The biggest problem that you have is your dog could start to show fear-based aggression toward people.
Here are the steps to go through to deal with fearful behavior:
“People
When a dog reacts fearfully to a man, people tend to jump to the conclusion that a man has abused the dog in the past. Possibly that is the case, but often it’s a problem of lack of early social experience with men. Men, women, children, people wearing big hats, people in Halloween costumes and a wide variety of other human presentations can spook dogs who have not experienced that “style” of person before.
Of course, if there has been actual abuse or something has happened to frighten the dog in conjunction with that type of human, the dog’s fears will go deeper. Either way, the treatment is basically the same. Don’t let people force themselves on a fearful dog. In spite of hurt feelings on the part of the offended human, this process needs to be taken just as slowly as when dealing with any other fear.
Working Principles
With a severe fear that causes the dog to suffer, you need to enlist the help of a veterinary behavior specialist who can prescribe both the behavior modification protocol to deal with the fear as well as any indicated medication. When the fear places people in danger because the dog reacts aggressively, that’s another case for in-person expert help.
Similarly, get help quickly with an extremely fearful puppy. The right intervention can do so much more for a puppy during early development than if you let this opportunity pass and the habit of fear to become stronger with time.
Whether working on your own or with the help of a specialist, the following principles are typically part of working through a dog’s fear:
1. Have a veterinarian examine the dog and perform any indicated tests to diagnose problems that could be causing pain, sickness or disability. Work with the veterinarian to treat the problem and ease the dog’s physical pain. Bring the dog back to the veterinarian regularly.
Don’t assume that a problem brought under control at one point will never need further treatment. Make any indicated changes in treatment to keep the dog comfortable.
This requires detective work! Dogs have a survival instinct to hide their pain, because an animal showing weakness in the wild gets killed. Look hard for possible physical problems, rather than expecting the dog to cry out in pain or otherwise “tell you.”
2. Assess the problem:
a. Do you know of an event that started the fear?
b. Is the thing the dog fears actually dangerous and/or likely to cause pain to the dog? How are you going to keep your dog safe?
c. Are people or other animals being placed in danger by the dog’s behavior and if so, how are you going to put a stop to that danger right now?
d. How can you protect the dog from experiencing this fear while you work through the behavior modification steps?
e. Is it necessary for the dog to cope with this situation, or could things reasonably be managed to simply keep the dog away from it from now on?
f. If you determine it’s better to protect your dog from this situation rather than trying to treat the fear, give the dog time to get used to your new plan. Chances are you’ll be surprised to see how much happier your dog becomes.
3. To treat the fear, plan the steps for conditioning your dog gradually to the feared thing. Plan how you are going to start at a DISTANCE from the feared thing, with it functioning at a low INTENSITY for periods of short DURATION. Plan how you will, over time, gradually reduce the distance, increase the intensity, and expose the dog to the feared thing for periods of longer duration. Plan how you will increase one variable at a time.
4. Determine what things this dog finds rewarding. For the greatest chance of success, you’ll want to use as many of them as possible. Incentives include: food treats the dog likes, food treats the dog goes crazy for, regular meals, retrieving, games with you the dog enjoys playing, special toys reserved for special times, “happy-timing” the dog with a jolly attitude (using excited voice and body language to convey to the dog that is a happy thing), privileges such as a walk or ride in the car, and anything else THIS dog likes.
If you can’t come up with anything your dog finds rewarding, developing these motivators is your first training goal! You may need the help of a behavior specialist or trainer. One option is to break the dog’s daily food into more, smaller meals. Some or even all of the food can be fed by hand, depending on what works best for your conditioning program.
5. Discontinue all exposure of the dog to the feared thing. Start your conditioning program at the distance, intensity and duration where your dog happily accepts rewards. Advance very slowly toward your goal of having the dog comfortable with the feared thing so that the dog will be able to function happily around it in the future. Be patient and take as long as needed to avoid pushing the dog too fast. If you trigger the dog’s fear during this process, that’s a big setback, so keep the progress slow enough to avoid that.
6. Reward your dog at times the dog is showing confidence. Avoid rewarding fearfulness. Certainly don’t punish the dog for acting fearful! Just give the rewards at the moments when you see in your dog the state of mind that is your goal. ”
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