[margaretd]

I have an 11 week old mini doxie, Cody,(my 5th dachshund), have had him for 4 weeks. He is healthy, has had 2 sets of puppy shots, had a reaction to the lepto in the second set, but otherwise no problems health wise. However, he is terrified of most everything. He will not go out into cold grass, finds dirt to pee and poop, (although do not blame him on that little thing), noises scare him, husband pulled down attic door last nite, and thought Cody was going to climb up over my head and jump off top of recliner we were in, he was screaming, terrified. He whines all of the time, except when he is sleeping, or I am holding him..He sleeps in his crate beside me at nite, and only wakes up once during nite.
Daytime, when it is sunny, he will run and play,rolling around, and playing with my 10 year old female doxie, which took a little bit of time for that to happen. I am terribly concerned that there is something going on with him, and when the panic episodes happen it takes me a good 15 minutes to calm him down. I am not going to put him in his crate during these do not want him to associated how he feels with his crate.

I have not had this issue with any other dogs, this is really very strange. Any help will be greatly appreciated..

[lange]

Hi. A few things that stick out to me on what you might be facing; bad breeding, environment/developmental, fear stage or health related.

First you mentioned the adverse reaction to Lepo. I searched over a few places on this and didn't see any mention of something in that, that might trigger these sort of developmental/nero issues so I'd guess you can rule that out. (here's some links that you might want to read that cover lepto problems, as an FYI: http://www.aroundtownvet.com/files/14935829.pdf And LEPTOSPIRA VACCINE--Adverse Reactions)

Bad breeding- Do you know the temperament of the parents and whether the breeder has had any other dogs with these sort of issues?

fear stage- All puppies go through fear stages, they will however get through it fine if they are dealt with in proactive ways. My question would be, what do you, or any other caregiver, do when the dog starts freaking out?

Environmental/developmental- How long was Coby sick? When he was sick did you act differently towards him and could you have possibly, inadvertently created anxiety & fear in the puppy?

In the end, as long as it's not a biological issue, you should be able to guide your dog out of the fear. It should go more smoothly simply because he is so young & is growing & developing so quickly.

You'll want to ignore fearful behavior completely. Do not acknowledge, look at, talk to, pet, nothing when he is scared. Don't give him any sort of attention, even if you see it as positive. If you give him attention then you are in fact confirming to him that he has something to be scared of, when instead you want him to realize it is nothing; so much so that you will ignore it and him.
Whenever he starts acting normal or you literally see his body language relax, then you give him attention but in a calm way. You can slowly stroke him or giving him a treat, ect. But he can only get attention when he is in control of his self.

All in all, there's a lot of info on this forum. If you do key word searches on here for, fear, socialize, scared, desensitize, ect..you will find a little more info on what others have done or recommended.

[Lunareclipse]

We had an italian greyhound that did that. He was terrified of the grass and of being left alone and anything that moved. He came from a bad breeder that never socialized his dogs and never let them out of their cage until someone bought it and took it home.

[Deafdogsrule]

I have a dog that was likely a puppy mill breeder dog for the first year and a half of her life. She used to go into panic attacks over noise, children, a chord across the sidewalk, anything new really. In the house, she'd bolt for her safe place (the bed) if we were out walking, it was alot harder. but we ignored it relaxed and kept walking. Over time she slowly got better. It took years and the adoption of a confident little deaf dog to truly get her over the paranoia. I haven't seen a panic attack for 2 years... but then, she is 9.5 years old now.

What Lange said is true, dont try to comfort the pup, be calm, yawn at him, blink your eyes slowly. ("Calming Signals" by Turid Rugaas). As long as he's safe, give no attention whatsoever. We couldn't give Zoe any attention, even if we wanted to, as she was afraid of us too (it took more than a year for her to take a treat out of our hands, more than 2 years for her to approach us for a pat)

Clickertraining may just be an appropriate approach here, there are ways to use a clicker to rehab aggressive and fearful dogs. And teaching tricks can be a big confidence booster (works wonders with my fear aggressive dog)