I have a 6 month old male GSD. I got him at 7.5 weeks and have been the focal point of his world since that day. I say that to note that I've spent a great amount of time trying to develop him into a quality dog. Proper schedules, diet, exercise, teaching/training, playtime... He does great OB work although not proofed yet, obviously due to age. He has been around everyone that I'm around at some point in time. We take walks through a very busy local park, etc... Socialized the devil out of him. Up until about 2-3 weeks ago he was the ideal GSD puppy but has recently developed some disturbing behavior. He has started barking like a banshee when someone he doesn't know approaches him or comes to the house. Not aggressively either mind you, it's even worse he's fearful. Seeking to avoid the situation rather than confront it but because they are there he feels he has to deal with it - stressing himself out and barking almost continually the entire time. He will not allow strangers to pet him even with me right by his side. I've tried having them offer treats and he won't take them or does and spits them out. I'm considering prong corrections but kinda felt that might add to his stress as opposed to alleviating it. There are people he still likes a lot and doesn't see daily. My best friend, sister-in-law they come in and he acts as though they never left - loves'em. He's never had a traumatic experience that I'm aware of and he's never out of my site except when I'm at work and then he stays in the house in his area we've established for him. So I'm thinking, what happened? Do I have a dog in avoidance? Is he shutting down mentally during situations such as I've described? It has become a real issue because of the "non-stop" way in which he's approaching it. Barking until he's horse or until I interrupt the event and crate him. When I let him out it starts all over again. I'm very worried that I might have a dog with weak nerves or fearful tendencies. I've just not seen him act this way before. I'm not ready to give up on him after all the work I've put into him but even though it's only been a couple of weeks that he's done this it seems like it'll never pass. Can anyone relate to this situation? Should I be considering taking him back to the breeder or do you think this will pass in time? Also how should I approach people outside the house for continued social skills? (being that he barks at them) How should I deal with people entering his home? Corrections, reassurance, OB - one thing I know, you can't ignore it. He's loud, in your face, and non-stop. Please anyone help it's like my puppy went from Dr. Jekel to Mr. Hyde. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Sorry I do not know the answer but I do have one more question for this. could anyone tell me how long this fear puppy stage lasts? Tonka is starting to get out of this stage.

There is probably a reflexive component to your dog's reaction. It feels some sort of fear/anxiety under particular stimulus conditions (strangers present). When dog feels this way, his overt (visible) response is to bark and put on a show. You will have to try to address this. Here are some ideas:
1) habituation & respondent extinction: constant exposure to an eliciting stimulus (strangers present) can result in a great diminishment/elimination of the reflexive response to that stimulus. Some would describe this loosely as "getting used to..." the thing that scares them. Yes, this does require that you ignore the dog's behavior AND it definately requires that you saturate the dog's environment with the presence of strangers at home and when you are out as much as you can. I would try to think of areas of town where there would be tons of strangers moving about. You can feed your dog at these times especially if he has missed his last meal...you know, make good things happen for him when he is acting reasonably appropriate at these times. This is a tough process because of all the drama that you will get from the dog, and it would be best if you can outlast the dog...meaning that you stay at each session until the dog is no longer freaking out. No organism can go like this forever, but you still have to have the fortitude to ride it out. You also have to insure that nothing bad happens while all of this is going on. It's a challenge.
2) A similar method would be to situate yourself&dog such that you are in view of the strangers, but far enough away that your dog does not react. When the dog happens to look toward some particular stranger, you can offer the dog a favored treat. (a sighting of a stranger leads to great stuff!). When you get total reliability at a particular distance, you can bring things closer in..slowly. You may not have enough strangers visiting your house to arrange a similar situation at home. If you do know that you have a stranger coming, you can arrange it so that, as often as possible, the dog will miss the meal prior to the visit and the visitor can put the dogs dinner on the floor upon arrival (making sure the dog sees this)...and make sure that these meals are especially good (chicken broth mixed in or something). It takes time, but this procedure (counter conditioning) could assist in the process.
3) Cross your fingers and hope that this is some sort of 'developmental stage' that will pass.
4) A combination of the three.

