Hi all, first time posting here although I've been reading for a long time! Always find the information on here interesting and useful so thought I would be brave and ask a quick question. Really hope this is in the right place...
Am currently owned by a 19 month old weim and a 13 year old swedish valhund, along with hubby and child. Question is about the Weim.

She's an amazing girl, comes everywhere with us. Loves to camp and we're taking her to France with us this year. As a family pet I cannot fault her. But she's had some fairly unpleasant experiences with other dogs in the past, which have left her a little timid. Hard to explain, she's well socialised and has lots of canine friends we see regularly, best buddies are another weim and a gordon setter.

She approaches other dogs she knows without fear, will just ignore others mostly. But if another dog approaches her, especially if they approach at speed, she panics and hides behind my husband (who usually walks her). If there's a number of dogs together she will approach them or be approached but she is very submissive.

She does usually get over it and then will play happily, has never shown even the slightest hint of aggression towards another dog apart from to tell it off if it plays too rough!

The real issue was recently with a dog - who we have seen before and try to avoid - that ran at her, then into her (fortunately she wasn't hurt), but she just legged it and the other dog chased her and would not stop. The owner thought it was funny... but I asked her to call her dog back because otherwise ours just wouldn't come back to us. She wasn't far away (she rarely goes out of sight and returns at a whistle usually), hiding behind a familiar basset hound...!

We've tried not to reinforce her fear and try to ignore her behaviour and praise her when she plays well. She seems to cope most of the time but I want her to enjoy everything to the full, with confidence, as I know a weim should! So my question is how can we help her? Is there anything we can do to build her confidence?
Any advice is very welcome. And sorry for the long post.

Hi Katien,
I have 4 weims, 4 & 6 year old bitches and 2 year old litter brothers. The difference in acceptance/fear of other dogs out on our walks is amazing. The dogs are OK, sometimes they are very protective of their bitches but that is another matter. The bitches on the other hand can sometimes be an absolute nightmare, completely unpredicatable, will they play, be submissive or hide behind me.
I personally think it is in the personality of the individual dog. Weimy bitches can be very very clingy, far more than other dogs.
I would try and avoid the type of situation that you know your girl will react, perhaps putting her on lead with gentle encouragement. Try and avoid contact with the type of owner that laughs off their dogs behaviour have no regard for the effect their charge has on others, difficult to do i know but the damage done to your girl is more important.
You always go back to basics with her, go along to your local ringcraft class, she will meet and greet all ttypes of dogs, great therapy for socialisation and learning doggy manners.

Hi gummy,

Thanks for that, what a lovely lot of weims! It's good to hear she's not alone in her ways, there are a few other weimys where we walk her and she is the most timid of them, including the girls, so I couldn't help but worry. We're steering well clear of some particular situations, especially those with owners who think that kind of behaviour is amusing. We've been considering going back to basics so thanks for confirming that it's a good idea.

Hi,

Is her recall good in all other situations including distractions?  If not I would do some work on that, in lots of different situations.  I would do as your doing and lots of reinforcing when she is brave and has a nice play.  I wouldn't worry about her choosing to go behind your legs, infact it's a good thing that she feels safe and that you'll protect her.  Much better that she chooses to do that than to run off when scared.

I would also work on rewarding her for looking at dogs when out and about on walks, so if she sees a dog immediately say "good" and reward her with something yummy.  I'm sure she'll start seeing dogs and looking to you for her reward quite quickly.  This should start to build up a good association with ther dogs aswell.  I would do this when dogs are a distance away to start with so that you're not inadvertently rewarding her if she's is maybe a bit worried by a new dog being too close.  Hopefully as her confidence improves you can reward for dogs that are closer and closer.

Always try and stay as relaxed as you can so that she doesn't sense any tenseness from you.  It's also good to keep her busy and keep her brain occupied on walks so that she doesn't have time to worry about thing.  Lots of training and fun games.  She sounds like a lovely girl :-)

Just to add to above as couldn't edit - if when's she's being chased she is terribly frightened it may be very hard for her to respond to a recall anyway as she won't be thinking clearly and has obviously gone into flight mode - just didn't want you to think I was saying her recall wasn't good.  However if you work on all the rest and build up her confidence and she does have a spot on recall, it is much easier.

Also wander if taking her to some well run/organised reward based training classes may help build her confidence, where she could learn that being around other dogs can be safe and also to get her to focus on you in the presence of other dogs.  Sports such as agility can often build an insecure dogs confidence up aswell, again it would have to be a well organised one as if dogs off lead in that environment were allowed to run up to her it could work in the opposite way.  Good luck.

i have a springer who is now ten months. however the first 9 months were the hardest i have ever had with any dog. she was so timid and petrified of eveything inc people. i had been taking her to training since 12 weeks and by 8 months i still could not get her to come out from under the chair. i was starting to get really fustrated with her. however this last month after being extremely patient at dog training she has finally started to come around. is there not an obedience class you could take her to which would help to get her used to being around other dogs. also i think i read you had another dog too. do you take them out separatly as i found mags ( my timid dog) was relying on my other dog to much. so we started to take them out seperately.

Try not to over worry, I think that most bitches of all breeds at this particular age group are extremely submissive to other dogs it is a built in survival technique especially around male dogs, if she did not act this way she could be in big trouble with other dogs, it is not just young testosterone charged dogs that others will attack, but bitches can also be in danger, she knows this and is taking the sensible route which for a bitch is to either roll over submissively or run, it is not an abnormal behaviour, she is just doing what is best to keep herself safe, unfortunatley dogs do and will continue to have their own language and what she is doing is just a part of it.

Just keep re-inforcing her recall as already said, and continue to give the evil eye to those dog owners who think it funny to let their dog chase her, 'tut, tut' bet they wouldn't like it? :-(

She will improve and become more confident with age as she matures she will either learn to tell a dog where to go, give her own stance and body language of 'don't mess with me!', ignore, or give out other friendly dog signals, wag of tail etc. Allow her to learn all of this naturally.

Keep her safe and attack free and she will be ok and grow out of this. :-)

I agree with everything Carrington says. To me your young girl seems perfectly normal, acting in just the right way for her age. Remember, at 19 months, she's still a very young female, with not a lot of "say" in the dog world. At the moment she's using her submissive bodylanguage as a way of staying out of trouble. With age you'll see her get more and more selfconfident.
I would more or less let her keep on interacting with other dogs in her own way. After her next season I think you'll start noticing a change in her behaviour anyway :-D
Good luck,
Karen

Thanks to everyone for their helpful responses. It's reassuring to hear that we don't really have anything to worry about, I think that we were just spooked by the recent encounter I mentioned when she just ran away... she hadn't done it before...and the owner of the dog wasn't very complimentary about how timid she was. It was foolish of me to listen to her!

Oh, and to answer one of the questions posed, Tilly (the weim) is walked alone. Our other dog, the Valhund, is 13 years old and suffering a little from old age. As much as she'd love to run with the weim she suffers for it afterwards!

As I said, I can't really fault her in any other way so we will take the advice given and continue to reinforce her good behaviour and see how she matures. Thanks again everyone.