Mine is the brown dog. I thought she was too pushy, husky owner said it's fine.

My dog will NOT pee or poop when the neighbors cat comes in our yard. He's immediately fixated on the cats and no matter how much I walk him around or carry treats he gives 0 shits I'm on the end of the leash. He'll lose his mind whimpering, barking, pulling toward the cat. I'm reaching my wits end on how to train him.

This happens on walks and hikes too, where it seems like he does not care I'm the one walking him asking him to do things. Even if theres no other animals it's like I'm not even there on the end of the leash. Please help ;-;

I have a gorgeous 11yo male long haired dachshund and he has always had mixed reactions to other dogs. Lately though he is reactive to all dogs and our walks are filled with barking. His sister moved away about 3 months ago so I don't know if that's what's made it worse.

He is more territorial and spends his walks pulling me in directions to sniff and pee on everything (even though he is long been neutered).

I don't know quite how to teach this old dog manners bu at least ignoring other dogs.

Any suggestions appreciated 😊

i have had my rescue dog for about five months now, and, despite all my best efforts, I cannot curb her barking. It seems to be borne out of restlessness? She really struggles to exist as herself. If I am not interacting with her, she is sleeping. Which would be fine if I knew why she was barking at me, but it is a struggle to interpret what she wants!

I genuinely could not tell you what her barking it is about most of the time. She has food, water, went to the bathroom, I try to give her attention/play- none of these things help. So, I thought maybe she was under-stimulated, so I have taken her on sniffing walks, done inside mental stimulation with sniffing, played tug with her, etc etc. That does not help, and half the time, only seems to rile her up more.

Then I thought it was maybe an attention thing (even though she does not seem to really want attention when she barks?) so I tried reverse time outs, regular time outs, ignoring her (all at different times and for at least two consistent weeks per method)

Throughout all of this, I have been trying to practice the rewarding calm techniques, to try and encourage her to relax. This has done very little. She sleeps a bit more I think, but when she is awake and running, it’s right back to the same old barking at me and my partner for an unidentifiable need. To try and figure out what she wants, we started using button communication. This curbed some of the barking, but I think it was the novelty of the buttons that distracted her, because she has caught on to the buttons and their meaning but the barking had ramped back up again as the buttons became routine.

Any and all help is appreciated. I am really trying to avoid any aversive measures but I am struggling to find a method of curbing this behavior!!! I hate being frustrated at her, because it’s not her fault, but the barking is incessant and I feel like I have tried so much.

Hi! I have a Boston Terrier that LOVES being curled up in a blanket. He’s very attached to me as a work from home so we’re working on him having other safe spaces in the house that aren’t right beside me.

We recently purchased a hooded dog bed (one with a soft blanket on top) and we’re hoping we can get him to figure out how to get under the blanket part on his own. My other dog uses his head to nudge blankets and can figure out how to get under without our help, but our Boston just paws at us. Because of this, he’s just kind of scratching the top of the blanket (bed) and not understanding that he needs to use his head to get underneath it.

He seems to like the bed and has been using it, but he just lays on top of the blanket part. We started with putting treats in there guiding him, but he kind of looked at it like a snuffle mat he couldn’t figure out and tried to flip it😂

Any advice???

Whenever I’ve asked her to take left side, she always gets excited and jumps INTO me on her way there. 😂 Cracks me up. She doesn’t do this for center or right side.

Hello,

I am new to professional dog training but not training dogs itself. I showed dogs in 4-H for a little while and did plenty of training and teaching my own dogs. I am in need of finding a job and was hired as a dog trainer. I am not sure if it is the best place and would love to know more about people’s perspectives with training dogs or working with trainers.

The owner has 10 dogs who most do not get along with the client dogs. Some of the owners dogs have to wear muzzles or be leashed while around client dogs because they will attack/step on/bite other dogs. Many client dogs do not like coming into the yard because of them. The owner and other trainer are aware of this and just don’t seem to do anything to mitigate that specific problem.

While training dogs, the owner will not always use the dog’s name. She and the other trainer said that they have to consciously say the dog’s name or they will call it the nickname that they determine for the dog. Which would lead me to believe that the dogs don’t truly know their names, which is detrimental to every other aspect of training (in my opinion). She says that they don’t train for competition levels. She doesn’t train “stay” as a command with sit or down, but will train stay while going through a gate, which doesn’t make sense to me. As they aren’t competition levels, I believe training the stay would be more beneficial for families (that’s not the point besides it being contradictory, because the gates shouldn’t need a stay either). The head trainer is the only one who takes her dogs outside to do training. They sometimes seem to prioritize dog tricks over basic obedience.

