The word "timid" is defined as "lacking in courage or self-confidence" according to Merriam-Webster Online. When you rescue a dog from an animal shelter or foster home that is labeled timid, or if you notice that he or she is in fact quite shy and slightly nervous in the company of others, then you need to take certain steps to create a suitable home environment to avoid doing any harm to your new pet. After all, you want to give your dog the best life possible, and no two dogs are exactly the same. What works for one dog may not work for the next; the point is, you need to understand your dog's personality before deciding on how to assimilate him or her into your home.
It is important that you get some background information on your pet before you take any further action. Was he or she abused in another home? Did the dog get moved around from owner to owner more than three or four times? Is the dog afraid of other dogs because he or she is smaller than most of them, or was picked on by others during its stay at a shelter? All of these are questions that you should ask the previous owner or caretaker of your new pet, because it will explain some things for you, such as why your dog is afraid of people or why you shouldn't take your dog for a ride in the car for an extended period of time. Every piece of information you have about your pet is another piece of ammunition that you can use to fight your dog's shyness.
Adjusting a dog to living with others and enabling him or her to trust you as a new owner is a gradual process; do not try to rush it by overwhelming your dog with a surprise "house-warming" party the very day it arrives at your home. You don't want to scare your dog too much by having a myriad of people wall wanting to hold it, handing the dog off from person to person that he or she doesn't know, and making too much noise around it. Respect your dog's timid nature and give it some time to learn its way around your house, get adjusted to your daily schedule, and most importantly, to get to know you as an owner.
Living with a rather timid dog myself, I know how important trust is to a pet. When a pet is bounced around from home to shelter to foster home, he or she never truly knows who is going to be taking care of him or her next, or whether or not the current owner will be the owner for much longer. Oddly enough, pets who have not had the same owner for more than a third of their lives at a time or who have been abandoned will form the idea in their heads that when an owner leaves to go to work, he or she may never come back. This is pretty logical, so to avoid further traumatizing your dog, try to spend as much time as possible with it. You should allow your dog to sit in your lap if he or she is small enough so that he or she can feel closer to you and get the idea that you're the most important person in its life. Building a good bond of trust with your timid pet is crucial to giving it the best life possible.
Yet, steps will still need to be taken to ensure that your dog's shyness doesn't get in the way of its everyday life. For example, lets say your dog flinches every time you try to attach its leash to its collar. This could be for a number of reasons; your dog may in fact have been hit by a human hand, could have almost gotten strangled on a leash, or had another horrible experience involving either a hand or a leash. To accommodate this, don't make any sudden movements around your dog, but move slowly and make your intentions as clear as possible. Even if you're afraid that you'll look like an idiot, slowly explain that you are taking your dog for a walk to "go potty." Move slowly and with clear intentions in order to rewrite your dog's reactions to certain situations.
Gradually, you want to allow your dog to have contact with other dogs and humans. If you have small children, try to get them to play with the rescued dog, but tell them to be calm and gentile with it. Your dog needs to understand that playing with other dogs and children is a fun experience, not a serious competition for survival. Dogs need to have trust in their peers as well, and yes, I just referred to human children as being the peers of dogs, which is frankly a compliment seeing as dogs mature much faster and don't cry nearly as often as humans, not to mention their other skills. As far as getting your dog to know other dogs goes, use the one at a time method: have your dog play with another dog in the neighborhood for a few weeks before including another friend in the play dates. This way, your dog gets accustomed to having company around without becoming overwhelmed and scared.
That being said, do not constantly try to pick up your dog or chase it around the house in order to do so. Granted that this mostly applies to little children, you don't want to scare your dog into thinking that you want to catch it and hold it against its will, not to mention associating human contact with being "captured" or interrupted during the day. You want your dog to think positively of humans, not run away from them because of fear and resentment.
When it comes time to feed your dog, this may be tricky. In some scenarios, dogs have to compete for their food extensively at shelters because of a lack of adequate individual attention. Your dog may have a hard time believing that you aren't out to steal its food, so it might either run away from its food if you are standing too close to it, believing the you will fight him or her for it, or may eat too quickly and run away, making itself sick in the process. Try to convince your dog that no one is going to take its meal by slowly setting down the plate and using words such as: "dinner" and "eat." Consequently, your dog may become aggressive if you have another dog, even if their food is in two different bowls, so you may want to space out where your dogs are being fed to avoid any competition.
Give your dog a safe home with safe people, and it may slowly become less timid and nervous in the company of others. Really, the best way to sum all of this up is to just be kind and generous to your timid rescue dog. Remember, slow and steady wins the race. You cannot expect to break-in your dog to its new life by making sudden adjustments. In fact, that would be counter-productive because change scares dogs. If you make your changes gradually enough, your dog will have nothing to fear.