which type of reinforcement would we be talking about? Positive or negative?

Reinforcement and emotions

In positive reinforcement learning, animals learn that certain behaviours have desired outcomes, as they result in getting access to something the animal wants.

The animal performs a behaviour, receives reinforcement, and repeats the behaviour in order to get some more of the good stuff.

Fear isn’t a behaviour, though, it’s an emotional state. 

And I sometimes hear people say “emotions can’t be reinforced – only behaviours can be reinforced”.

That sweeping statement suggests that emotions have nothing to do with the process of reinforcement, nor with behaviour.

I disagree.

I think emotions have everything to do with reinforcement.

After all, without emotional responses to stimuli, those stimuli wouldn’t be reinforcing – or punishing – and the animal wouldn’t behave for effect.

Without emotional responses to incoming stimuli, those stimuli would remain neutral.

It’s because they elicit emotional reactions that those stimuli end up being reinforcers or punishers.

But here’s the kicker: positive and negative emotions are regulated differently, by positive versus negative feedback loops.

Let’s see if I can unpack that last statement, because it’s  crucial to this discussion.

Feedback loops and the two types of reinforcement

Imagine for a second a dog who does a high-five, gets petted, and then high-fives some more.

Petting feels good (assuming it’s a positive reinforcer in the first place when delivered from one particular person to a particular animal, but let’s make that assumption, for now. Note that people often overestimate how much their animals enjoy being petted, but that’s a topic for another blog post, perhaps…)

For a cuddle-seeking animal, petting is a positive reinforcer that leads to more of the target behaviour (in this case, high-fiving) and a corresponding feel-good emotion: a positive feedback loop.

The animal continues offering high-fives to get more attention and body contact and remain in that happy mood, at least until something more interesting happens – or until they satiate.

What about fear, then?

Here’s how the fear-is-reinforced-by-petting argument goes: “the animal acts fearful, gets petted and then acts even more fearful in order to get petted some more.”

It is assumed that through positive reinforcement (adding something the animal enjoys), fearful behaviour will increase. And presumably, the accompanying emotion too, although no distinction is usually made between observable behaviour and the underlying emotional state when making this type of argument.

However, fear is not comparable to operant behaviour such as high-fiving, coming when called, or going into a crate or trailer.

Fear is an emotional state, and one that has immense survival value.

Fear also leads to predictable observable behavioural reactions such as freezing, fleeing, hiding or (if cornered), fighting.

In other words, many behaviours associated with the emotion fear serve to reduce that emotional state, by removing or increasing the distance to the frightening stimulus.

This involves, by the way, the process of negative reinforcement (removing something the animal dislikes when the animal performs the target behaviour). For instance, for a frightened animal, hiding would likely reduce the impact of the scary thing.

In other words, the behaviour would be in a negative feedback loop that reduces fear. So even though the observable behaviour (hiding) may be negatively reinforced and showed again when the fearful stimulus is presented, the corresponding emotion is not.

Successful negative reinforcement leads to relief. A reduction of fear, the emotion driving the behaviour. 

To pet or not to pet?

To summarize how emotions, behaviour and reinforcement interact:

High-fiving produces treats when you’re hungry through positive reinforcement, and happy excitement increases.

In contrast, hiding eliminates aversive stimuli when you’re fearful through negative reinforcement, and fear is reduced.

Back to the dog seeking comfort during a thunderstorm, and the question of whether we should comfort and pet them.

What were the arguments used, again?

• 1) does comforting a fearful animal positively reinforce fear? or
• 2) does comforting a fearful animal reduce fear?

I have trouble with both of these statements.

For starters, it’s hard to even imagine that you could positively reinforce the emotion of fear and the associated observable behaviours, such as hiding, since they work in a negative feedback loop.

So no, I’d say that there’s no risk of positively reinforcing the fear by giving comfort.

So, the argument that petting-positively-reinforces-fear is just plain incorrect since fear-related behaviours are governed by negative reinforcement that result in the removal or reduction of the aversive stimulus, reducing the underlying emotional state through a negative feedback loop. Once fear has diminished beyond a certain level, the animal will likely stop showing fear-related behaviour.

Hiding during a thunderstorm is negatively reinforced since it reduces fear. Likewise, soliciting petting from the owner when fearful is also negatively reinforced since it reduces fear. Getting comforted leads to a lessening of the aversive stimulus, and the animal will be more inclined to seek comfort the next time that he’s fearful. Yes, your dog will seek you out to ask for comfort when frightened, just as he will attempt to hide, since both behaviours work to reduce fear – through negative, not positive, reinforcement!

But I’m simplifying things, you may say – and you’d be right..! Perhaps comforting leads to not just a lessening of fear, but also perhaps an increase in positive emotions.

So, it could even be that there’s a combination going on: negative reinforcement of fear-related behaviour, and positive reinforcement of comfort-seeking behaviour.

But, as mentioned, I’d say we’re not seeing positive reinforcement of fear-related behaviour.

And indeed, many animal guardians will comfort their frightened animals to good effect. However, we need to be mindful and observe the animal – it’s not fail-safe!