She can’t keep staff and has only had one consistent dog trainer for 4 years. From what I have gathered, no one else makes it past 2 years. She is trying to set up daycare and is taking daycare dogs, but doesn’t have a daycare attendant. She talks badly about past staff right in front of me and I only just started.

I would love to know more from other people’s perspectives of training and working with a trainer. Thank you!

I see a lot of posts online (not this sub inparticular) where people are losing motivation after being set back, i PROMISE its all worth it

Spaniel in the video is a rescue that came from a horrific background, he was reactive to just about everything that made a noise or moved. I was told time and time again, by trainers, family and friends that its not worth it. Now, hes a working gundog and is contracted with local police. He does demos in schools to educate kids on scent work and working dogs, life is good. No more stressful walks, having to avoid areas etc. Every single minute I put into him was worth it

My 12 week old ridgeback cross puppy has been good since we got him. Just the usual biting from teething but the other day he started resource guarding a hoof and bit my hand hard and aggressively. Since he’s still young what should I be doing right now to prevent this from being a problem in the future.

Our 12 year old miniature dachshund was just diagnosed with IVDD. She’s crawled into bed with us for years and won’t stop now. I’ve tried to crate at night, which gets 45+ minutes of crying and howling before I cave. Currently working on daytime training to make her own bed a positive place, with high praise and treats. I’m open to suggestions on how to get my old girl to stop coming to bed with her humans.

I was watching a Hamilton video on Youtube where he's training a dog outside/around a dog park. The stim level he uses makes the dog yelp.

Is this considered normal or within the normal range for correction under these circumstances?

The dog didn't seem over threshold per se, just distracted. Hamilton wasn't using the leash to control or punish the dog here, which would be my (possibly incorrect) intuition.

He also added a caption that he "stimmed at a very -R level".
(I thought an aversive shock was P+)

So I recently got a new 9 week old “German shepherd / Lab mix” (Not a hundred percent sure if it’s accurate waiting for dna results to come back.) she is terrible about going to the bathroom; I take her out every hour, after playtime, after naps, 30 minutes after she eats, and 20-30 minutes after she drinks water. The only issue is, she will NOT go outside. She will hold it in until she takes herself back upstairs to our apartment, I take her to the same spot outside EVERY SINGLE TIME. And she almost never goes. When my partner takes her out, she cries whines, and pulls / bites at the Leash to take herself back up 2 flights of stairs to get herself inside to pee/ poo on our carpet. I’ve tried using potty pads, literally covered the entire carpet in them, she won’t use them, she lifts them up and goes underneath them. She will pee on our clothes ETC. She whines when she has to go poo so that’s when I know to take her out, but she won’t go. I’ve asked my vet, and she said it’s normal puppy behavior, I have her in puppy preschool and she’s still doing this behavior. Any Advice? I’ve literally contacted 3 different trainers. Have her in school, talked to a vet, take her out more frequently, and nothing is working. In need of desperate help to get this sorted out.

Hello! My service dog in training is having some trouble staying focused. When we are near grass he always sniffs and even when I correct him and bring him back to heel, whenever we pass grass or plants or something desirable he sniffs. I'm not really sure how to train this out, when he's not in a heel I'm fine with him sniffing and I allow him to. He also has some very mild excitement reactivity towards dogs. He doesn't bark but he does fixate and typically he tries to pull towards them. We've had some success in ignoring dogs, but its not consistent and I don't think he truly understands he cannot visit. When he pulls towards dogs I correct and ask for his attention, but when he is around dogs he doesn't listen very well. I was able to have a mostly successful training session at a dog park with quite a few dogs in it (this is one with multiple fenced areas connected, there was an empty one so we trained in it.) The only dogs I allow him to play with are the neighbors dogs, and he can train around them off leash and listen very well. He wants to play with every dog he sees, and I'm not quite sure how to fix it. I still need to see if the park training session helped, I haven't been able to take him out since then.

Quick question for alternate ways to train left right center. I’ve seen where people use food to lure the dog to center by bringing food from one hand around your leg and then bringing your dog through your legs with the other hand. My dog pretty much just tries to bite my fingers off getting to the treat so I had to modify center by standing with my back to her and calling her with the food in my hand between my legs. She picked it up real quick. To make her understand I wanted her facing foreward I slowly would rotate my body repetitively calling center and she figured it out pretty quick. so she knows center real well now. Picked it up in about 20 minutes over 2 training sessions. Doesn’t do it like most dogs as you can see in the video but it gets the job done and I’m not entering her into any competitions. My problem now is working on left side. I can’t lure her with the food so I’ve started doing the same trick but she just is t catching on this time. Does anyone have any alternative ways to teach left and right without luring with food?

