Terrified of park Benches...wtf? - Page 1

So I have a very nice, very confident high drive bitch that has never shown fear of almost anything. Her nerves are pretty solid though she  can be just a little nervy sometimes in new situations given the right or rather wrong settings. Anyways we were working her around some enviroments and we approached a park bench it turns out that for no reason I can think of she is deathly terrified of benches. I have no idea what could have caused this but she acted like I never had seen her before bucking and pulling away like her life depended on it. I did not push it too much but want to hear if there are some ideas I could consider.

Overall I am not concerned she did approach it to sniff it quickly before stepping back so long as she was not pulled towards it and like I said is a very confident dog. I have a couple ideas like playing tug near it to get her past it but wanted to know if anyone else had ideas I could try. Thank you :)

I haven't ever had a dog scared of them but you can try very small pieces of raw meat or hotdog on it. just let her go find the meat on her own but don't lay the meat while she's watching.
you can take her to the park a few times a day if you want to and just see if that makes it better. then eventually sit on the bench and just feed her all around it.
maybe there is some scent on it. I would try different park benches and feed her. my dog has high food drive. I would try food first.
good luck

Fenrir, out of curiousity, how old is your girl?   Regardless of her age, though, there's simply no way to tell why the park bench posed such a threat to her upon encountering it...maybe a really pungent vagrant slept on it the night before, and it was an assault on her sensitive sniffer, or maybe the notion of a couch-like piece of furniture set in the Outside seemed Twilight Zone time to her....until you teach her to speak English, or we get better at understanding Doglish, the trigger will remain a mystery.

If she's food driven, I'd toss some really choice bits of it around, and then on, the bench itself, but unlike matthews3662, I'd let her see me toss the food--I don't think you really want her learning to scarf down any random thing she finds lying around near a park bench, so IMO it's better that she sees it coming from you directly as you encourage her to get the food.  If she's more driven for the toy, the tug idea is a good one, and in addition to playing tug *near* the bench, I'd also see if I couldn't entice her to put her feet up *on* the bench, too, by luring her with the tug toy.  If she's basically a solid-nerved gal who just got thrown a bit by the stench of a derelict or a couch showing up in the Outside, it shouldn't take much for her to tune out the bench in favor of targeting either the food or the tug. 

Sit on the bench.

A fearless dog might be cautious but would also be curious.

She is a year old, I have heard this is a fear stage in their lives. I did sit on the bench and she would pull away and buck if I put any tension on her leash if I just let her chill she would come up to it and sniff it and then lay down kind of near it but still very weary of it

try a different bench.

First thing that popped into my head, was "hotdogs", too! That should take care of that in no time, lol.

And you should just sit on it, (the bench) and read a book, stop feeding her your fears. While reading, sit on her leash, and when she eventually settles down, is relaxed, then praise her.

Did you call that company that sold you the dog?