Now, the remarkable thing about dogs is their adaptability, and this fantastic dog (lets call him Rover) has grown into a great family pet - apart from his noise fear. This is not just a problem for the dog, but it had reached the stage where walking the dog was a problem - he'd almost turned agoraphobic.
Anyhow, this served to remind me that it may be a help for prospective new puppy owners to make sure that they get good advice when buying a new puppy. The best age to get your puppy is about 7 weeks. At this stage they are still open to learning lots of new things and also they don't FEEL fear (to much).
Please don't be persuaded to get a puppy that's been brought up in a farm byre, and also make sure they're around 7 weeks old.
For more information on understanding your puppy, please see this link
And for lots of free puppy training tips, please look at the puppy pages here.