What else can we do to help terrified rescue puppy?

[SexyGiraffe]

We recently adopted a 9mo Lab cross puppy. He was born in the pound but rescued by the dog rehoming place and spent his time with his brothers and sisters. I don't think they made much effort to socialize him.

He is very sweet, totally relaxed about other dogs but petrified of strange people. It took him about three weeks to relax around our daughter but he still barks and trembles whenever he sees another human.

We are trying to socialize him in the following ways:

• walking him around our local village every day to get him used to people and cars, etc (his tail goes right up thru his legs and he trembles and pulls like anything)
• on the rare occasions anyone comes over we put him on a lead and introduce him - if he's off the lead he just bombs round the garden barking in fright.

We are making some progress with command training but when he is frightened he won't respond at all and won't even take a treat (literally today my husband couldn't get him to take a piece of ham).

We are hoping that if we continue to expose him to strangers he will get used to it, but is there anything else we could be doing to help him? Thank you, dog experts!

How long have you had him?
Does he have periods of time when he can be somewhere quiet and nothing required
of him?
It takes months for adult rescues to settle down and relax and you need to go very slowly, at their pace rather than yours in introducing them to new people and daunting situations. Walking through village every day is probably now something he dreads in advance. Better to walk him somewhere quieter and perhaps sit down every now and then with him while you both watch world passing (few cars, few strangers not too close to you - ie middle of a village green) in as relaxed and unhurried way as you can manage. If he settles down and is less tense, reward him with praise and a treat.

My second point above, that I missed saying, is I think a rescue puppy may possibly need even more slow, patient introduction to new things than adult rescues generally do.

Our older rescue had spent her life in the shelter and was terrified of everything, especially traffic. We did desensitisation or the training when you get them to associate the thing they are scared of with something nice (can’t remember the exact name!). It basically took quite a lot of consistent training, in our case by feeding her lots of treats near cars, then near noisy roads, then closer, as buses and lorries went by. She eventually began to associate ‘big scary noisy thing’ with ‘mmmmm nice treats’ and a month on is now ok with traffic 90% of the time. We continue to work on it. But something similar may help - its almost like
You have to ‘reset’ the fear for them. Simply exposing our dog to traffic wouldn’t have worked, she was utterly terrified, it was changing the association that did it.

Google it - it’s called counter conditioning. It was very effective for our rescue x

Sorry - googled!

If her tail is going between her legs and she’s pulling to get away she’s already reached her threshold and you’ve taken her too far. You need to reverse things right back. Do you have any willing friends you could rope in to help out they haven’t met the dog? Hire a field or go somewhere very secluded, get friend to stand very far away and walk the dog closer, keep a close eye on her body language and stop as soon as she starts to show signs of panic or stress. Make her sit and give treats until she is relaxed. Walk closer and repeat. Very simplified obviously but if you look for counter conditioning and desensitisation you’ll find some great techniques. Have you engaged with a professional vet behaviourist?

Thank you - some very interesting food for thought. We've had him about six weeks, so early days. He is very relaxed at home with us now and is becoming very affectionate and responsive to commands at home (he's already learned his name, 'sit' and 'here') and he gets on very well with our other dog (also a rescue, but has always loved people).

When we first got him we couldn't even get the harness or lead on him without him totally freaking out and now he does come up to us for walkies and happily put it on, so he's definitely made some progress.

We cannot get him to take treats when he is frightened - I think that's a really interesting point that we may be pushing him too far so he cannot learn.

Honestly, if you have a big enough back yard then I would confine walks to just there on a regular basis. Some trips out but sometimes stay at home where you know he is happy and relaxed. And he needs to increase his focus onto you- not the next scary thing that is coming down the road.

He sounds a dote, though, so best of luck with him.

Start right back at the very, very beginning.

To echo what others have said, if he won't take a treat then he's already reached the point where he's too terrified to learn anything, you need to scale it right back, keep people at a distance he is comfortable with, read his body language really carefully, and as soon as he seems stressed or upset, let him leave the situation....he needs to learn to trust you and that you will keep him safe, and if you keep repeatedly putting him in stressful situations that he can't cope with he won't learn that!

