Expert: Have4Paws - 10/24/2003

Question
I received my beagle, Daniel, as a birthday gift after my first true love(my first beagle) passed away. I was so depressed after she had died, my friend and my dad took me for a long car ride, we drove for an hour and a half and finally ended up somewhere in the country, as soon as i saw the puppies in the yard, i knew why we were there. My excitement was shattered when i went over to pick out my puppy, they were afraid of everyone, they ran and hid,some were so afraid of being touched, that they litterally urinated on themselves. I spent over an hour and a half trying to get them to come to me. After some time, two males were finally captured. Both were very shy, we realized that these werent shy puppies, they had been severely beaten.. To this day, three years later, Daniel is still afraid of men, his brother was killed in a tragic accident. Daniel still shys away from strangers, we take him places and he is fine, but at our house he is very shy, any advice on how we can get him to realize that he is safe from now on? If no ideas, i would like you to know, that no matter what, he has a permanent family, and will never be hurt again!

Answer
I am so pleased to hear your story  had a good ending and know he and his brother blessed the day you rescued them!

A dog who has been abused needs someone who has a tremendous amount of patience, it is a slowwwwwwww process. But that is not usually enough, it often also requires the intervention of a personal trainer for a couple sessions to help you learn how to do confidence building exercises with your dog. Without knowing it you may have inadvertently reinforced some of the shy behavior by not doing certain things or doing them exactly the way they needed to be done to extinguish the shy behavior. I would consult with someone who can work with you in person, one on one. This is not something I can do via email as it is fairly complicated.

Also read the book called BEST BEHAVIOR. It is written by the experts at Tufts University School of Medicine. You may find other good ones too on the Amazon.com site. Go to the book section and put in keyword "training an abused dog" and see what comes up.

I wish you the best of luck!
Have4Paws