On the point about 'correcting' the dog, I just don't know. That's a risky venture. It's hard to do something directly that will make the dog feel more comfortable around strangers. There might be some sort of situation along with very particular dog types that could possibly respond to a correction, but I don't think I'd go that route.

I would try to soak this dog in a world of strangers just to experiment....to see how long this annoying behavior will last in a single session. Then, on the next session, check to see if the duration of this behavior has decreased from the previous session. Don't forget to time these sessions, and bring your ear plugs!

There are probably some good guesses out there as to why your dog does this, but they are only guesses. All you can do now, though, is to arrange conditions so that your dog's behavior will change.

As I understand it, fear based behaviors are not generally subject to habituation or extinction. Generally speaking, if you don't address the fear, the problem becomes worse. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding.

I would suggest an approach in which you keep strangers a comfortable distance from your pup; for example, if he can be aware of the presence of a stranger 20 feet away without freaking out, but once the stranger is any closer, he freaks, then keep him at least 20 (if not 30 for starters) feet away from strangers (those numbers are just examples; your pup's distance may be greater or lesser). Set yourself up so that the person can pass or go about their business without coming closer than what the pup can handle. When your pup is aware that a stranger is over there but is not acting out, throw him a doggie party. A doggie party might consist of you acting like an idiot, singing a song, doing a silly dance, feeding him lots of tasty morsels, and having a short play/tug session with him, in the presence of the stranger (if you don't feel like an idiot, you're not doing it right). It's good if you can sprinkle in some easy, fun, OB during the party too. Have him perform some easy sits or a little heeling, whatever he is good at, and keep it FUN. When the person is gone, stop the party and be neutral, so that all the really good stuff happens only when other people are around. Eventually you might notice that when he sees a stranger, his first response is to glance at you to see what you will do. That's your cue to throw him a party, and it's a good sign that he's learning.

For visitors to the home, I would suggest that you do a similar type of thing. Have him leashed so that you have physical control and can keep him at a comfortable distance. He should not be allowed to get up into the person's business at close range. At first, the good stuff would come from you, as a tool for changing his emotional state and redirecting his behavior, and once he has the hang of that, then the good stuff would come from the visitor, tossed to him from a safe distance. You might keep him in the room only for a few minutes, making sure it's a happy fun experience, then confine him elsewhere, away from the main living area, so that you can relax with your guests. Give him something really good to chew on while he's confined, like a stuffed Kong (or if you're not worried about Mad Cow disease, a beef shank bone). Just make sure he has a good, brief, positive few minutes then put him in his crate in a back room with a radio or tv on and his Kong/bone before things have a chance to go wrong. In other words, quit while you're ahead.

If it's too hard for him to be in the room when the person enters, then put him in a back room before you let your visitor in, let the visitor inside and wait about five minutes for things to calm down, then bring the pup out, on leash, for a quick doggie party.

In the meantime, you could also work on having him grab a toy on command. Be really excited and reward him heavily for doing this. Eventually, you could have him "go get his toy" when visitors come. But he'll have to be in a relaxed enough state with company in the house to be able to do that, so I wouldn't throw that in there until he's much better about visitors than he is now.

I used the term "generally" for a reason. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> Perhaps I could have been more clear. Habituation as I understand it would not be my first choice of approaches for this type of emotional reaction. If by "respondent extinction" you're meaning something along the lines of what I think of as "counterconditioning", then I agree with you that it would be appropriate here.

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Anyway, calling something "fear based" or "aggression based" (or ego based, or martian based) has very little to do with the way things are addressed. We can't see "fear" or "ego", but we can see responses to stimuli. And, even then, all we can directly manipulate are the stimuli.

