Need help with scared dog

[willy73]

Hi to everyone,

In december 2008 i adopted my dog. She is a good dog, she play well with my 5 y.o. son and they really love each others. We took her when she was 4 months old. When she goes out she is really really scared about people. It was impossible to take her out so whe went to a trainer. He gave us a "shock collar" (i hope it's the right name) and we started to go there, trying to let her to stay with other dogs and some people.
Some months ago a police man told me that the collar wasn't allowed by the law and i had to change it. So i understood how bad it was. She started again to be very bad when she was out, she made fall my wife a couple of times. We were thinking to give up with her, but then we started to watch Victoria and searching on internet. We decided to don't use violent method now. So with patient and love we are having good results and now she is a little more calm.
We tryied a lot of things. We forced her to meet people, but it doesn't work. So now we try to pass away, but sometimes we try to get a little closed to people.
She meets more people, but we don't allow to touch her if she isn't totally calm.
Now we have a problem: she doesn't eat when she is out. I gave her wurstel, meat, biscuits but she always turn her head in the other way, but I can see she would like it. So when she come back to home she comes to me asking for the good thing. I decided to give it to her so she knows the walk is good, 'cause when she return she have something good to eat. But when we are out we can't do positive renforcement with food and she looks to be not interested to anything.
When she is not on leash she is a little less scary and more curious. She doesn't go too close to people and she doesn't allow unknown people to touch her. When all the family take her out, she plays more and she is more happy. But she still doesn't eat.
Whe take her out at least 2 times a day, but when i am out alone with her, she doesn't like to run or play. I try to make her run, sometimes, but she looks annoyed. She becomes very happy if she meet a dogs she likes. She plays for a little, but then she start walking around watching people or cars and sniffing.
I would like to help her more. She perfectly understand the base commands like "stop", "sits", "down", "come", "leave it". She is a middle size italian dog. Her race is naturally used for the sheeps so she always need to check everything. When she is at home she is perfect. She doesn't break anything, doesn't bark, and she is well alone at home. Rarely she pees at home, but we understood our mistake, we are correcting it and now she doesn't do anymore.

I hope someone could give me some suggestions for helping her better.
Thanks in advice.
Paolo

[astrogirl]

Hi there,

It sounds like your dog is REALLY anxious (that is why she won't eat when she's out). We have had similar anxiety issues with our dachshund and have been working with an animal behaviouralist/dog trainer to try to help him be more confident and calm. I would strongly suggest asking your vet to recommend a very experienced trainer for you to work with. The first one we went to did not know enough, we had to try a few but we have now found someone who believes strongly in positive reinforcement and although progress has been slow we have seen lots of improvement in our dog's behaviour and anxiety.