In the past I have considered adding another dog to our family but our current dog can get very anxious and is a sensitive soul. I just wondered , from those of you who have had a sensitive/anxious dog, do you think it’s born into the dog or learned.
I’m not sure if another dog would make our current dog more confident, or if it would learn from our current dog and become anxious/sensitive.
Any experience welcomed.

It's a bit of both.

Fear is often genetic, so in most cases, a fearful or anxious dog will have a inbuilt component to that behaviour.  There is also the possibility that if the mother had a very stressful experience or environment during pregnancy, the pups are much less able to effectively handle stress once born and as they grow.

But, experience also plays its part, with some anxiety based behaviours being triggered or gradually built up through bad experiences or poor handling (depending on the issue).

And for a third option, medical stuff can trigger anxiety too, particularly pain and it doesn't necessarily resolve with the removal of the medical issue.  For example - my oldie became frightened of fireworks and thunder at 8 years old, because her painkillers for her back pain stopped doing the job.  That was resolved very quickly, but the noise issue took about 3 years to go away again (with work).

Whether a newbie would adopt anxious behaviours depends on the newbie - the best way to prevent it if getting a puppy is (as I'm sure you'll know) to go to a breeder who does everything right, and selects for temperament as well as everything else.  Pups with a solid temperament background in their ancestry are much, much more likely to resist adopting anxious behaviour, and to bounce back from bad experiences.  If looking at an adult, look for a confident one!  A good way to do that would be to look at rescues who use foster homes for their charges, so you can get a good assessment of how the dog is in a home.  On the whole, I find that bringing adults in is less of a risk for behaviours being passed on, because pups are little sponges for that stuff.  It's not set in stone either way, though.  It also depends on what the issues are - a newbie of any age might give your dog confidence and help ease the anxieties!

I met my dogs mum and she bounded in to meet us, no fear or anxiety there. I didn’t meet dad but he is shown, so used to being at shows, gone over and all that showing entails.
The breeder was a good breeder IMO and everything was done properly.
My dog is very sensitive I think, extremely noise sensitive. Her first bonfire night aged 8 months passed without a problem but they became a problem after that. Because the door occasionally bangs in our house when it’s windy, she is nervous of the wind. We live rurally and any shooting sets her off, even though they are a mile or so away.
When she was a pup on one of her first walks she fell down a grid, we assumed she would walk around it, now she won’t walk over anything like a grid in the road or pavement. And that was over 8 years ago !

I meant to add, do you think anxiety can be picked up and learned from a human ?

Yes, in some cases we can influence it as well.  People often talk about how it's transferred down the lead and that is true (although not necessarily the mechanics of it) - if we are twitchy then our dogs pick up on it.  And vice versa, I find!

It sounds like you may have just gotten an odd one out as it were then.  It happens sometimes, that a litter can be fine and well bred, nice sound parents but one or two pups are sensitive.  My mali is one.  Lovely parents, well bred, but she isn't wired right.

Nature, or nurture eh.   A big percentage of why a dog is fearful is genetic.  But how the puppy is handled also plays a part.   Buying in another dog could be the making of a fearful dog, but you could also end up with two less than outgoing dogs!   I'd always tend to avoid buying from a litter who wasn't reared in a family environment where from a very early age, the puppy gets used to hearing the everyday noises of a household, from the dishwasher/washing machine to the vacuum etc.

> I meant to add, do you think anxiety can be picked up and learned from a human ?

Definitely, my own breed, silkens, are pretty bombproof, go anywhere, do anything dogs, but they're also very sensitive to their owners moods. I only know two who are slightly anxious dogs and in both cases their Mums are quite nervous, anxious people. It can't be a coincidence.

I would choose a breed that is generally bombproof, so not a collie for example, every collie I've owned has been terrified of fireworks, thunder etc and generally if something upsets them it would take an awful lot of work to get them to go near that thing again. As a sweeping generalisation gundogs by definition are less nervy/jumpy/sensitive whatever you want to call it.

I would also find a breeder who not only breeds for temperament but also does the super puppy exercises if possible. Roughly speaking it's a process of very slightly stressing baby puppies, which in turn makes them much less likely to be stressed as adults. One of mine came from a breeder who does these exercises and he's awesome, his whole litter are, nothing phases him 

Just an aside, how bizarre is that website I've linked to! I just googled super puppy exercises and chose it for it's video, but then I started to look around the site, check out the 'trained' dogs for $20,000!!! It's a lot of money for dogs that really aren't trained to do anything well

My 1st GSD was fine till he was about 2,  he used to sit on the doorstep to watch the village firework display across the road. 

Then he developed an extreme noise sensitivity mainly when out, the car was safe but nowhere else so he dragged me out of a petshop and onto a busy road when the resident Jack Russel yapped at him - the car was across the road!  At an exemption show an empty freight train about ¾ mile away was rattling and clanking so he got in through the car window - only about 1/3 open. Took daughter pushing and me pulling to get him out 2 hrs later for a pee before goig home, stopped obedience class as other peoples dumbells landing on wooden floor caused freak-out, etc etc.
He had total panic attacks with copious drooling, feet leaving big wet paw marks and totally unresponsive to treats.

Vet at the time was really good, took Zigi up and it was something Martin had seen once before. did blood tests and put him on large daily dose of Collocal D till results came back. It worked.
The balance of Calcium and Phosphate was totally out, diagnosis was a non functioning parathyroid. We talked it over and as Martin said why pull the dog about doing expensive tests to try and find out why when it won't alter the diagnosis or treatment.
Zigi had blood tests every 2 weeks then monthly, 3 monthly then bring him up if anything changes but you know him so just juggle the dose when you need. He was also on daily Vit D liquid.

