He seems secure in his territory. He will not leave the back yard, even when the fence falls down. He loves to go on walks with me, but is very insecure. His family seldom walks him. Barks at strangers and strange dogs. Lunges at them, but licks people if they stick around. Last year a little Westie trotted out and the hound hid in back of me.

The hound is too timid to go into the pet store. I suggested a starter dog training course, but the owners said no. I doubt that the trainer would accept him into the regular classes, but rather suggest individual training. I do wonder if the dog might be happier out on a farm somewhere, but doubt the family would give him up.

So back to the book idea.

First. Ignore any unwanted skittish/fearful behavior. Completely. Don't talk to the dog, don't look at the dog---nothing. Just halt whatever is happening until it resumes normal activity. Once the normal behavior resumes, praise the dog briefly.

What that accomplishes is to separate the types of behavior in to acceptable and unacceptable. Not good/bad, desired/unacceptable. The dog will soon adapt to the behavior that gets rewarded.

This is difficult to do for many people. The tendency to comfort the dog is great, but doing so actually tells the dog this is a good thing because they get attention.

The barking/lunging may be a fear based reaction. Develop a leash correction---Use a sharp but gentle tug, just enough to redirect the dog's attention back to you and a HEH sound(means STOP). Working to establish that routine before the walk helps. Walk on leash in the back yard and get the dog used to the command to stop.

Might be silly, but I do not use human words---very often dogs get used to certain words and they pay attention to those words even in normal conversation.

A real problem is people---they want to help or are clueless about a problem. I simply tell people the dog is in training and I need them to allow that to happen.

Once the dogs confidence level is raised, working on other things, like going into the pet store, can be addressed.

Working with fearful, timid dogs is very difficult. Altering their fear/timidity takes a long time. And very often, it seems no progress is being made. Progress is sometimes measured in the lessening amount of time unwanted behavior happens.

It helps when all people dealing with the dog do the same things. That is often not a good probability in situations like the one you are experiencing.

Sounds like you really want to help this dog. Good Luck.

It can also be attributed due to leash reactivity. I frequently see this with dogs who are walked on prong collar and choke collars. Prongs dig into the skin. It hurts and causes discomfort. This is how it works. It hurts and causes the dog to work to make it stop. This is how it suppresses behavior and non-compliance. Choke collars do exactly what they say. They choke the dog. They cut off blood supply by constricting the air way and pressing against the sensitive close to the surface of the skin in the neck area. Front attach harnesses until his leash skills and behavior improves work better and don't cause any fall out from punishment.

People will argue with me on this to justify the use of choke and prong collars but this is how they work. They cause undue discomfort and pain. If they merely tickled, then they wouldn't work, now would they? If you touched the burner and it hurt, you would stop. If you touched the burner and it didn't hurt, why would you stop?

Grisha Stewart's BAT (Behavioral Adjustment Training) sounds PERFECT for this dog. I'd give it a try. Start at their Yahoo group. They can also recommend books. http://functionalrewards.com/yahoo-group/

You can also try LAT. It's counter conditioning. It stands for Look At That. It's a game. You teach the dog to look at something neutral and then mark and reward. Once they catch onto the concept of looking at what you point to, you move onto pointing to what causes them to react. Then you mark and reward for calm behavior. This changes the association of the subject in the dog's opinion. They associate what they were once uncomfortable with with the reward of getting a treat. Or a toy, or a ear scratch, or whatever else they truly find rewarding. Here's a video showing how. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdraNF2hcgA

Dogs are associative learners. That's why counter conditioning works so well to build new, positive associations. That's also why using corrections is so counter productive. They associate the corrections with whatever they're looking at or experiencing.

They cut off blood supply by constricting the air way and pressing against the sensitive nerves close to the surface of the skin in the neck area.

Handymac has provided some very good advice. In fact, EXCELLENT! I read it over several times and didn't see any reference to torturing the OP's dog by misusing choke or prong collars, cutting off air supply, or wounding any dog's neck.

Dogs are not people and they are not children. They are dogs. Some people may prefer to waste their time by reasoning with a dog to convince it to behave correctly, while some of us will cut to the chase and simply train our dogs. A dog who knows what is expected of him, and trusts his handler to provide consistent positive and negative reinforcement, is a happy and confident dog.

A collar is merely a means of communicating with our dog. When walking, the handler should be the focus of the dog's attention. There are a variety of progressive exercises that one can do to maintain that focus, therefore limiting distractions and reactivity. Trust develops when the dog learns that his handler will keep him safe from the bogeymen that inhabit the world outside his own yard.

Just my opinion, but I think the dog in the OP needs lots and lots of leash time At least an hour a day, maybe two. Dogs just don't get enough exercise and stimulation when confined in a yard and left on their own.

I've given the OP my advice. I'm not here to argue with self-proclaimed experts who, in reality, have no idea what they're talking about. Behavior is a science. It's time it's given credit and approached as such. You can have a dog who complies because you're a good teacher and use valid science based methods or because they're acting out of avoidance of your violent overtures. It's your choice what you want to be. Good teacher or tyrannical dictator. Unfortunately, it's not the dog's choice who they end up with.