Technically, that's correct, but I can tell a lot about my dog's emotional state by reading her body language. I can tell the difference between a fearful response to a stimulus and a predatory response to a stimulus, for example; and I can indirectly manipulate her emotional responses through the direct manipulation of stimuli. In addition, where I might use respondent conditioning to address some behavior, I would use operant conditioning for others, so the motivation for the behavior has a great deal to do with the way I address things.

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Your descriptions of how you would go about addressing the problem is, in fact, respondent extinction with only trivial differences from my own suggestion.

My suggestions aren't much different from your "suggestion #2", however, I would not recommend "suggestion #1" because in my opinion as a layperson, I would have concerns that it might lead to greater sensitization resulting in a stronger negative emotional response in the future. It's just not an approach that *I* personally would be comfortable with advocating.

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Also, by adding 'good stuff' to the mix as the dog is exposed to the stressful stimuli, we are using a procedure called reciprocal inhibition. All of these procedures are variations on respondent conditioning (altering 'emotional' or reflexive types of responses).

Thanks for filling me in. I'm not too concerned with what it's called so much as I am about how I can apply it to my own dog handling, and communicating to a fellow layperson in a way that they can understand how they can use it. I think the precise terminology is of far less importance.

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Can you remember where you heard or read that 'fear based' behaviors aren't subject to extinction/habituation?

I didn't say that. I used the term "generally", remember. Also, I misinterpreted your use of the term "extinction" to be in the context of OC. As for habituation, to clarify, I think there are many emotional responses that can be subject to habituation, but my understanding is that the stronger reactions, such as the one described by the original poster, are far less likely to be subject to habituation, and that further sensitization is the more likely outcome of continued exposure. I couldn't tell you where/when I read/heard/learned that.

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'Respondent', by the way, can be used interchangeably with 'classical conditioning'...the Pavlovian stuff....but "classical conditioning" is no longer used as a part of behavioral science.

Yup, I know what classical/respondent conditioning is, thanks. However, while "classical conditioning" may or may not be used as a part of behavioral science these days, it is still widely used in dog training.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying. I just hope Chad can muddle through this and find something he can use to help solve his problem. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I think Chad has enough information from his first two responses to get started, but will need to ask more questions if he has doubts or further questions.

I understand what you mean by being able to read the dog's emotional state by the way he is behaving. My point was that no matter how good we are at guessing our dog's 'state', and even if we are correct....respondent (classical) conditioning is still the weapon of choice. Every emotional state is heavily hooked into reflexive types of stuff. If one wishes to address this kind of thing whether it's 'fear', 'joy', 'anger' or whatever, you're stuck with respondent conditioning. Operant conditioning is always thrown in for good measure in the real world as well.

Habituation is just an option...we can't know which would be more effective without testing things out. There are advantages that I could argue for this as well as other methods. What I like about the habituation is that: it can be easier to arrange than the other methods, but the best part is that the trainer will be able to see his dog show proper behavior inside of a single session AND the trainer really doesn't have to do much more than tolerate all the dramatics. The trainer will get to see that "hey! Look, my dog is calm! So my dog IS capable of behaving around strangers!" all within the time it takes to complete the first session (hopefully). I have yet to see a dog not just give up, but then again, I have not seen every dog. Almost always though, the owner says "MY dog will never quit!!! as though their dog possesses some supernatural ability to withstand the laws of nature. So far, not only has the dog become relaxed under the stressful conditions, but it relaxes far quicker than the owner expected....probably because the owner never truly attempted to wait out the dramatics. Of course, many more sessions are warranted, but each one will likely result in shorter and shorter durations of drama.

Two things that I think do not recommend habituation are:
1) This dog is still young and I am not sure, but there may be developmental variables which could make this a bad idea.
2) This option has a good chance of only making the dog relaxed around *crowds* of people...it likely won't help the dog with visitors to his home, or a single isolated stranger walking towards the dog on a walk.

