Apologies for the long post in advance… I have an 11 month old Doberman/pittie mix who is driving me kind of crazy.
She is VERY talkative, which is fine, except for the constant whining and now barking at everything. She’s also very confident about some things, and then extremely scared about others (such as someone playing music in their car when we’re on a walk). When she’s scared, she will cry and refuse to move or try to bolt away. On walks, she will also randomly start aggressively barking and/or lunging at people/other animals as well, so now we don’t go on many walks.
She also constantly is grabbing shoes and socks and then just dropping them in the living room, and now also has been eating poop. Her poop, and/or her (dog) brother’s poop. She also absolutely will NOT let anyone touch her paws, let alone clip them. It’s an absolute nightmare to try and clip her back ones and pretty much impossible to even do one nail on her front paws (and yes we’ve tried a scratch pad but she doesn’t like it/trust it due to it involving her paws/nails).
She rarely likes to cuddle with me but will sometimes, and pretty much never with my husband. It also feels like she cannot be corrected. I’ve tried redirection, treats, positive reinforcement, and even raising my voice sometimes (not proud of the last one) and telling her no, and she does not care in the slightest. Nothing I do or anyone else does seems to affect her and she will keep doing what she wants which is incredibly frustrating.
I’m truly at a loss. I love dogs, and have had pitties in the past (never Dobermans though) and giving her up isn’t an option but I just don’t know what to do to make this situation better. We have had her since she was 3 months old and I have raised dogs in the past and thought I did all the right things. I touched her paws a ton, tried socializing her early (she’s always been nervous around new ppl/dogs), took her to puppy training school, worked on training at home and yet it feels like it was almost a waste.
One day she woke up and decided no one could clip her nails and also started hating people touching her paws, her aggression has gotten worse, she won’t listen at all anymore… I also took her to the vet and got her checked out/have been giving her vitamins, etc for the poop eating but I think it might just be a behavioral thing.
I don’t have a lot of money to put towards more training and I’m not sure what else to do. Any and all advice and/or success stories is appreciated.
– A defeated (and frustrated) dog mom
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