Why is my dog scared of strangers?

Some dogs are born cautious, and a whole litter can carry it. Some missed the window, the weeks between eight and sixteen when a puppy files people as normal, and met their first strangers as adolescents. Some were frightened once, by a man in a hat, a child who grabbed, a vet visit, and filed the whole category as dangerous. Whatever the start, the fear grows with every encounter the dog cannot escape, because a stranger reaching for a cornered dog confirms everything. The fix is the reverse: structure at home so the dog has something to rely on, strangers at a distance where the dog can still eat, nobody reaching, and the distance closing over weeks at the dog's pace.

A fearful puppy under sixteen weeks is the best case: calm exposure to many kinds of people at a distance it can handle, every day, nobody reaching, and the window does its work. An adolescent that has become fearful needs the same with more patience and a structured walk that gives it a job. A rescue with an unknown history needs the decompression month first and then the distance work. A dog that has snapped at a stranger is managed with a muzzle it is taught to love, a leash everywhere and a rule that nobody touches it, and worked with the same method more carefully; it can usually be made safe and calm in public, and our team says on the phone if it cannot.

Fearful dogs are one of our specialties and Platinum, three weeks at $3,750, is the program: structure in the training home, strangers at distances the dog can handle on field trips that grow harder each day, a handler who reads the threshold, and unlimited lessons afterwards so the family learns to run the distance work on their own street. A fearful puppy under four months starts with the Puppy Development Bundle at $550 or $750 at home, where the exposure is built in. The fearful dog training page describes the program in full.