Dog scared of traffic and barking at people on walks - help!

Well, I am having quite a time of it with Bella just now
I have just taken her for a walk around the street. Now inexplanation she normally gets most of her walks in fields or woods(where she is mostly off-lead), with short walks down very quiet roads to get there. She is being lead walked at the moment as she was speyed 2 days ago so is on restricted excercise.(although you would never know from her behaviour, going mad and trying to leap around the house!)
I decided to walk her down the main street through the village, which though a small road was fairly busy.And I realise just how TOTALLY scared of traffic she is
She was really on edge, tail between her legs, very jumpy, and when we passed a woman and she had a real bark at her, hackles up and all. This is so not like her.
We have had her from 6 months old (she has now just turned 1) and I feel that she wasn't really well socialised in her previous home. And I realise that I haven't helped by never really walking her around traffic . But I thought I was doing good letting her run around fields and woods etc !We do go to the park with the kids, and she is fine there with dogs, children,other people etc...so I think the barking was because she was so on edge/scared?
I have taken her training classes and she did great.She knows sit, down,stay etc and I am clicker training her now too and will be starting agility in a couple of months (when she's all healed)
I am so shocked how she barked at that lady
How can I firstly get her used to traffic and road walking and secondly encourage her not to bark at passers by?
Please help.....with that and trying to stop her leaping round and riping her stitches I am feeling a bit of a rubbish doggy owner.

Well this is all new and scary for her. I`d each her the `watch me` command, ( hold a treat, say words, give dog treat) till she looks at you automatically. Little and often is best for teaching. This will get her attention on you when a possibly tense situation looms. Which makes it easier to control her.
For now I`d go on short, quiet walks - loads of confident body language and praise. When she`s better you can extend it to slightly busier places, but take it at her pace.
And don`t worry - this is a fairly common problem.

We're currently going through it with Cain as he was completely unsocialised before we got him and everything is scary and he reacts in a fear agrresive manner by barking and raising his hackles. I can't really give any good advice as we're still very much learning! But our dog trainers have put us on a programme of gentle desensitisation. Regular short walks exposing him at a low level to things and gently building it up. Whenever I walk past a person I bring Cain in close to my leg and walk past the person briskly with purpose. I also try to position myself between the stranger and the dog. I've found that when I meander along Cain feels like he has to take control (being part GSD it's in his breed) and be the protector, however when I take the lead and act confident past the people, he is far less reactive. He's made huge leaps in a few short weeks

ClaireandDaisy's idea with the "watch me" command is a great one. As I said, I can't really advise as I'm no expert and our methods may not work for your dog, but thought I'd share and say I know what it's like

Willow wasn't keen on traffic when I first started walking her a month or so after we got her. (She came here with a broken leg which later had to be removed - probably from chasing a car.)

I used to walk her down to the road and sit with her feeding her portions of her meals (then dried food). Gradually she relaxed more and more about it. Now she only has the occasional bark and dive at the odd motorbike or ambulance/fire engine with the sirens going. If I see one of these coming I ask for a sit and treat her.

Still, if she was off lead near traffic I've no doubt she'd be trying to chase it down.

Perhaps try something similar with your dog, starting off with quieter roads and gradually slightly busier ones. Once a more relaxed attitude is there you could ask people walking past to drop a few treats you give them for her and gradually build it up to taking treats from strangers.

Baby steps. Best of luck,

We went through this with Bruce he even used to dive through hedges to get away from the cars...dragging me behind him.

To solve the problems I started with five mins walk at a time, lots of nice treats in my pocket and much much praise with every car that went by that he didn't OTT react to, if he did OTT I just stopped walking, talked softly calmly and told him...OK OK relax...

not that he understood, but he got used to the quietness of my voice and my calmness he calmed down

as time went on we extended the road walks and took in road walks at night too as the cars are alot different at night, keeping tastey treats in my closed hand but near his nose so I kept his attention, it took a what seemed a long time with patience, but I walk him day and night now and he just doesn't bother anymore about any of the traffic or people

best of luck

I would like to echo what has been said already. The same principal often works for many other problems too........i.e., instead of the dog being scared of traffic/crotchety with other dogs/nervous of strangers etc. etc., you can gradually teach it that all these things actually mean that something nice happens in the form of a treat, and eventually with patience the dog will happily ignore everything and just look up at you for the titbit.

Just make sure that you get your timing right, and don't reward the wrong behaviour.

Thanks for the replies.I am going to try some of the tips.At least with the fields and woods being off limits for a while it gives me a chance to work on street walks!
I will definitely start on quieter roads, and build up gradually. I did have treats with me, and tried to reinforce her seeming quiet/calmer, but she wasn't even interested in the treat(not really that food motivated at the best of times...sigh )but I will work on it....will try higher value treats tomorrow
She does know "watch" and I did try it to get her to focus on me, but she was so wound up she didn't seem to be responding to me...Will keep trying...
Still, I'm sure we will get there....
Her background is very hazy, we were lied to I think a lot by the people we rehomed her from ....but she is such a wonderful dog and I so want to give her the best lief
Must admit, despite months of research before getting her it is still such a learning curve .....but also must say that if I had known how wonderful owning a dog was I would have got one years ago !

as well as making your treats better, just dont feed her before her session

Cain was too wound up around dogs to focus on me or treats at all, he'd totally ignore chicken being waved under his nose - it could have been the best treat in the world but it just wasn't motivating enough to override his fixation on the stimulus. What we did in this case (on advice from our dog trainers) was to keep exposure very low and brief and end the session BEFORE he got a chance to react and keep it entirely positive. We needed to take control and never give him a chance to react negatively. So we'd walk up to another dog, if calm he could have a two second sniff then we'd turn around and walk off with a cheery "good boy!". Slowly we increased the exposure time as his stress threshold increased to tolerate more. Do try some super scrummy treats but some things are just far more interesting/scary/stimulating than any treat. If treats don't work, perhaps just try keeping everything as short and positive as possible. Good luck

Hi,

You've had some great suggestions from people and teaching the "watch me" command worked for me too - although my dogs aren't afraid of traffic fortunately.

Keep persevering and you'll see results quite quickly. And NO - you're not a rubbish doggy owner. You did what you thought was right at the time. You haven't done anythign to hurt your dog but have jsut taken her on a different sort of walk until now. Ther's nothing wrong with that.
Round where I live people here hardly ever take their dogs anywhere other than just 10 minutes round the block. They don't get the freedom of running abuot in fields or in the park. Havng said that - they most certainly are rubbish doggy owners.

Start off slowly and work up to the very busy roads. There's no time limit so take it slowly and you'll have no problems at all. In no time you'll wonder why you were so worried.

Laura xx