Issues with Puppy Obedience Training

[frankykeno]

Okay folks I need your wisdom here, I'm at my wits end.

Gunnar our female, spayed Boxer/Labrador mix is about 8 months old. Not a great age for pups I know, sort of their teenage time and all that but it's getting ridiculous around here. I'm hoping some of you can offer suggestions so it doesn't get to the point of considering rehoming her.

Gunnar has always been a bit stubborn and hard headed. She's extremely smart but will "argue" commands and is not the nice calm submissive dog we are trying to raise here. It's more than just being a puppy and it's getting worse as she's growing. Here's some of her problems and what we've done to try and resolve things....

1) She will go and urinate on our bed (Mike and mine). This is done very deliberately as she is housetrained (though that was a HUGE struggle...worst pup I've ever had that way). She would go out of her way to go through a number of rooms, down a hallway just to do this! She is no longer allowed in the master bedroom at all due to this. She will then for no reason we can see....occasionally urinate on our couch even if we are right there. Is this a marking behaviour? She is rarely allowed on the couch due to this. It's not just a little bit of pee by the way.

2) She is extremely jealous of anyone in the family paying attention to each other and not her. She will jump up constantly, nose you, paw you (that hurts) and even literally sit on Mikey to stop me cuddling my own son. She's especially jealous if Mike and I dare to try to even sit together to watch a movie. If we put her in her puppy cage, she barks hysterically. When disciplined for barking...she immediately barks louder. It is not a whining type bark, it has tons of dominance and demand to it.

3) She will not leave anyone alone if they have food. This I understand, she is after all a puppy. When we eat however or even snack on chips we have to lock her in the puppy cage which then results in the above loud and constant barking. My Thanksgiving buffet today will be hell *sigh*

4) She fights any type of restraint while walking. I have recently put her in a halter style head collar and she's much improved. She is fighting the halter but that's to be expected. I'm also using it in the house on lead to try and control her dominating me me me behaviours to some success.

5) We have problems having anyone come to our home. She will not stop jumping and demanding attention from the visitor, if we remove her from the room she barks insistently, paws at doors and carpets (and has done damage to both which as a renter isn't good for us). She does jump a lot and is totally uncaring if we try to raised knee thing (she just bounces hard off our knees, and jumps more...hurts our knees more than her I think).

6) We have to keep her puppy cage in a room where she cannot see us because she will not settle in the cage even if she's been out for a walk and loose in the house for hours and hours with us. As soon as she's in the cage it's an all out war to see who is more stubborn. We do have to give in at some point as we do not want complaints to our landlord over her barking, whining and howling. She is however quiet and happy in her cage with her toys while we are at work (so the neighbours tell us...she's so loud they can hear her outside and next door!)

Gunnar isn't a dog that's left alone all that much. Mike and I are often home with her. She's not sitting in a cage day after day or anything like that. She has toys always in there with her when we do have to cage her and her cage is very roomy for her size. Mike was spoiling her a bit but has since realized that is making it worse and is disciplining and correcting her with me but it's just like she's too bullheaded to listen.

We love Gunnar and want some ideas here. She's making our life very difficult right now and we are worried a landlord issue will come up. We cannot tie her outside as an option to the cage as our yard is not fenced and in Toledo we have a lot of dogs stolen for bait dogs for dog fighting. I've had dogs before and always had happy, well trained dogs even as puppies but Gunnar is amazingly stubborn and just doesn't seem to care if she's in trouble. I'd swear she was just not quite smart except the little turd can pick up commands so easily (she learned sit in one 15 minute training session when she was only 4 months old!) Show her a treat and she's Miss Manners but heck I cannot spend my life dispensing dog treats to this spoiled, stubborn brat dog! (sorry I am very frustrated with her today especially)

Sorry for the long post folks.

[RockSolid]

I have had some of the same problems that you are having and while I am no expert, I can offer some tricks that worked for us.


1.) Is your puppy fixed? Do you see her squat when she pees on the bed and couch or do you just see the pee there after she has been lying down? Our Shep/Lab mix would leave pee marks on the couch and bed, but we only noticed it when she was lying down. Turns out she has incontnence issues which are associated with large breed females after being spayed. We have to give her Proin 50 for the rest of her life to help with incontinence, but no problems since then.

2,3,5.) Give this a try. Put some coins in a metal can and tape the lid on the can. When she does any behavior that you don't like shake the can at her and say no at the same time. This worked for us. It confused our dog a little, but after about a week of this, the behavior stopped. (This was recommended by our vet.)

4.) The head collar is a great tool. We used it and had great success. Also when your pup starts to pull the lead immediately change directions. This should let your pup know who is in charge. Keep doing this until she gets the idea. It may take awhile, but it works, just be patient.

6.) The dog should see its kennel as a safe place to be. Right now your dog associates the kennel with punishment. Try training sessions where you toss a treat into the kennel, when she goes in to get it, give her lots of praise. Again, you want to do this as a training session.

One more thing. I have found that training sessions with young dogs are best kept to about 10-15 minutes as their attention span is limited.

Once again, i'm no expert, just offering tips that have worked for my dogs.

Good Luck

[Regal Boids]

Call the dog whisperer

I wish I could help sorry.

[Rapture]

Maybe it is being kenneled too long? I couldn't imagine kenneling my dog for 8 hours during the day and 8 hours overnight... that's more than half the day...

[RockSolid]

Gunnar our female, spayed Boxer/Labrador mix is about 8 months old.

Is your puppy fixed?