The habituation to crowds could be faded to fewer and fewer people, but as a practical matter...that might be hard to arrange. Really, the most challenging aspect of all of these methods is that they are just difficult to arrange. How does one find the right kind of crowd conditions where you can maintain their safety,keep the dog at a proper distance, where the crowd size will maintain while you wait for the dog to give up and so on. and How does one get true strangers into their house to set up these procedures? If you just wait for the occasional willing delivery man or new visitor, that probably won't get it done.

This is a reason why one can do their best socialization while, at the same time, hoping that this is just a developmental stage. Gaurding breeds do need lots of socialization with regard to strangers...they are prewired to be suspicious of lots of tiny nuances. So while the dog may accept short ladies, he may treat taller ladies like the anti-christ....and all the while the owner thought that the dog was given a well socialized youth. Some dogs are more forgiving than others with regard to socialization.

Does anyone out there have direct experience with this 'irrational fear' phase in young dogs/pups? Can it be truly extreme and then just go away with the passage of time?

Thanks guys. I had posted this reply a while back and was starting to think no one had been in this area to answer. The information you gave is really good stuff. Over the holidays he has had plenty of opportunities to meet and be around strangers and family that he doesn't see on a daily basis. I decided to implement a couple strategies of my own and it seems to be working. First I've been walking him in areas where there are more people at a distance. He seems to do better in this situation. Watches intently, but doesn't bark. The more I do it, the more he's beginning to ignore them all together. Then followed up by short intermittent walks in my neighborhood where I purposely stop and talk with my neighbors just to chat. His first reaction is to grumble and bark. "Embarrassing" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Especially for those that just don't get owning a GSD anyway - BUT! I ignore his insecurity and give him a sit or down command. If he doesn't comply I'll give him a quick pop on the leash and he follows the command. I'm not correcting him for being stressed but for not following his OB. I try to make this clear and stay very calm myself. Once he is sitting or in a down state a lot of the stress seems to dissipate. No more barking. He holds this while I have a casual conversation. He's a real 'looker' and most people want to pet him. If they try, he'll give a bark but nothing too over the top. As far as new people in the home - If I know someone is coming by, I'm putting him in his crate first. Allow the visitor to get comfortable and then let him out on leash. Again first response is to bark. So I've been keeping his ball on a string with me and practicing some Bernhard Flinks focus work with him. He wants his ball bad, more than he wants to bark at the stranger. So for a quick 5-10 minutes I'll bring him into drive with the ball placing him in random sits and allowing him to get a few good bites in. When he's got a good firm grip and tugging pretty hard. I bring him to me and begin to calm him by long, slow strokes with praise and then release the ball. Oddly enough it seems to calm him down so that there isn't this unceasing barking at someone just because he doesn't know them. After they've been there for 20 minutes or so he begins to warm up to them. He still seems suspicious but it's not as bad as it has been. He seems to be making progress back in the right direction. However, I'd love to here what you think about this approach. He has never been overtly affection to anyone other than me or my wife. He loves my wife's sisters and their husbands, family in general but again he's not a really cuddle type with them. He usually just wants to get them to play and that's when he enjoys them the most. This same behavior seems to hold true the first time he meets someone new. Once he can play with them he forgets they're a stranger... Hopefully I can continue to build his confidence through encounters such as this and implementing some of the things you guys suggested to keep these meetings positive and low key.

From what you describe, the prognosis on your dog sounds very promising! You have the idea....there are alot of creative differences, but that basic idea is the same.

Chad, thanks for the update. It sounds like you're going in the right direction. One question, though. Where is his crate? Personally, I would not have it in the living room where he can see visitors entering the home, but rather, I would have it in a back room out of the main ebb and flow of front door activity. The reason for this is that he could be becoming aroused and fearful while inside his crate, if he can see the visitor entering the house from there, so that when you let him out, he's already aroused. Others may have different opinions on this.

Otherwise, it sounds like you're doing great at setting him up to have positive interactions with people.