Building confidence in timid puppy?

[RosieLig]

Our new puppy is a little timid. She's fine in the house (we only got her yesterday) but shaky in the car and also very shaky when I took her into school this morning.

Am I moving too quickly? Our last pup took everything in his stride. I'm also award that I want to socialise her as much as possible in the next few weeks.

Any advice would be great. She's a black lab and 10weeks on Thursday.

She has had a lot to cope with in 24 hours. A lot.

Not altogether surprising that she is apprehensive. Be kind to her, manage the socialisation carefully and I am sure that in a few days, the school trip will be no problem, and the car less of a problem than it currently is. She has to get over suddenly being without Mum and her siblings, in a new scary place and doing new scary things. Give her time.

Lozdog was the same - shook all the way home when I collected him (and puked when I was almost pulling on the drive)!

Wouldn't walk past the end of the close for the first couple of weeks - carried him some of the way in the end.

I found that lots of reassurance in a stupid voice helped along with praise, pats and strokes on his back and lots of cuddles

Whilst he can still be a whimp at times, he absolutely loves his walks and meeting other dogs and people.

Ten weeks is still brand new.

I would maybe slow down the new experiences for the first couple of days. When you think about it every experience is new to her so it's maybe a wee bit overwhelming if you do too much.

I know the argument is that there's no such thing as too much socialisation but I have a dog who is the product of exactly that. A wee bit of doing exactly as the books all suggested and ignoring the actual dog in front of me in favour of the theoretical puppy resulted in a dog who was forced to socialise with far too many people at an early stage and now doesn't always trust me to protect her. End result - she's a biter and it's entirely my fault. If she is timid, I think you'd do well to go a bit slower with her rather than overload her.

Our trainer told us to have a 'puppy moon' period - not too many visitors, no school run, just keeping things nice and calm for the first few days and gradually introduce new experiences so as not to overload him

It seems to have worked as at six months he's a lovely, confident, sociable little thing who loves being fussed over by children

I'd give her more time to get used to her new surroundings first

Thanks all, brilliant advice! I took her in the car this morning and she was fine. I left her in the car asleep whilst I took the children in.

She seems more settled during the day. Last night was horrific though! Howling until 1.30 in her crate, I went down every 15 mins. In the end I gave her the top I had been wearing and she went to sleep. Hoping for a better night tonight!