This may be a bit long, so I apologize in advance! My family adopted a new dog on Saturday. He's somewhere around 1.5 years old, is a cattle dog/bull terrier mix, and weighs around 48 pounds. He's very sweet, extremely submissive, and overall we're very excited to have him as a part of our family.

The problem we're having thusfar is that he's very scared and anxious - about everything. He can't walk past the cat in the house (she is 8 pounds and does not swipe at him). He won't really go to the bathroom outside because any noise (a car, someone's voice, a dog barking, birds) freaks him out to the point where he tucks his tail and tries to run. He's petrified of going inside of the house once he's outside; we think this is because his foster parents kept him in an outdoor pen, and he's not used to being allowed inside of the house. He won't eat his food unless the bowl is in his crate, but he's so scared being inside that he won't walk down the hallway to get to his crate. We keep the crate in a bedroom so that he's near someone at night when he sleeps, which helps him be less anxious.

His fear leads to some problems. When he is inside, he runs circles around the living room. He basically jumps on the chair, jumps from the chair to the couch, jumps over the couch to the loveseat, jumps back, gets down, runs to the chair, etc. My parents don't mind him sitting on the couch but they don't like him jumping everywhere. He is afraid of his toys, especially the squeaky ones, so he won't go near them, but he does chew everything else that he can get his mouth on. He often jumps on people because he wants to be held. If it's time to feed him, I sometimes have to carry him down the hallway to his crate; the same at night. He weighs 48 pounds so sometimes it can be a little much. He either doesn't know any commands (sit, stay, leave it, drop it, wait) or chooses not to listen to them.

My parents are frustrated and I know the dog can sense that, which just makes everybody more agitated. I try and be a little more relaxed with him; I know he's scared and everything is new. I'm firm but gentle; when he's running all over, I'll sometimes sit down and pull him into my lap. Once he's laying down, or sitting, he's fine. He relaxes, although noises still startle him a bit. We're most likely going to hire an actual dog trainer, but what I wanted to know is:

• Is there any type of training or behavior modification techniques that I can implement at home now before we hire someone? Is there any type of training which can calm him down a little / has anybody had experience with this before? And finally, how do you train a dog - or even have him do simple commands like sit - if he doesn't like treats and you aren't sure how to reward him?

Tl;dr: Our new dog is untrained and super nervous. We're going to hire a professional but are there any training techniques that I can try at home now to help calm him down?