Rescued GSD afraid of everything

by Jason
(Carbon)

My fiance and I rescued a (vet guessing) 3 year old GSD. He is black and tan and well to say the least afraid of everything.

To start from the beginning we were moving in to a new house and I always had dogs growing up and wanted another GSD, she was bitten in the face at a young age and was afraid of dogs.

I wanted a puppy - an all white GSD puppy but after being at a house (I am a Computer Field Tech) that was part of a GSD rescue group i suggested we rescue one instead, she was not to keen on it but agreed, so i started to look for GSD's in my local area to help, one day after searching the internet for about a week i found our new dog. only one problem he was afraid of people.

Growing up with dogs I am not afraid of any dog but she was. So I went alone first to see how bad he was with stranger and well the guy at the pound said no one can get close to him, it took him 2 weeks to get close to the dog which they named bandit. Later on we found out why we should have left that his name...

The guy at the pound opened the cage and Bandit (which we renamed wickett...think of the bear like things from star wars) sat in the corner and wouldnt move and just growled under his breath at me. right then and there i knew i needed to save this dog. So i sent my fiance to see him and wouldnt you know it wickett ran right to her and melted her heart. no question about it he chose her, which is good because thats one of the reasons we got him to protect her.

Now to the problem other than my fiance he is afrraid of everything, for example the wind, tables, vacum cleaners, people, pillows, non carpeted floors, doors, his food bowl if you touch it while he is watching, he also doesnt take food from us or anyone, if we try to give him a bone he runs away and waits for you to drop it then he will take it when your not looking. all this while he is in the house.

If he is outside he is not afraid of anything but other people. He walks great on the leash right next to you doesnt pull at all, loves car rides too. I want to train him but he is to afraid when i tell him to sit he puts his ears down and his tail between his legs. I cant motivate him with food because he wont take it from me. I want to help him get over his fears and slowly he is getting better he doesnt seem to be afraid of me anymore. But he will not take food from me or my fiance treats nothing.

Please any help would be great - no GSD should live in this kind of fear ever. Now the story of why wickett should have been called bandit, after we got him and a few months had pasted we noticed that we started to only have 1 sock and no more pairs, well 1 night my fiance was watching t.v. and she noticed the dog was sneaking out of the room and followed him, low and behold he stole one of her socks and was laying with it.

where the rest ended up no one knows, since then after laughing at him he no longer does it when no one is looking now he just sneaks over and grabs the sock then runs with it like a bank robber being chased by cops. he doesnt chew them he just lays with them then they disappear. If you can help me or have suggestions please let me know.

P.S. he lets my fiance do anything to him as you can tell from the picture...he has about 6 costumes, 7 coats\vests, and a pair of boots... yes i said boots and he wears them too.