I see what you mean. In that case, having something like a target spot and a long down-stay might make her feel more safe and secure. Not an expert, but I would probably ask people NOT to go over and pet her there. Let it be her safe spot.
I think my dog’s indoor barking is a combination of wanting to protect me and of fear, because after the person comes in, she typically withdraws and sits quietly (“Okay, I’m not getting too close to you.”).
Dog trainer…with work it will be fine.
I have a rescue which has been with us for 5 months. He’s about 9 months at this point. He doesn’t like men in general, and still will growl and bark at H. He’s 40 lbs and a springer/border collie mix. He has never ever moved past the bark growl and fur rising level.
I am working with a great dog whisperer. Here’s what I’ve learned in a nut shell.
This dog will most likely always have a fear/concern about men.
this dog will most likely always be heavily bonded to only one person.
This dog is fearful and is hiding it under the bluster of being a big tough bully.
Here’s what we do…
He is on a drag leash at all times right now. It’s a leash he wears in the house that’s about 10 feet long. It’s easy to do corrections by simply stepping on the leash, no need to grab a collar or chase him - ever.
We tried verbal corrections, flooding therapy, isolation therapy - all with limited positive results.
The saving grace has been a firm and solid 'sit,down’STAY". The conversation between myself and the dog being " I would never ask you to ‘stay’ if it were unsafe (or if I was unsafe). If I tell you to stay, you will be fine - even if the big bad thing (husband, paper bag, hula hoop, towel having on chair) is in the area. When I tell you to STAY, you are safe, you WILL be calm, you will remain PUT and you will (given enough time) relax. You WILL NOT MOVE until I say so.
It is a long PITA to get this to be a solid behavior.
It has been a life saver (literally)
Like a kid, correct the behavior and redirect.
Barking? Firm No!
Now do something else. Let’s practice sit, stay, come. GOOD DOG!
Another good redirect is scenting objects. Dog’s brains have a TON of resources dedicated to smell. And that might be part of following the other dog…butt smell is fascinating to a dog. What can I say? They have weird culture.
Key is to redirect after the unwanted behavior is stopped.
Let’s stop barking and start thinking about these weird smelling objects mom just pulled out of a box, and is letting me smell. Maybe the other dog would like to smell them, too. This one smells like the ocean. This one smells like birds.
This one smells like cats. This one smells like a different family member. Hmmm…interesting, we’re hanging out smelling weird things together, but not barking and following.
Ok, now we’re on leashes together doing a little obedience. We’re both being expected to behave. We’re doing that sit, stay thing again.
Now, mom is going to make me stay, while the other dog is allowed to walk around free. Now the other dog has to stay while I’m allowed to walk around free.
Barking? Firm No!
Now let’s redirect.
Spray a little citronella in the air. What the heck is that? My nose is exploding…what IS that???
Ok, I have to sit, and stay and come again.
Instead of once a month…we’re going to invite our dog friend over once a week…desensitize…desensitize…desensitize…
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Following and butt smelling is a natural dog behavior. But we can be trained not to be obsessed with it.
Actually, firm "no"s do not work for dogs who are afraid. It can make them more afraid and actually reinforce the bad behavior.
Just like a “firm no” doesn’t work with dogs who are experiencing anxiety. They associate whatever they are afraid of with your negative reaction. It’s counter-productive.
Sure, firm nos work for some things and some dogs, but yelling “no” at a child who is crying because they’re afraid isn’t going to get the child to stop either.
What @MaryGJ did sounds a lot like what we did except that I’d describe ours as gentle no and instead of redirecting toward a scent I redirected the dog toward me. The “no” was often more like a “Pst!” and was just a method of interrupting the behavior before it got going. In our dog’s case she would start a low growl before she exploded into barking. If we stopped it immediately I could get her to focus on me and I could talk her through the approach and departure of the (to her) interloper. The dog was still aware someone she was nervous about was near but as she had more and more such events without any negative reinforcement, e.g., no dog barking back, and with positive reinforcement from me, she became much more comfortable and we were able to start approaching passersby under controlled conditions. Eventually she became fully comfortable with people on the street. We did have to retrain twice after dogs barked at her (she has an invisible fence so she’s out on her own) but those sessions only took a couple of days.
I think part of what may have worked was reinforcing that I was the boss, and as such I would keep her safe, not the other way around. When I was working with her I forced her to look at me instead of the passersby and I only allowed her out in my presence. I wonder if your illness has given your dog the sense that she needs to take over as pack leader. You may want to have the trainer give you some exercises to reinforce your dominant position. Little things like eating before you feed the dog and not letting her up on the furniture can send a signal about who’s the boss.
I think the trainer is an excellent idea. A good trainer can really help you to understand your dog and what motivates her.
Interview the dog trainer before hiring. Ask if you can watch them work with other dogs. At a minimum they should be a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT). If they are a graduate of the San Francisco Academy for Dog Trainers in Behavioral Counseling, great, that is considered a premier school.
My daughter’s dog is a mix. We had given her the doggy DNA test for Christmas just for fun. It was useful when it came to trying to figure out what his instincts were telling him to do.
edited: He is barky at the door and after people come in. We have started instructing people to not look at or acknowledge him. We don’t call out in excited voices “Hey So glad to see you!”; instead we speak in a soft monotone that other people think it is fun to imitate. Bringing the emotion down at door time has helped but it has not been a cure.
You can tell a lot about a dog trainer by how they interact with your dog. When we got a second dog we hired a trainer for a single session to make sure we integrated the new dog into the household without causing problems with our existing dog. It was money very well spent and it was clear from the start she could control our dogs while making them feel safe and comfortable.
While she was at our house she gave us some tips on dog training in general. My favorite was “Reward your dog when they’re doing what you want.” It seems like a a total no-brainer, but how any of us do it? We tend to reward them for certain things like coming or lying down on command but we also tend to reward bad behavior like petting them to distract them from bothering visitors or giving them treats when they ask. Our existing dog was doing a little begging at the table even though we didn’t reward it directly with food. The trainer showed us that the easiest way to stop it was to, at random times in the day, throw him a little treat when he was lying down being good and calm. Instead of begging he learned to lie down away from the table when we were eating. That one simple tip was worth the trainer’s fee.
I suspect it is fear aggression and it can happen down the line. We have 2 dogs we adopted last year that just turned 1 (litter mates), and their reactions to things evolve, often in ways that seem to make no sense. The female when we first got her we considered the devil dog, she was barking a lot, was kind of hyper, very aggressive in some ways (but a sweet dog), kept trying to dig her way out of the yard, etc, while her brother was kind of the surfer dude dog, and with the female she wasn’t afraid of anything.
At 1 year, they have changed. The male is still a big goofball (I think is a Rob Gronkowski dog, big, handsome dum dum with not a mean bone in his body) but he has turned more aggressive, especially with barking (squirrels are public enemy number 1, but he will bark at a leaf falling). He also has gone from being a NYC dog, sleeping late (while the female wanted to get up early), now he gets us up early and she wants to sleep later. She has become more timid from being a bull in a china closet,she shies away from strangers while the male is a happy idiot,loves everyone.
Some of it is developmental I suspect but others are likely right, that your dog has some bad memories that are being triggered, it could be around smokers, or could be because they had a bad experience with men. With our female some of her problems were when a pup she was a mess, she had parvo and spent time in an animal hospital (they were rescues from Lousiana and the rescue group must have spent a fortune on them, as we did post adoption as well, they had everything, both had parvo, worms, mange, you name it) and I think that may be part of her fears.
With barking, one thing experts like the Cesar guy say is not to get excited about it, but rather to get between them and what they are barking at and make it seem like it is no big deal.When you yell “no” or say “no barking” in an excited voice, they associate that with danger (or in the case of our male dog, knowing he got a rise out of us, I think he is in his equivalent to human teen years) and it will make them bark more. One thing that likely will happen is that as they become aclimitized to more and more people, dogs tend to calm down, and your dog is still young. Seeing a behavorist is a great idea, they likely will help you figure out the triggers, and know also as they get older dogs do mellow, at least a bit 
Allie Brosh used to write some pretty funny comics about her adventures in dog obedience:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html
The best one (by far) is “The Helper Dog Is An (expletive deleted but it begins with an A if you want to look it up in her book)”. That one isn’t online, but it’s about trying to train the dog mentioned in the moving comic.
