Organized and Consistent Dog Training
The first important step to training a fearful dog is to make a schedule for him. Implement goals into steps, and have time limits. Teaching your dog to play around something that he is afraid of is a good way to help him. Lets say that your dog is afraid of strange adults, one way to help him face this fear is to practice letting him be around an adult in your family whom your dog knows and teaching him to touch this persons hand. Teaching this to a dog will be challenging and is certainly not the easiest thing to do. This will probably have to be done in many different sessions. One idea to start off with is to have this adult sit away from the dog at first and drop some snacks at a certain distance, and then eventually have the adult drop the snacks at his feet until he eventually touches the adults hand (when he does this make sure to treat him). If you see that this does not work though, you will have to regress and try something new. Just make sure to not try this experiment with complete strangers at first, as it will not work on an over stressed and fearful dog. The people who have been successful with training their fearful dogs have first started with themselves and then with a family member and eventually after a period of time with strangers. Building confidence in your dog is what you are targeting for. Taking time to teach your dog to learn this is the key is the most important thing. And training him to target things that he is not to be afraid of will help him overcome his fears. When he associates or realizes that his fear is actually something positive, he will then be more willing and able to overcome the next one. If your problem is a fearful and aggressive dog, then you should teach him also with positive reinforcement. Help him associate his fears with positive things always. Train him to look at you for a consistent amount of time, or to touch your hand or an object. Just keep in mind that this is a slow process.
