Phobias, innate suspicion and lack of socialization in dogs often appear with similar characteristics. The dog may appear to be frightened of strangers, objects, sounds, unknown animals etc.
Suspicion, phobia and lack of socialization are three completely different things even though they appear to be similar. They often coexist. Meaning we may have a dog that becomes phobic out of lack of socialization or a dog with innate phobia and lack of socialization. An experienced dog trainer will get the dog's history , will expose the dog to new environments objects and more and will evaluate the dog by carefully reading his body language.
Depending on the dog's history, pace of adjustment to new environments and the dog's behaviour , an experienced dog trainer will tell if the dog is truly phobic or not. It is more often than not that dog owners lacking knowledge and experience, call a dog phobic and based on that judgment they will try and train their dog, help him overcome his “phobias”.
The problem is, the approach should be completely different towards a suspicious or purely socialized dog than that of a phobic dog. Choosing the wrong approach means we will never achieve the desired results and there is a possibility to create problems that were not there in the first place.
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