My fearful goldendoodle, Brian!

Hi all

First time poster here. In fact I just joined the site to post this question about my concern with my almost-5 month old goldendoodle. He is just the sweetest thing you will ever meet, extremely social with people and with kids all around my neighborhood. We got him when he was 8 weeks old from a really good breeder of labradoodles and goldendoodles in the northern virginia area. This is my family's first dog ever, it has been a learning experience and a really fun time with him for all of us over the last 3 months.

The problem I'm having with him is that (I feel) he seems to be a little too scared of many many things around him. This is just my feeling because I notice other dogs at puppy school who aren't as scared as him. I diligently crate-trained him and he was house broken really fast. He is a very loving dog and wants to be cuddled every day when i get back from work. But here are the things that concern me.

Right from Day 1, hes been an excited (or submissive?) piddler. He always piddles a little every time he meets someone new (or someone he hasn't seen in a couple of days). He also does this consistently when he meets other dogs (even slightly bigger than him) on our walks. For a long time (over 2 months) he never even entered a narrow hallway in our home that led to our garage, and he refused to enter the garage from the outside (driveway). That has gotten better off-late, but he's still a little cautious and looks into the garage as the door goes up, before deciding to follow me in. To this day however, he hasn't entered the den/study (which we usually keep closed because we don't use it much ourselves). But even when the door's open, he refuses to walk in. When walking along the sidewalk, he will cautiously avoid walking over the black manhole covers, and he will never get off the curb if its from right above the storm-water drain (I guess he's afraid of the big hole leading to nowhere!). He's afraid of any vehicle thats bigger than a SUV and will try to run back towards the house or in the other direction if he sees the mail van or ups truck or anything that size. He's afraid of running lawnmowers and will not go anywhere near even the other side of the street from where it's being used. Even when we go on long walks outside our immediate subdivision, he walks most of the time constantly sniffing the grass as if hes trying to scope out the area to make sure its safe for him to walk. If he had his way, he would just turn back towards the house. Never have seen him walking for a prolonged period of time with his head held up, looking around. He was really afraid for a long time to climb into the back seat of my car, but its gotten better now, but I still have to park on my driveway and get him out of the car, because if I drive into the garage and try to get him to climb out, he gets scared (cramped space and darker I guess?)! Oh, and he still doesn't know how to (or is scared to?) climb up the stairs in our house to come upstairs. Once I just carried him up after trying with treats for well over half an hour. He was ok after he was carried upstairs and just walked around everywhere exploring the area, but then again, refused to climb down, so after a long time trying to coax him to climb down with treats on every step, I just ended up carrying him down.

I may be just paranoid here, being overly concerned abt his fearful nature, but I don't know if dogs his age (5 months) are supposed to be this cautious with so many things? What can I do to help him get over his fear of so many things? Will targeted training with a professional trainer help with this? We went for a series of 6 puppy classes at a petco here, and I was able to teach him Sit, Down and some basic commands because of that. I don't want him to be an overly extroverted dog not afraid of absolutely anything, because its kind of good with his passive nature because we have a 2 year old son, and its been getting a lot better off-late to let them both loose with each other in the house, and not having to worry much about him jumping up on my son trying to play with him like he's another puppy (which used to happen a lot earlier).

My fearful goldendoodle, Brian!

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