my staffy jakey is fine when you take him for a walk in the daylight but as soon as he is taken for a walk mid evening he is scared of his own shadow, any sound e.g. wind in the trees, cars backfiring etc. He is really excited when you mention walkies and always wants to go out until he is actually there. Is there anything we can do to try and stop this, he is the same on the lead as off.Only he does nots get let off the lead at night anymore incase anything spooks him and he runs off.

thanks
alison 

How old is he?

do you do anything to comfort him / reassure him that everything is ok ? a 1min stoke when he is scared or a cuddle will do him the world of good if he is only young. If he is a re homed dog he may have had some bad experiances in the past.

Wrong, Roswell! If you stroke a scared dog to 'reassure' it, you are in fact praising it for displaying fearful behaviour, and it will repeat it more often.

Think dog, not human! It's a fault we all have.
:)

My pup went through something very similar at 5 months old all of a sudden everything scared him if it was dark, we just cheered as if whatever scared him was great and sometimes stopped and played a game for a couple of minutes until he'd calmed down. He's fine now at 7 months but it really worried us at the time.

Steve

he is nearly 2 he is a rehomed dog, we have had him about 8 months. he is very confident otherwise. tonight he heard a car backfire and bolted for all he was worth trying to choke his self in the process. we do talk to him when he looks scared. in the day you would think he was a different dog. he is also very friendly and soft, so i suppose it might just be his nature.

Hi Alison,
    Maybe something happened to scare him in the dark in the past, before you had him.  If he starts acting jumpy, I would just jolly him along - use a light matter of fact tone, so that he knows you are not worried, and ignore his jumpy behaviour.  As has been said, if you stroke him or try and tell him it's okay, etc, he will just think he's doing right by being scared.  You may find it is just him - I had a dog who was scared of the dark for no apparent reason - if anyone was out walking they would get growled at through fear - yet no probs in daytime.  I'd had this dog since little, and never encouraged his fear, so you just don't know sometimes.  Especially with your dog having been rehomed - my rescue dog still hates going in the car nearly 9 years on!
  Hilda

Have you had his eyes tested he might have on going eye disease.

My rescue dog does that sometimes.  We just tell him not to be so silly and lie down and he's fine.  If you show him that there is nothing to be afraid of he'll come round.  It has taken us about 18 months but it did the trick and he's not so jumpy.  He hardly notices the fireworks now.  The most he does is prick his ears and looks at you to see what your reaction is.  We just ignore them (as best we can) and he's fine and goes back to dozing in front of the fire.

and fireworks were an absolute nightmare. one night i was in the bath and he tried to get behind the toilet cistern. we have to have the telly up loud and someone always has to stay in with him

You can do a search here on the Forum for FIREWORKS and get some idea of what others have done to try and combat the problem. I agree with the other posters though ..one of the first things a scared dog does is look at its owner.....if you ignore him completely , carry on doing exactly what you were doing and don't look at him or touch him , he will gradually realise that there is nothing to be scared of

Melody :)