Read up on trigger stacking as well, you'll find some helpful info about how dogs react to repeated stress and triggers, it'll help you pick the 'right' times to train him, his cortisol levels need to be lowered, once he's had an 'incident' they'll remain high for a few days and he'll need time for them to drop.

Good luck!!

Not all others may agree with me but I have always been a great believer in talking to my dog (and previous ones). If my dog sees something alarming (still happens very occasionally even nearly 4 years after adopting her - perhaps if a bike skids on the path behind or she finds someone odd and scary), I just say to her in a conversational normal voice, "It's all OK, nothing to worry about " and she does relax with my tone of voice. I am sure other walkers think me batty when they come round a corner and I'm making odd remarks to my dog as we go along (about a bird we are both looking at or something) but she likes it.

You need to back right off. DO not have any interactions with new people at all for a while. If he shows no reaction you can let him see people from a distance. If he reacts turn away with a cheerful lets go and call it a day.

I would not start counter conditioning him yet.

Do not encourage him to meet people do not encourage people to touch him or to give him treats.

Do get lots of eye contact and focus on you reward him when he looks at you.
Play recall games in the garden and house
Scatter feed his food to let him release all those happy hormones.

Let him just be for quite some time yet.

Thanks everyone for the advice - I think you may be right that we just need to slow things down. We have several quiet countryside walks near our house where we don't encounter many people and he's getting more confident on those so perhaps we'll focus on building that routine for a while.

We give him lots of affection, eye contact and cuddles at home (and yes, I do talk to him!) and do lots of reward based training which he is starting to respond to. I had read several articles that suggested 9 months was a critical time to socialize which is why we didn't want to leave it too late and miss the boat, as it were. But I can see he is too frightened to really learn anything when we are in the village. Plus I worry he'll somehow wriggle out of his harness and escape - he's chipped and tagged, but I'd worry he'd get into trouble.

He's a very sweet, affectionate boy and we want to help him feel relaxed and happy.

If you don't want him racing round the garden barking when people come to the house then it would help to actively teach him what you do want him to do rather than just restraining him. Does he go in a crate? Teach him to go to his crate or bed for a treat when anyone knocks on the door. Practice with just the people in your family going out and knocking over and over again so he gets the idea. If he races round completely ignore him until he stops and try again, preferably with him starting in a smaller area near his crate. Part of the racing round is likely to be because he doesn't know what to do.
Concentrate on quiet walks for now and build his confidence walking on a lead and being with you. Do a bit of training while you're out with him to keep his attention on you. Once he's comfortable and more confident build up to busier places and use his training to get his attention back on you in a positive way.

No 9 months is not a critical socialisation period and tbh you have missed the window eg up to 16 weeks BUT dont let that stress you that is the case for many rescues and it all works out ok.

It is a matter of the slower you go the quicker you get the results you want.

If he is anxious he will not learn to be confident. So help to build the calm first then he can learn.

Re harness if you are concerned can you use a double ended lead and attach one end to his collar? Do not put pressure on this end but IF he does wiggle out of the harness you still have he on lead.

Look at perfect fit harness they are hard for many dogs to escape from. You may need to work on getting used to the clip noise.

Small update - we've stopped the walks into town and focused on quieter local walks, as suggested. He's been so good we've been able to start letting him off the lead for a run around - he's beautifully behaved. The run is also really good for him. We had someone round at the weekend, put him on the lead the whole time, and showed him that person entering and leaving the gate. He was still frightened but much calmer (not bombing around barking and growling). Progress!

Aw, that's great news. It's a pleasure to read how dedicated you are to this rescue dog.
Any chance of a picture please

Good work @SexyGiraffe
Have a look at Grisha Stewart's behavioural adjustment therapy (BAT) for info on keeping him plunder threshold whist reducing reactivity