Giving leash corrections to a fearful dog expressing their fear makes absolutely no sense. A collar is not a means of communication. A collar is to hold identification. If you think that yanking a dog around by their neck, choking them and driving spikes into their skin is acceptable, then something is very wrong. Those are some quite violent ambitions indicative of a violent personality.

I'm through here. I hope the OP goes with sound advice, not the advice of ego-maniacs who think that their dogs actually view them as "alphas".

Nowhere did I even mention any kind of corrective collar equipment. In fact, all of my advice is for non violent methods. I do not believe in punitive training simply because basic non violent corrective methods produce much longer lasting behavior modification because those methods develop trust and affection between the dog and human instead of obedience due to fear.

I watched the video on Grisha Stewart's BAT site, and was totally appalled that anyone who purports to be a professional dog trainer would allow her dog to wander about at will at the end of its leash on a public sidewalk. Not only does she fail to provide any leadership and guidance to a dog with known issues, she exhibits a total disregard for anyone else who would potentially wish to use the same pathway. There are much more effective and safer ways to deal with dogs with fear problems.

Dog training is not taught through TV or words. You can learn training philosophy that way, but not training.

I don't think HandyMac was necessarily the target of MsMinn's views on dog collars. A thread on what is the best harness started out with paragraphs on opinions, then went into page long opinions on training vs collars/harnesses. I suggested we continue with short opinions of collars and harnesses, and leave the long philosophical discussions to another thread.

Lisa, I don't have cable, if the Dog Whisperer is a cable show. I watched 'Dogs in the City' several times, but understand its off the air.

In fact, today I was working with a dog with serious leash reactive issues thanks to the prong collar his ex-owner used to put him on. Today, I walked him on a harness alone with no pressure on his neck via any collar at all and the different was stark. I see this ALL the time. You'd be surprised the difference a simple harness can make on walks. Front attach if it's a strong dog learning leash manners.

Then we had to work on counter conditioning him to his triggers. We focused on curing the cause for the problem behaviors and the symptoms clear up when the reason for them is fixed. Yanking on the dog's neck isn't going to cure the cause, only suppress. Suppression is dangerous. You're silencing communication.

I was at the vet the other day and there were two labs from different owners on prongs. Both were over stimulated and didn't feel the pain from the prongs digging in. Therefore, the prong collars didn't work because the pain wasn't great enough to get the dogs to work to make it stop. They could seriously have injured themselves. Prongs have been known to puncture the skin, even when those caps are put on. The prongs go through them and then skin too.

Choke collars constrict the airway and compress the fragile nerves and blood vessels at the base of the skull. This cuts off blood and oxygen to the brain. Some dogs have a high tolerance for this and will cause serious injuries to themselves or pull until they pass out. The choke collar, when placed or hiked up to under the ears can break the hyoid bone. This is a very fragile bone prone that's prone to becoming infected when broken. Breakage of this bone is said to be extremely painful. This is actually how they determine when a corpse has been strangled during autopsies. They look for the broken hyoid bone.

This isn't a philosophical debate. It's fact. Up to date, peer reviewed behavior journals and studies don't lie. And these materials, lectures, seminars, text books, and other scientific resources are what I go on. Not television shows or outdated information. It's applied behavior analysis. It's a science.

If you're going to use these collars, you might as well know what they do.

You asked for advice about the dog's reactivity. I was just offering what I thought would help.

My advice for getting a dogs attention via collar is equivalent to a tap on the shoulder with a pinky finger. In fact, an observer should not be able to see the correction. The Hey! along with the correction is so very soon, the leash correction is not even necessary.

Working with severely scared/timid dogs is often better done with a harness than a collar anyway. It just depends on the individual dog, since a harness can often encourage a dog to pull.

Either way, it takes much more than just a leash or collar to properly control/train a dog. And there is more than one way to skin a grape.

In addition to LAT and BAT, it's also very important to teach a cue for eye contact. I use "Look!". Others use "Watch me!", or whatever. On walks, rewarding auto check ins (when the dog makes direct eye contact with you or comes up to you without being prompted) and manual check ins (when you prompt it via your cue word) is very important and helpful. It makes sure that the dog is keeping you in mind and is ready to take direction.

I do the eye contact thing a little different, but it is an important part of being in control.

The local library was selling off half their books, I guess for the new digital era. So I bought all the dog books for fifty cents each. My overall favorite for learning about dog behavior is:
'DogSpeak' by Bash Dibra

The books on dog breeds were helpful too. Saw a vocal and not too friendly dog in the pet store. The owner claimed she didn't know what it is. Looked like a Karolian Bear Laika, in retrospect. Notice how folks always give the less dangerous breed and skip the more dangerous breed of their mix when you ask?

One of these I read when I was 12 yrs old (I'll be 50 this year) - its called "So you are going to get a puppy"

It's an old book. But I learned a lot from reading it. It's "old school" but still great advice.

Another is more recent but a great read and called "How to Speak Dog".

I recommend both highly - old and new - with some sound advice.

Dogs have three basic modes of communication. Body action, sound, and smell. When working with a dog, when the person understands the first two, the person has a much better understanding on what dogs do when they do what they do.

And knowing body language is paramount to stopping unwanted actions before they start----which is a much preferable way to train/retrain/rehabilitate a dog. That is basically the same as defensive driving---make sure you do not get into a bad situation with a car.