We lost Zigi at nearly 9 due to CDRM :-( but he was on collocal till the end.

In my experience it is 99.9 % genetics and only if the gene (whatever it is) causing the anxiety is present will the dog be affected by "normal" bad experiences (i.e. not extreme situations that few encounter), including being influenced by other dogs. With one exception: It seems to me that people either have only dogs that are all OTT noise sensitive eg. fireworks, thunder etc, or none at all, and that there it is very much copied. It's been about 40 years since I last had a dog worried by such sounds, including gunshots, and that includes past dogs I've had that had real problems with anxiety. They just don't worry about loud bangs ever. Don't even prick their ears up. I have (touchwood) managed to breed out the weak temperaments.

I suffer terribly from anxiety myself, in fact I have panic disorder so I regularly have fullblown panic attacks, in particular if people appear outside the house uninvited. If my husband is at home in such a situation, the dogs are fine. If he is out, my Malinois assistance dog will guard a LOT, really meaning business, and my little Poodle will come to me and sit with me and basically look after me. Two very different dogs and also very different roles. (The Poodle is not a qualified assistance dog and I'm unsure if she will be as I'm not able to go to training classes now.) Then the moment my husband arrives home, both dogs relax as they know that I will be okay. Neither of them could be described as anything but very confident, very much people loving (and the Poodle loves all animals too) yet they haven't been affected by my behaviour -thankfully.

> It seems to me that people either have only dogs that are all OTT noise sensitive eg. fireworks, thunder etc, or none at all

Oh that's strange, I've always had a mixture, because I've always had sighthounds (none of whom have cared at all about fireworks, thunder, loud bangs) and border collies (all of whom were noise phobic), I've always assumed sound sensitivity/phobia is genetic.

My Dad always used to say that only intelligent dogs were frightened of strange noises

That's intriguing! I know for definite that littermates of dogs that I have owned but not bred have been noise sensitive when mine were not, and also some pups I have sold have been but not any I have kept from the same litters. How odd!

I think the question of nature versus nurture in complicated traits like temperament is almost always much more complicated than a black/white answer.

I’ve always been told that the dam influences the temperaments of the pups far more than the sire does because she brings them up (nurture). I also believe from studying videos of my own boy before I got him that some aspects of personality are shaped by the relationships with siblings - his brother and sister were far more bonded to each other than to him and almost teamed up together to push him out where food or mum’s milk or attention were concerned, and I’m convinced this is the root of why he can display resource guarding behaviours at times.

Certainly pups are going to learn from each other and mum and any other animals or people they have contact with.

On the other hand the experiments they did with silver foxes showed that if you just breed from the friendliest (or most aggressive) individuals each generation it doesn’t take long for the temperament to change completely from the original generation with no training or habituation taking place at all. There has to be a large genetic component there. (Interestingly some physical characteristics consistently popped up in the “friendly” group, such as white patches and floppy ears.)

It’s likely that whatever the genetic components of temperament are, there isn’t a gene that says “this pup will be anxious about loud noises”. It will be more like the pup has a tendency to physically respond more by producing hormones like adrenalin which makes it more prone to react in a fearful or anxious way, but other things will have influence as well (such as recovery time, curiosity, how secure the attachment to mum or owner is, if the environment is new or familiar, etc).

Back to my boy, he was attacked by a dog three weeks ago, badly enough to need staples to close a wound on his chest. He was absolutely terrified at the time, but hasn’t shown anything but enthusiasm and friendliness towards other dogs since, just as he was before. No fear of dogs at all. But I tried to teach him to go round a cone the other night for foundation agility and once the cone moved a bit and his lead made a tiny sound touching it, he was done. No way did he want to go too close to that cone after that! And he’s convinced that brushes are going to eat him after I very slightly pulled his ear fur while grooming the other day - and I definitely didn’t cause anything him other than slight discomfort.

Doesn’t turn a hair at fireworks, or thunder, or loud motorbikes. Neighbours children playing loudly in the garden? Barking fit. I don’t understand why some things set some dogs off but not others, or why one dog can be brave about big scary things but freak out at small ones.

I’m not convinced that a confident dog will become anxious because it starts living with an anxious dog. But for a dog that’s more prone to nervousness, having an anxious role model might push it over the edge. But it might not. It’s complicated.

> I don’t understand why some things set some dogs off but not others, or why one dog can be brave about big scary things but freak out at small ones.

That's no different to us - just different personalities.  Same reason that some people are frightened of spiders and others aren't, but those others might be frightened of dogs or heights instead.

The whole thing is complicated Because your current dog can be anxious and sensitive due to genetic. Or maybe he has some traumatic experience. If you are worried about getting a new dog and it can be influenced by the current dog, then you don't need to worry. Because it can be vice versa. Maybe your current dog can get influenced and he will become confident. You cant know anything before you are in the situation. And that's why I have said this whole situation is complicated.

Yup.  It depends on the particular anxieties too.  My older boy is prone to separation anxiety, and can be taken into a relapse by the other dogs, if they bark.  It's happened twice with new additions - previously only to the degree that he barked and howled for a couple of minutes after I left (and everyone else, too) but this time around, it was a full on, square-one relapse, barking and panic for the duration of my absence and I'm 7 months into retraining.

By contrast, my bridge girl who had multiple anxieties and phobias with both a strong genetic and experience base to them was never impacted in that way by a new addition.