Hi, I’m diving more into the world of punishment and I’m a little overwhelmed and confused about a few things.

What types of behaviors can we punish, and at what stage do we add in punishment? Should we punish first and then teach, or teach then punish? Or is it situation dependent? As an example, say your dog is wanting to chase something, should you first train around the thing they want to chase, and show them how you want them to react, then once they have a strong understanding of what you want, add in punishment if they do the wrong behavior. But also I’m thinking, you could be punishing them for simply just not fully understanding what it is they are ment to do in the situation, or is that how you get forever stuck in just managing every situation and always thinking “well maybe this environment is just to hard for them” ?

If you use punishment first, for example, they start lunging or chasing something, you punish them, then show them what you want them to do and reward that, like walking calmly next to you. Is that effective? Will that result in that behavior decreasing and them learning to avoid punishment they need to do this behavior?

Or am i totally miss understanding 😭

I saw someone say that using something like an e collar to instantly punish the dog as it is doing something you don’t want, doesn’t work. They used an example of you being in class doing something wrong and the teacher yells at you, and apparently that alone isn’t enough to change the behavior, how ever if they then sent you out of the class and made you walk down the corridor in shame after, that would be punishment? So you need a marker before punishment? I hope that makes sense because it made no sense to me.

Overall what I’m wondering is, is punishment effective, and how should it be used to ensure it’s effective? I have a behavior my dog does that is undesirable to me, (similar to chasing prey, although I won’t go into all the details as it will be a long post) but I’m trying to figure out if punish (such as an ecollar) will decrease the behavior or eliminate it all together. I can keep everything positive by recalling him every time he does said behavior, but because the behavior is so desirable to him, its likely going to be a case of forever constantly managing him, because doing the behavior is way more rewarding than orienting back to me on his own. So will adding in punishment, then showing him what I want decrease this undesirable behavior?

This has only started recently before he would ignore the other dog but over the past few weeks he's started barking at it and I'm not sure why. Does it look aggressive like he wants to go for the other dog behind the fence?

I adopted this wonderful 8 year old pomeranian from a shelter last year. Just an absolute lover of a dog, knew to go to the door for potty on day one and a snuggler. He also enjoyed walks BUT reactive towards people and other dogs and anything else- squirrel, paper bag, etc. He would bark and bark and dig his feet in and not budge. I stopped taking him hiking because he would bark at people and I didn't want to ruin it for others out enjoying nature. I thought he was just another barking small dog who I loved with all my heart and soul but a barker nonetheless.

Last month I started going to a trainer who specializes in working with reactive dogs. We have been meeting her weekly and working on desensitizing my pom to other people and dogs and working on sit, down and recall. This past weekend we met at a busy park and he barked initially out of the car but from there not one bark. We walked by multiple people, dogs, ducks and squirrels and he did great. He even got pets from three people, who asked first, with a wagging tail. He isn't a social butterfly just neutral with other dogs and people and I am so proud of him. He genuinely seems like a happier and more relaxed dog and we have been going on longer walks up to the park so he can run in the grass.

He did so well the trainer invited us on her group dog hikes she hosts for free with her clients. One thing that stood out when first meeting the trainer was she said that not many owners with small dogs train then and treat them more like an accessory. That made me sad to hear but hopeful for my little beefy boy that he will have the best life. Our goal is overnight camping and I can actually see it in his future.

Photo of the ham in question

We live in a rural area and the length of our garden (big) runs along a relatively quiet road, often used by cyclists, walkers, tractors and some cars. We recently rescued a six-year-old border collie x greyhound. She’s a very anxious hypervigilant type and was going crazy in a cage at the Rescue Centre, which is why we took her.

She is very smart but seemingly untrainable. We also have another rescue of a similar age who used to be calm until we rescued the new dog? He is now picking up her chasing and barking behaviours and additional ones such as barking to be let out of the house at 5 am and scratching at doors to come inside. We try not to reinforce the scratching and barking by rewarding the behaviour, but they aren’t stopping.

We can’t fence off sight of the road as the area is too large, and she also barks at planes and birds.

Hi everyone,
I had the hormonal implant (Suprelorin) done for my Corgi about 20 days ago, but he’s still very reactive and aggressive toward every male dog we pass on walks.
Does it usually take longer before the implant starts having an effect, or should I have expected to see some improvement by now?
For those of you who’ve used the chip, did it actually help? Or did you find that training or other methods made a bigger difference?
Walking him has become so stressful and frustrating, so I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences.
Thanks!