Category: Top Dog

Hello,

TLDR; Can I train my puppy at 9 weeks or too early? Why does Graeme Sims say to not train until 6 months?

I have a 9 week old Chihuahua pup, I have read Graeme Sims The Dog Whisperer (Not Graeme Hall – but is he any good?), I am also reading Sue Ailsby's Training Manuals – I have bought both, and Dr Sophia Yins – How to Behave so your Dog Behaves.

My intention is to train her (Mouse is her name) to be an assistance dog – to remind me to take my medication and other memory based things such as paying for parking when I park the car and if possible some triggers when around my Diabetic son as I struggle to remember things I need to do.

I understand to just start with the basics so it will just be working through Sue A's levels slowly. I have got her an In Training patch for her harness (the harness is a little large even though it's an XXXS).

Graeme Sims says do not start training AT ALL until 6 months old. But… how do I take her to the park or anywhere at all if she cannot walk on a lead or sit. She is quarantined until she is 14 weeks anyway because her last jabs are still a month away. So I want to train her now to sit, come and walk on a long line.

The other two books above do not agree with his 6 month rule so I have started with sit and she is making great progress. She is a tiny baby so I don't want to stress her out but she seems very excited and willing – we only do a little bit each day and we cuddle and praise her all of the time.

She has access to half our garden (the patio part) which is safe enough for her pre-jabs, she wears her harness on the patio and also when I take her out I carry her in a little sling on my front and she wears her harness for practice there too. Everything is rewarded if she is unsure about it, play, toys and kibble. She is very relaxed and happy.

So is that okay? To just start her training now? I end up going round and round in circles if I hear conflicting advice. So I decided to just start on the Sue A and just trust those, they seem to be well respected.

Thank you 🙂

Hi! We adopted a 2 year old boxer-heeler mix a few weeks ago and he's been perfect in nearly every single way.

The issue comes from an uncharacteristic aggression towards a single household member, who I'll just call Ben.

Ben lives on the property but in a separate building, but comes up frequently for dinner, water, to hang out, etc etc.

Almost every single time he walks in the new dog acts incredibly territorial, barking and growling and getting uncomfortably close until he is scolded, when all the sudden he acts completely fine with Ben's presence and doesn't mind him until the next time he walks into the house when the cycle repeats. The behaviour has not gotten any less aggressive since his adoption and I am concerned one of these days he may bite.

Ben has a cat in his building but does not have any dogs.

Warning I have ADHD so I might ramble a bit but I will try to keep it short and sweet lol

I have a 4 year old mini Aussiedoodle that I got from the shelter at 4 months. She’s easy to train and was perfect up until she was spayed at 7 months old (vet recommended that I do that to avoid behavioral issues). After she was spayed she became VERY reactive towards people and dogs (never bit) and have bee working on correcting her behavior and we have made a lot of progress to the point she has made friends and can walk passed like 75% of dogs with no issue but once in a while there will be a fog that she will make her go absolutely insane. She hyper fixates on them her eyes get red she tries, she barks and jumps around. I try to walk away but she doesn’t budge. She’s on anxiety meds which has made her a little better but I would ideally like her to not react this way and I know she can do it but maybe my methods aren’t working. Like I said before she was easy to train and knows a lot of tricks and commands. She knows the basic commands, Recall, she does some agility courses and even knows numbers 1-6! So I know she can become the best dog she can be but with the right methods. I also forgot to mention she barks at strangers but once she’s alone with them she’s chill. For example we found a sitter for her and when we met the sitter she was barking at her and tried to get her to go away but then once I handed the leash to her and walked off she was fine and listened the the sitter but then once we picked her up she started barking at the sitter again eventhough they got along! It’s so confusing.

Any advice on how to handle this situation would be super helpful!

P.S. we have worked with trainers as well.

Hi all, I have a weird situation and I would welcome any help or tips because I’m really struggling here. To make it easy to follow, I’m giving my dogs fake names. We had our dog, Sweetie, for 15 years, adopted when she was 2. She loved everyone and everything, was always gentle, and only barked once in all those years. About 4 years ago we adopted a second dog, a 2 year old street dog we’ll call Spicy. Living 2 years on the street made Spicy super wary of everything, but especially strange men and other dogs. Her aggression is definitely fear based.

When we would go on walks, meet new dogs or people, or when people came to the door, Spicy would take her cues from Sweetie. She would bark and be aggressive until she saw that Sweetie was calm and then she would calm down and go to say hello. We had to say goodbye to Sweetie in the fall and Spicy has just gotten worse and worse without Sweetie to show her that she’s ok. We’ve had 2 different trainers since then, both strong positive reinforcement based trainers, one of whom specializes in wild / stray dogs. We’ve done counter conditioning, we’ve done thank you for barking, we’ve done leave it, we’ve done a handful of treats as we walk by other dogs, we’ve done uturns as soon as we see another dog. When people come to the door we’ve tried leave it, tried to get her to go lay down, tried having the new person give her treats. We’ve been so careful to be consistent. She’s just not getting better, and seems to be getting worse. She does so well in training when we’re faking the « danger » but as soon as the « danger » is there irl it all goes out the window. It’s like she’s in an aggression trance, she doesn’t hear us she doesn’t see us.

