Hi folks. I've been training Caius more and more commands with both intervals of treats or positive touch (e.g. petting, stroking) lately. I've noticed whenever I try to reach out to pet him for doing a good job of listening to me, he suddenly backs away like I'm going to do something bad. He does this quite often. The only time he allows people to touch him is if he's essentially laying down, or comes to you. My boyfriend and I have never, ever hurt him along with anyone else that has come into contact with him.

Caius does this at the dog park, too. He'll approach strangers in a friendly manner, sometimes even jump on them (ugh, trying to teach him not to!), but as soon as they lean down to pet him, he backs away suddenly and runs off to do other things. It also makes it very difficult to get in range of him to actually grab his collar to go home from the dog park, so we end up tricking him with a toy to sit in front of us, and I put the leash on him that way.

Any ideas why he does this? I can't really explain it. You would think he would enjoy being touched. :p