Well I am sure that my answer is in the achives somewhere but I thought I would ask the question anyway. My female GSD pup is almost 6 months old and is having a bit of a fear problem. I have socialized her well and still am, she is not fearful of people just cautious as a typical GSD will be but with other dogs she seems terrified. Her confidence is not where is should be and I contribute that to her age. To say she is weak nerved at this point is a little early. I have been working on building her confiedence, and acting matter of fact when she shows these signs of terror. I also take her to puppy class to get her exposed to more dogs and pay close attention to her comfort zone and do not allow her to get overwhelmed. She is fine with my other dog, except for the usual KID FIGHTS LOL. My question is this, what is the best way to assist in building confiedence while she is going through these fear stages? I have the Leerburg puppy video and it has been a great help. I don't expect her to be freinds with every dog she meets that is why I am enforcing the ignore the other dog theory and make her focus on me. Her working ability is great but I would like to see her be a bit more self assured. Any advice will be greatly appreciated <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

I have had this problem with my now 14 month old female. She first showed nervousness to other dogs at 12 weeks in her second puppy class. She definitely was worse around the 6-8 month mark, and then seemed to come out of it again. I continued to take her everywhere, tried to ignore her when she showed fear, and gave her praise and a pat for going forward by herself. I made sure she only met with friendly dogs, preferably those that were smaller than her. It sounds like you are doing all these things, all I can say is stick with it. My girl is definitely much better now. My current 7 month old, had a short wobble around 6 months too, when she decided that lawn mowers were a little scary. But we continued going for walks with my grown male, and she seems to have come out of it now.

Louise

As a safty measure, I would get some pepper spray to have on hand just in case a nasty dog approaches you and her you can take care of it before it gives her reason to be really affraid. We are always running across these "flexi" idots that let their dogs run all over the place "on leash", leash or not, their dog is still in my dog's face, and I have heard some bad stories about fights from this. If your pup is already having problems, the last thing she needs is for an accident to happen. Just a thought.

Thanks for the advice. As far as the pepper spray I do carry it because my Sibe and I have been attacked on more than one occasion. He never had any ill affects from this, THANK GOD. But I agree with you about keeping her from being terroized because that sure would not help things at this point. She is starting to come around, and I guess I just was jumping the gun on worry because none of my other GSD's or any of my other dogs went through this. There is an owner that has her 1/2 brother and sister, and he was telling me his Male never went through this but the female did and she finally came out of it at around 8 to 9 months. Yesterday I was very proud of her because we walked right past the little dog next door and she made nothing of her, not a growl, not a look NOTHING, so we are making small steps forward <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />