Many people automatically assume if a dog acts fearful, it has been abused. But this is often not the case. There are several things which can cause a dog to behave fearfully. When you adopt a dog, unless your vet finds a medical reason (and yes their are medical reasons as well as medications which can cause such behavior), it is hard to know what the cause is.

The most common cause is genetic, not abuse. Temperament id highly heritable and hard to breed out of a line.

Then there is lack of stranger human contact before 13 weeks of age. Scott and Fuller did years of studies at the Jackson Behavioral Institute where they determined amongst other things, the critical periods in a dog's life. What they termed the socialization period begins 1 to 2 days before week three and lasts through week 13. Puppies having minimal human contact during that time, or only contact with the household; will become shy of people.

Then there are medical reasons and medicine side effects.

And finally there is trauma such as abuse. One way you can determine whether or not the dog has inherited a good temperament but do to trauma is behaving skittishly, is whether it becomes confident within a matter of weeks once the dog is physically well and in a good environment. A healthy dog with a confident inherited temperament, and who was socialized as a pup; will bounce back from even extreme trauma.

A horror scene is seeing a dog that has gotten loose and d**gging the chain. Unfortunately, a dog that has lived on the end of a chain will be difficult to catch, they seem to want to make up for the lost time while on the chain, plus, living on a chain, they've never learned to respond when called.

I drove a truck for many years. I often traveled the same route for months on end. One day while traveling by a house that I had traveled by often, and had noticed a dog kept on a chain, I saw that the dog was loose and d**gging the chain.

He had gone across the road and was checking out a field. I stopped my truck, fortunately, it wasn't a busy road. It's a medium size dog and didn't seem unfriendly, however, a bit afraid of me when I attempted to approach.

It wouldn't let me get close enough to get ahold of the chain but didn't run off either. I decided to sit down with my back to it and waited. It didn't take long before it came up behind me, sniffed me a bit and then was all licks and wagging of the tail.

I petted and fussed over it for a while and then led it back to the residence and secured it to a nearby fence. Later in the afternoon when passing by again, I stopped and informed the women that answered the door what had occurred, and where I had secured the dog. No one had noticed the dog wasn't where it's supposed to be.