Fearful of other dogs

My dog is the same exact way!  I have read, Scaredy Dog and The Cautious Canine.  I can't remember who wrote which and I think there's more to the titles.. gee I'm a great help!  loll.  but they gave me some ideas for working towards more enjoyment while on leash.  He may never "like" other strange dogs, but that's ok.  For us, it's just being able to go for a nice walk without hysterics anytime another dog walks past us.

Both books are short and inexpensive too.

My lab, Sassy, is the same way.  I wonder if it was a lack of socialization too since we rescued her at about 2-3 y.o. and have no idea of her past.  I also think some dogs are just inherently less friendly.  I decided that it was too risky to take chances with her, so I do my best to keep her safely at a distance from other dogs.  I make it pretty clear to anyone approaching us that she's got some fear aggression and they usually back off quickly.  As Leslie indicated, some dogs just aren't going to like other dogs and we have to work with that.  As much as I'd love to, I could never ever imagine taking Sassy to a dog park.

I know he'll never really get along with other dogs, but I would at least like to be able to walk by a dog on the other side of the street without him making a scene [:'(]  I've tried to distract him with treats but he doesn't care about them when he's on a walk.  Sometimes he's ok and will just raise his hackles and pretend the other dog's not there, but sometimes he just goes nuts.  I try to stay away from other dogs as much as I can, but even still it's sometimes a little difficult.  I was at a park the other day walking him and we saw another dog coming towards us farther up on the trail so I stepped about 5 feet off the trail (it was in the woods so I couldn't have gone much farther), and you'd think that would be a pretty good indication to the oncoming people that I was trying to keep my dog away from theirs, but of course they didn't pay any attention to what their dogs were doing when they walked by and of course one of their dogs decided to come off the trail and check us out.  Of course Cairo snapped at him, whereas he would have been fine if the other dog had stayed away.  Sometimes people just aggravate me. [:@]

Nikki - I know exactly what you mean about people acting clueless.  I'm sure it doesn't help Sassy's fear level when I'm thinking "oh my gosh, they're going to let that dog come right up to us" and getting panicky.  I posted recently about being at the vet and some guy letting his bulldog wander around mauling all the dogs in the waiting room and then heading my way.  I actually backed Sassy up in the corner of the room and blocked the dog from getting near her.  The guy looked at me like I was nuts, but I didn't care. 

My Sierra actually does the exact same thing.
When another dog approaches, she'll sniff for a second or two, hackles raised, then she'll bark, lunge, and growl. Sometimes, if the dog is a fair distance away, she will ignore it (with hackles raised).

I also think she's scared of the other dogs. When she was about 6 months old, I was outside with my parents, and I had Sierra on a tie-out in the front yard. She was being good, keeping us company.  Then the neighbours came outside with their dog. Their dog's a Border Collie, and a very aggressive one at that (both with humans and dogs). They never leash the dog, and once it saw Sierra, it came running across the street and attacked her. I'm fairly confident that this incident is the root of her problems.
Unfortunately, my parents neighbors still have the BC, and it is still never leashed.
The exact same situation happened last summer again, but this time Sierra actually caused injury to the neighbors dog.

Like you, my options are very limited as to finding other friendly dogs that we could work with. My solution, so far, has just been to avoid dog parks and common dog-walking areas. I do (of course) give her walks often but when I see another dog, I pick up my pace and get as far away from them as possible.

Sorry I'm no help, but at least you know you're not the only one battling this problem.

Well it definitely helps knowing that I'm not the only one.  It's always so sad going by the dog park and seeing all the dogs running around and playing together, happy as can be and I just wish my dogs would do the same.  At the very least I want them to be able to tolerate walking by other dogs without stirring anything up.  This is what I've come up with so far as a sort of solution: 
 
I'm working on training my dog a command I call "Fall Back", and have been incredibly surprised at how fast he picked up on it, even though it makes sense that he would.  While I'm walking him I have him on a retractable leash because I like the extra exercise it gives him as he likes to run all over the place whereas if I had him on a shorter leash he's stuck right next to me.  Mind you, I do have him heel occasionally for practice so his obedience doesn't get rusty.  The Fall Back means that he can wander anywhere he darn well wants as long as it's behind me.  That way if I see an obstacle up ahead like a little kid or a dog I'm not sure how he'd react to, I tell him to 'fall back' and he will, giving me the upper hand.  I like it better than just 'heel' because he can still run around and explore, but I can control him better (and it helps me stay calm when he's not charging ahead) when I know he's safe behind me.  It also works wonders for enforcing dominance, which is another of his little issues, having a dominant personality.  Not long ago he'd charge around everywhere on his leash with his tail waving wildly up in the air...after learning 'fall back' he walks along very nicely with his tail at half height and often chooses to walk beside me instead of racing ahead.  I also give him the 'ok' to go on ahead if I decide it's all right so he doesn't get too discouraged for having to lag behind all the time.  So far it's worked great and I've really only just started working with him like that.  He learned 'fall back' almost instantaneously which was pretty surprising, but I guess in the wild that's how wolves move - alpha in front, then beta, then middle guys, and so on, so I suppose it makes sense.
 
I know there are ways of working with them to help them get over fear though, which is what I would really prefer over anything else.  I know he'll never be perfectly comfortable with other dogs, but someday I would like him to be tolerant of them.  I'm just afraid it's going to take an expensive professional trainer to do it, which I'm not sure my parents will be too happy about.  So if anyone has some success stories they'd like to share, please do...I'd love to hear if it's even possible []