Question

Our Great Dane will be 3 years old in November '09. For the most part he is a friendly, easy going, healthy Dane now, after being quite sick as a puppy (hospitalized 2 times for bloat, hospitalized for pneumonia once, and lastly he got the operation that tacked his stomach wall so that he wouldn't fully bloat again in the future). This all happened in the first year that we had him. Since then his health has been amazing. He lives with me and my fiance and our other two dogs (7-year-old Golden Retriever and 5-year-old Black Lab/other mix). All 3 dogs get on like a house on fire. The Dane and the Lab are best buddies while the Retriever is more of a lone wolf. Not sure if this is because he's the oldest, or it's just a personality trait. We have however some pretty significant behavioral issues with the Great Dane. Since we got him as a puppy at 3-months old, he's had a tremendous fear of people. He's great with other dogs, but with people, he's terrified and will not allow anyone to get near him. I should note that we don't walk our dogs on lead on a regular basis. We take our dogs to a large off-leash park in the city that is typically empty, or may have another 4 or 5 dogs max in the park. We go to the same park every day, and every so often we take them to a beach off-leash park as a treat. I realize that we're probably not helping matters in that we're not walking them on lead every day (Cesar Milan's #1 theory on having dogs and being a good pack leader is to walk them on lead and demonstrate your pack leadership). I'm not sure if our issue relates to the fact that we don't walk them on lead every day therefore establishing a good pack leader role for ourselves or not, but at the moment we're only going to an off-leash park twice per day with the dogs. When we're at the park with the 3 dogs, the Dane very rarely relaxes. He is constantly scanning the park for people. If another dog owner approaches us, he backs away and always makes sure there is at least 10 feet between him and the person. He's almost never let anyone else touch him other than us. At the same time, he's extremely curious about people at the park. If someone walks through the park, the Dane will circle around behind the people (always keeping at minimum a 10-20 foot distance) and he'll sniff the air behind them to "check them out". If the person turns around to say hello to him, he'll simply turn around and run back to where we're standing. He doesn't bark, he just moves away. Likewise, when people come into our home for a visit, he'll initially bark. We can get him to stop barking fairly well, but again, he won't let anyone get near him, he won't lie down to relax, essentially he's always on his guard when there's anyone else in the home other than me and my partner. He gets highly stressed when someone else comes into our home. We have one friend in particular who comes over to visit for an hour or so at least 3-4 times per week. Even given that the Dane's been socialized to this person for more than 2 years on a weekly basis, he still won't go near that person and he's always on guard as he is in the park. He's never let this friend touch him, ever. Mainly his fear is not aggressive. On a couple of occasions when someone tried valiantly to get near him he started to show a little bit of aggression, but in general I wouldn't categorize it as fear aggression, although I understand that this could potentially turn into fear aggression if we don't get it worked out. We've tried to tell people "no eye contact, no touch, no sound" when they meet our Dane both at home as well as at the park. But that doesn't seem to change his behaviour. We've tried giving people handfuls of treats and have them toss them at the Dane without making eye contact. That doesn't seem to work well either. The Dane is too busy keeping his eye on the person to reach down and eat the treat and the other two dogs jump in and scoop up the treat from under him. He doesn't seem to care. He's too worried about that new person in the house. We don't really know what to do. We're frustrated because when it's just the 5 of us, he's completely and totally an affectionate, lovable dog, (probably more affectionate than the other two) yet no one else other than us can actually receive that same amount of affection and love. Overall, we're just sad that he's so afraid of everyone and unable to relax if anyone else is around. We want him to be with other people the way he is with us. Lastly, I said that he's great with other dogs. This seems to apply to all dogs other than Great Danes. When we meet another Dane at the park, he refuses to warm up to them. And he has exhibited a bit of aggressiveness with other Danes, but never with another breed of dog. As a puppy he loved playing with all other dogs except Danes. Now that he's 3, he doesn't really play much with any other dogs at the park because he's constantly scanning and sniffing around his environment to see if anyone else is coming along. He'll sometimes play a bit with the ball and the other 2 dogs in the park, but this only lasts for a couple of seconds. Then he's back to scanning the park and sniffing around, completely unrelaxed. Can you help?