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Extremely shy/fearful hard to train dog, won't accept treats or food when training.

24K views 11 replies 8 participants last post by  Shannon 
I adopted an extremely fearful dog at the end of August last year. Her name is Pip. She used to shut down and crumple into a little ball to different triggers and even expressed her anal glands (Enough times that we gave it a cute nickname so we wouldn't be as angry about cleaning it up)! I remember when my brother kicked off his shoes and she went wide-eyed and flat on the floor and wouldn't move for several minutes. It was heart-breaking. My tip is this: You really have to take everything at the dog's pace.

I actually didn't have strangers hand her treats, but instead, had them toss them away from them so she didn't have to come up to them. You want to be careful about having him need to choose between safety and fear. I instead use treats to reward brave choices and have the reward appear in a safe place.

For example, Pip gets a click or a "yes" for approaching someone and touching her nose to their hand, but the treat comes from my hand or if the stranger has the treat, I tell them to toss it on the floor for her.

There are actually hands-free ways to interact with and train your dog and that can give the confidence boost he needs. I trained my dog before I could touch her and I swear that that is why she has improved in leaps and bounds. You can look up clicker training. I taught Pip to nose-touch target different objects before I asked her to nose-touch my hand. Now nose-touch is her favorite thing.

Also! One more thing.

I will say that with Pip, when she was still shut down, I tried to ward off people and say that she does not want to be pet and is afraid and not friendly. Some people still walked up to pet her to prove to me that they "are good with dogs" and that "she just needs to see that people won't do her harm." And they'd walk up to and pet her while she was a wide-eyed, shivering statue--frozen in fear. The only people she is VERY reactive to right now are those people. Everyone who listened to me from the beginning are friends with Pip now.
 
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