In my opinion, the people that warn that petting-could-make-fear-worse are not wrong, they just use the wrong terminology.

Comforting and petting may, unfortunately, lead to increased fear or more suffering; just not through the process of positive reinforcement.

I see no less than three potential mechanisms where this might occur.

Mechanism 1: Extinction Burst.

Let’s say that the animal is really frightened, seeks attention and gets petted, which under normal conditions feels really nice and constitutes positive reinforcement for the attention-seeking. But if the animal is too fearful, it could be that this effect is not achieved and high arousal is maintained. If petting no longer “works”, the animal is no longer being positively reinforced.

What happens when previously reinforced behaviour no longer works?

Extinction bursts, that’s what.

Apparently, it is not uncommon that frightened dogs start climbing and pawing their owners, getting even more aroused when they get petted – perhaps because they’re not getting the relaxation they’ve learned to expect from being-petted-when-in-a-positive-or-neutral-mood.

So, hypothetically, at some arousal threshold, petting will no longer feel good, and this may cause an extinction burst and increased arousal in frightened animals.

To reduce this risk, remove the trigger or block out offensive stimuli such as sounds and sights by providing a good hiding place. Theoretically this might keep the arousal level below the threshold so that petting still “works”.

Mechanism 2: Sensitization.

Another scenario: the animal is really frightened by loud noises and has become sensitized to other stimuli, including other sensory modalities such as touch.

Sensitization has multimodal effects, meaning that the other senses tend to become sensitized too, so even though the original fear-inducing stimulus was auditory, they’re now also tactilely sensitized to the point of touch becoming aversive. And even though the animal may not become more fearful when petted, petting may add another unwanted stimulus on top of everything else, and increase the general level of discomfort.

To reduce the risk of sensitization, again, block out the aversive stimuli that’s causing the fearful reaction, and try to avoid sensory overload.

Mechanism 3: Aversive counterconditioning

Through classical conditioning, fear may increase – or decrease.

Suppose that your animal is fearful of thunder or fireworks, and after each loud sound, you pet the animal. The animal thus learns that awful sounds are followed by petting, and through counterconditioning, the sounds become less aversive.

Yay, success!

However, what happens if there is a new loud sound immediately after petting occurred? Then it’s hard to predict which type of counterconditioning will occur.

• If you’re lucky, counterconditioning to noise occurs (noise predicting petting). Fear of noise should decrease (the change is from negative to positive emotions)
• If you’re unlucky, counterconditioning occurs to petting (petting predicting noise). Fear of petting might increase (the change is from positive to negative emotions).

In other words, petting-during-noise might increase fear, not through operant conditioning and reinforcement, but through inadvertent classical conditioning, namely aversive counterconditioning.

Incidentally, through the same process, animals may learn to fear wonderful treats, too.

To avoid aversive counterconditioning, be mindful of when your own behaviour occur in relation to when the scary stimuli occur – and observe the animal carefully to see if what you’re doing is helping or not. Their behaviour should inform you whether you’re successfully doing appetitive counterconditioning (reducing fear) and not inadvertently falling into aversive counterconditioning (increasing fear or discomfort).

Why petting during thunderstorms is more likely to be successful than petting during fireworks

During a fireworks display, there’s typically more or less continuous sound, whereas during thunderstorms, annoying visual and auditory stimuli are less frequent.

I would therefore expect that the risk of inadvertent aversive counterconditioning resulting in petting-increasing-fear would be higher during fireworks than during thunderstorms (unless the animal is fearful of the changes in barometric pressure or electrical discharges which may be a lot more continuous).

I would also expect that the intensity of the stimuli would affect the outcome of frequent-noises-interspersed-with-petting. If noise is loud, it may overshadow petting so that the animal doesn’t even notice that they’re being petted (unless they’ve sensitized, which you’ll notice).

Sorry, if you’re unfamiliar with the term overshadowing, it means that one of the two stimuli is so obvious that the other stimulus isn’t noted.

If noise is soft, petting may overshadow the noise so that the animal doesn’t even notice that there is a storm outside… and if you’re using treats, make sure that they’re absolutely fabulous so that treats overshadow noise rather than the other way around.

Of course, another factor that will influence the outcome of the interaction is that the human may be calmed by comforting and petting the animal – and that may have a huge influence on the animal!

Do you agree – do dogs respond better to comforting and petting during thunder than fireworks? What’s your experience? Let us know in the comments’ section!

Conclusion:

Be mindful of petting a frightened animal when they’re fearful (especially during fireworks). It may make both of you feel better, but pay attention to the animal.

Stop if you see that petting makes things worse (which could occur through three different mechanisms). Above all, block the annoying stimuli as best you can: allow the animal to hide. If you’re giving treats after each scary event, make sure they’re superbly yummy.

BTW, here’s everything else you need to know about how to reduce fear of fireworks and thunder in dogs during the acute phase, the off-season phase, as well as the preventive phase. Want it as an E-book? Just sign up below, and I’ll send it your way! I’ll also keep you posted on future blog posts, webinars and courses, all related to animal behaviour, learning and welfare! 😉