If she was a dog who didn’t like other animals, fine. We could just do our best to avoid them. But she actually loves them once she’s met them. She gets so excited to see the dogs she met via Sweetie and she loves to play with them, howls and spins around in circles when she sees them, etc. When we visit my in laws, who have 2 dogs, she just wants to run and play with them all day like we don’t even exist. I know she wants to make friends, she just defaults to stranger-danger and then the other dog reacts to her reaction and it’s just a mess. Same with new people. 10 mins after she’s met them, she’s a sloppy mess begging for tummy rubs and giving kisses. But the first 5 mins are just nonstop crazy aggression barking.

In a perfect world, I’d like her to learn to look at us for reassurance the way she used to look at Sweetie. If someone comes to the door and we’re having a calm and relaxed conversation, I want her to recognize that we’re not worried about danger and she shouldn’t be either. So far the only thing we’ve found that will stop her from barking and lunging at someone at the door is if we pick her up. She’s 40lb so not ideal but doable. But being picked up stresses her out, so I know it’s not a good solution because it’s just associating strangers at the door with stress. My husband thinks we should get another calm confident dog, but my worry is that Spicy would be the established dog in the house, so what if Newbie takes their cues from her and not the other way around? Having one reactive dog is so stressful, I wouldn’t be able to deal with 2.

Any help is appreciated. She’s been staying with the in laws in the country for a couple of weeks to give us a break but she’s back here soon and I’m already dreading it. We live downtown in a city of 3 million so we can’t easily avoid people and dogs. She doesn’t have a yard so needs 4 walks per day, and the parks near us are pretty busy.

Hi, I’m looking for input on my new-ish adult rescue lab who jumps up during the following circumstances: 1) coming downstairs to eat breakfast/dinner, 2) entering my spouse’s room downstairs — he’s very sick and spends most of the day in bed. 3) being let out of her crate 4) greeting someone at the door.

The first two circumstances are the most challenging because she is the most excited. We have to remedy this ASAP because my spouse is extremely sick and she has knocked him over.

So far, we are addressing this by immediately and repeatedly asking her to sit so that she doesn’t have the opportunity to jump up. This has helped. But she still does jump up quite a bit. I’m wondering if there is anything else I can do to facilitate calmness during these times or if there are other techniques to prevent jumping up. It seems like the high level excitement is a big part of the piece. we have another dog so doing a treat scatter is not possible d/t mild resource guarding.

Thanks y’all!

Edit: one area of improvement is that I think I could be a little better with marking her good choices with a “yes” but other than that, I am at a loss.

Hi all first time dog owner here and trying my best to do this right, so I’d love some guidance.

I have an 8-week-old terrier puppy that I just brought home and I’m starting to potty train him. My current setup is a playpen with an open crate inside of it.

When I first got him he was pretty scared, so I didn’t want to lock him in the crate immediately and risk making it a negative experience. Instead, I left the crate door open inside the pen. For the first few nights I’ve been sleeping on the couch next to the pen so I can hear him.

The routine has been:

• When I hear him wake up or move around, I pick him up
• I take him outside to my balcony where I have a grass pad
• He usually pees or poops on the grass pad

He’s actually picked that up pretty quickly, which feels like a good sign. He’s generally going on or very near the grass pad, so directionally the potty training seems to be working.

The issue I’m noticing is that sometimes he wakes up and doesn’t make noise, and he’ll just walk out of the crate and pee on a puppy pad inside the pen.

It’s not the worst thing since it’s still on a pad and not the floor, but my concern is that I might accidentally be training him to leave the crate and pee immediately instead of signaling that he needs to go out.

So my questions are:

• Should I start closing the crate door at night once he seems comfortable with it?
• Then wait for him to whine or wake up, take him out to the grass pad, and put him back in the crate?
• Or is the open crate + pen setup okay at this age and I’m overthinking it?

Again, this is my first dog, so I’m trying to balance crate training, not scaring him, and building good potty habits. Would really appreciate advice from people who’ve been through the puppy stage before

Welcome to the fortnightly loose leash walking virtual workshop!

Join us as we compete with the squirrels, cats, other dogs, fresh urine scents and things that go zoooooooom!

Resources

Articles (All have videos embedded)

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• Train Your Dog For Perfect Loose Leash Walking by Casey Lomonaco. (With links and descriptions of several great videos, which we'll link to below.)
• Loose Leash Walking Tips by Casey Lomonaco
• Silky Leash by Grisha Stewart (blog post + videos.)

Youtube (Many of these are videos which are embedded in the above articles)

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• Silky Leash intro video with an excitable puppy
• Clicker Training Loose Leash Walking by Casey Lomonaco
• Loose Leash Walking II by Casey Lomonaco
• How to Train Your Dog Not to Pull – Loose Leash Walking by Emily "kikopup" Larlham
• Dog Training Tip- Leash Walking: Go Sniff and Marking by Emily "kikopup" Larlham
• Choose to Heel by Loridressage
• Loose Leash Walking by Stacy Hiebert Greer
• Clicker Training a Heel by Amy Norcal
• Shaping Loose Leash Walking With a High Rate of Reinforcement Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by Helix Fairweather and Lynn Martin. (Read the text below the videos too!)
• Loose Leash Walking by Turid Rugaas

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See our page on leash reactivity for help managing and training dogs that bark and lunge while on leash.

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APDT webinar

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• Loose Leash Walking presented by Gail Fisher