My personal experience having lived with dogs all my life is that sometimes they just get an idea in their heads, and it can be really difficult to train it out of them, and sometimes age brings insanity (like people). We have a 14 year old miniature poodle who has good days and bad days. On good days she loves everyone and is wiggly and fun, on bad days she’s like a tiny Cujo with a perm and we have to keep her shut in the laundry room where she throws herself against the door trying to kill the people she was perfectly nice to the day before.
Luckily she only weighs 12 lbs so we can manage her this way, but it sucks and I won’t be sorry when she finally passes away, because it’s super stressful and it can’t be fixed (according to the vet and several trainers). She also randomly attacks our other dog (a 7 lb chihuahua mix who is the most laid back lovey dovey dude ever), and I have to keep them separated when I don’t have my eye on her. Again, sucks. I hope you’re able to have a better outcome.
My Cav gets very distressed when he smells smoke (like from a chiminea.) He starts pacing around the house with tail down. I asked my vet if it was a sign of trauma - perhaps from being in a fire. She said nope - just a dogs instinct to danger kicking in.
Thank you all so much again. In a way, it is comforting to know that I am not alone in having these problems. I was beginning to feel like a bad furmomma and that I had somehow let her down by not raising her right. I think I’m doing the right thing for all of us by getting a trainer.
The trainer is coming to do a free consultation on Monday. He said he wants to see how she reacts to him and then is going to do some things including taking her history, seeing how we interact with her, etc. He then said he’d show us how he works with dogs (with his own dog). I don’t know if that means he’ll show us a video or actually have his dog here.
Just the fact that he is giving us a free consultation makes me feel better about him than many of the others I researched. (My dad used to be a self-employed plumber and he adamantly believed that consultations should always be free. I’m sure my reaction stems from that.)
I can’t remember if I added this somewhere, but I also want his help to get her to be better on a leash. Our usual tactics haven’t worked with her and I simply can’t walk her because I don’t have the strength if she pulls. I really want to be able to walk her.
One of the things really going in her favor is that she LOVES to please us. She is not food or treat motivated, and hasn’t been since we adopted her, but she is a ham for praise. She is also very dumb so she doesn’t catch on to things quite as quickly as most dogs… but that’s ok, we’re patient
We’ve also started some training that I found online for how to get her to come to us when she sees a dog outside rather than barking. She is starting to get it and you can see the gears working in her brain that she knows she shouldn’t bark but that she also really wants to bark. In just a week or so, there has been a big improvement.
So many dogs wouldn’t wind up abandoned or in shelters if they just took the time and care to train (owner and pet). Kudos to you, romani, for actively finding a solution that will help your pup.
Thanks, CD. I am a firm believer that (with the exception of extreme circumstances of course) when you take in an animal, you are making a promise to that animal that you will do whatever you need to to make their lives comfortable. We’ve fostered several dogs (though unfortunately, not since I’ve gotten sick) but we don’t do aggressive behavior modification. We do anxiety and socialization but if they show signs of aggression, the foster dogs go to specialized foster homes. That’s why I’m quite lost in this territory.
She is my baby. I don’t want her to be scared. That is more important to me than even the barking and whatnot. I don’t want her to be afraid of people we bring in.
It is amazing how many rescue dogs are afraid of men. 
I have a chow mix who definately guards me. One important thing I have learned is that when a welcome visitor comes to the house I approach them (happily) and touch them…shake hands or hug. Sometimes I even say “I’m going to shake your hand so the dog knows you are ok.”
I always greet someone at the door in a very friendly way, and ask the person if he/she would like to give the dog a cookie. Giving her a cookie upon entering the house was always a family ritual – even if we were coming back from the mailbox at the end of the driveway. We called it “her due.” By having a visitor give her a cookie, it reassured our girl that this was a friendly person who we considered safe. She’d happily take the cookie, go off to eat it, and not give the visitor another thought.
Caveat: she was the least alpha dog on the planet. The only time she was territorial was once we put the Invisible Fence in the yard. At that point, we figured that it established her territory, and she would bark to define it more so than defending it. That, or she wanted everyone walking their dogs to stop and say hello – or the UPS guy to toss a treat as he drove by.
Just like second children, I am sure the next dog we adopt will train us in entirely different ways.
My dog has never accepted food from strangers which is fine by me.