Well I am stuck late at work with little to do, so I thought I would respond to all this helpful info.

Change #1)
I havent tried every food, and I will set a bunch of different kinds down when I get home and see which one he takes. I hope he will like something, since I did try most of the usual suspects... popcorn, peanut butter, raw meat, cheese, etc with little luck. Maybe bacon like you say! You'd have to be seriously sick to not like bacon

Change #2)
We did the crate thing and the ignore thing too. As I sat around thinking about it today, we have seen some subtle progress there and we moved his crate from a high traffic area to a back room in the last week or so. That was wrong, I believe. It allows him to isolate himself and no learning takes place.

Change #3)
He loves routine (as they all do eh?) every morning when I get up to let the tribe out, he is semi-happy to see me and runs to the door and sits to be let out. He doesnt cower or run as I approach him to open the door. I need to find more ways to form structure like that in his life, beginning with more crate time I think. Freedom is not his friend. No big surprise there.

Thanks for all the insight. I plan to hold off on the meds, at least till I can get a handle on whether or not he is fit to be rescued or not. I'll try and get a picture for you all.

Thanks again!

TJ

The suggestions everyone has posted have been fantastic. I have some experience with unreasonably fearful foster dogs, and I used some of these strategies and they do work (takes time).

One thing is that I would not worry about having his crate in an out of the way place. Dogs don't like being isolated, so he will eventually want to come out when he feels comfortable. If he is forced, by being crated, to be exposed to more traffic than he is comfortable with, I think it will take longer before he is coming out of the crate on his own.

Another thing you could try, if you have the space, is having 2 crates, so the dog can use whichever one he is comfortable with.

When I started leaving my fearful dog's crate open, he used to hide in there but eventually he chose another bed near my other dog and would sleep there at night when it was quiet and eventually during the day too.

Maybe others with more experience than I have will correct me, but for now I would leave the crate in a quiet place.

It sounds like you are making progress already though. Thanks for working with this boy!

Edited to add: For 3 weeks I had to leash the dog just to get him out of his crate to go potty. 11 months later he chose not to use the crate (he would go in when I asked, but not on his own). He spent most of his time in the living room with us and my other dog. This particular dog was more afraid of his environment than people.