My husband, two young girls, and I recently adopted a skipperke. He is six months old and the last of the litter to leave. He was outside with his mom and a lab. The family had no children. Now he is inside with us and terrified. He finds a spot and stays there until you move him. He does eat but only at night when we are sleeping. You can hold him without him trying to get away but as soon as you put him down he's finding somewhere to hide. It has been almost a week. Will he ever be able to adjust or are we just traumatizing him. We have a pug but they show little intrest in each other. I want this to work. Can someone help?

Give the poor little soul time. From what you say he's been taken from his safe environment into an alien one, where everything is new. He's several weeks past the 'window of opportunity' for easiest learning that new things aren't dangerous (that window closes at about 16 weeks) so everything new that he ever sees will be alarming for some time until he learns to trust it.

Basically the poor little thing is terrified out of his mind. Let him learn in his own time - whatever you do don't push him too fast or his mental development will go into reverse. See how he is in three months, if you carry on your life almost as if he wasn't there (obviously you'll be feeding, walking and grooming him!).

Please email me on Schipperke5@hotmail.com, I help with breed rescue as well as breed and show schipperkes so have some experience of this sort of behaviour and problem with them.

It will take time and a lot of patience as this little chap sounds like he's not had a whole lot of socialisation and is terrified of everything he's meeting now so he needs to learn that all these noises and strange smells etc are ok and might even be fun in the long run.  Have you spoken with his breeder about this problem and asked for suggestions on how to deal with it, such as introducing him to the house a bit at a time ie just the one room to start with where he can learn to feel safe with people coming and going?  Schipperkes are 'supposed',I don't allow mine to be aloof have to say, to be naturally aloof with strangers and can take a bit to accept new situations

I am still working on a male I bred who was returned at Xmas due to a change of circumstances who had not had enough socialisation after he left us at 10 wks, he did the same but had to be muzzled too until he got used to the other dogs, which took about 2 days but even now 4mths down the line he's still a nervous dog who occassionally has a fear aggression problem with other dogs outside of our home pack.  This was a very confident little chap who had been in cars, around children, other dogs, cats, out to the vets, markets and crate trained before he left but without the right handling they can become frightened and stressed, so don't expect too much too soon from him it's going to take time.