Sorry I missed that. I was watchin' football and reading the thread at the same time.

[frankykeno]

Maybe it is being kenneled too long? I couldn't imagine kenneling my dog for 8 hours during the day and 8 hours overnight... that's more than half the day...

Oh sorry I should have been more specific. Due to Mike's late evening hours and my early riser habits Gunnar is never in the kennel at night for more than about 4 hours. Neither of us work a standard 9 to 5 thing so mostly there is always someone home with Gunnar so she's never been kennelled day or night for any really long period of time. I think in some ways always having one of her humans around may be contributing to this constant need to be with us or demand we be with her.

The urination is a full on peeing not a dribbling thing. She only does this on items of furniture that Mike and I use so would carry our scent (our bed, our couch, Mike's favorite chair), never on our kids stuff. Can't quite figure out why she'd pee on our stuff and it's not all the time but it's very frustrating and a lot of work to scrub up after one of her incidents.

Excellent tips Jeff...just the sort of stuff we are looking for. Thanks! I will try that can trick, I've done it with stubborn cats but for some reason didn't think of it with the pup. We actually just had our Thanksgiving buffet and she was pretty well behaved. We kennelled her (she kept trying to get up at the food put out on the table) but left on the head collar and sort of draped her leash out of the bars. She actually was quite calm so I guess she thought she was still on the leash or something.

I think I read somewhere that keeping her on the leash and head collar even when "loose" in the house (loose but under leash control) should help her accept our leadership better so we are also going to concentrate on that and see if it helps somewhat. We are very determined to try and help Gunnar and get her through this stage. I'm just far more used to Labs and their need to please and easier training....maybe Boxers are just more bullheaded and opinionated LOL.

[wolfy-hound]

First and foremost, you are spoiling her. You need to take control. The reason she begs for food, is that you give her food. No one should have to lock the dog up to eat.
You need to establish that you are in charge, by not allowing the behavior.
No getting on the couch. No jumping up on you. Don't yell and fuss at her when she jumps up, simply push her away, and ignore her. When you want to snuggle your son, do so,a nd ignore her, if she is pushing in, push her away, tell her no. A sharp hist! will work better than out-shouting her, as shouting is just going to make it a game.
When she is acting calm, you can give her attention. No treats to make her behave, she has trained YOU to give her treats. Consistancy is the absolute key. Both you and your husband have to agree. When you come home, do you make a huge fuss? You are teaching her to act wild to get attention. Be calma nd pretty much ignore her until she calms, then pat her and swcratch her. Make her sit to get attention, and work on one or two things at a time. How does she get exercise? She NEEDS loads of exercise. A walk, won't do it for a atlethic breed like a boxer(or in this case a boxer mix). Get her to jog beside a bike. Teach her to walk on a leash properly too. Leash training is simple.
One chain coller, one 6 foot leash. Attach properly to dog. Go outside. Start walking and when the dog passes your leg, turn around. The dog will hit the end of the leash, come up short, whirl around and head the new direction. Again, when he passes your leg, turn around. What you are teaching is that you are unpredictable, and that the dog needs to pay attention to YOU. Once you can walk with her beside you, you can refine that to heeling, NEVER NEVER hold the dog nearby you! That ends up being nothing more than a tug-of-war. You let the dog go,a nd tug them back into position, then give them slack. If they move out, a tug back then slack. You MUST give them the opportunity to make the mistake, so you can correct it. Note that I do NOT say SNATCH them back, only tug them back to position. The slip chain collar is to prevent them from backing out of it, and it give enough of a tug consistantly.
Start with that, I've retrained tons of dogs. Be in control, and they will behave.
Wolfy

[JLC]

I don't have any significant experience in this area myself....but maybe you could call the closest large-city ASPCA...where they do specialized training of traumatized, rescued dogs to make them suitable for adoption. I'm sure they may have a number of tried-n-true methods for helping really stubborn dogs learn who is in control.


Sorry I don't have more specific advice than that. From everything I know of you, Jo, I know you're doing all you can, and will strive to do even more to make sure Gunnar has a healthy, happy home. Patience and perseverance will get ya there!

And when you're most at your wits end...pick up a book called Marley & Me by John Grogan. I think you'd love every single page of it!!

[frankykeno]

Thanks for the suggestions Wolfy and Judy. I know she needs a firmer hand but I've seriously never dealt with a dog this flat out butt stubborn and I believe I'm very firm with her actually (way more firm than I've ever had to be with any dog I've owned). We do push her away when she jumps, she just continues again and again to jump, claw at us and generally become impossible. She will literally jump into our faces and slap at us with her front paws (not a nice experience at all!) She does not get the point that she can't be in control which personally I've not seen in a pup of this age. My labradors might have been goofy and a bit stupid at this age, but they didn't do this constant dominance thing with me. It's exhausting dealing with her lately. She was a lovely pup at first but in the last couple of months is becoming quite an impossible brat.

We've tried ignoring her when we arrive home, or ignoring her when she demands attention by loud barking. She just barks louder. We've tried the sharp SHHH type abrupt sound, she quiets for a few moments (usually only seconds), then immediately starts up barking again. We've walked her and run her through the house tossing her toys, playing with her, trying to just sit with her quietly and she just never seems to have enough attention or exercise to bring her to anything resembling a calm state unless she basically feels like a nap *sigh*. Even if we just sit her beside the couch, she will NOT keep her feet on the floor and constantly and repeatedly paws and attempts to climb on us. Watching tv with her is not a fun or relaxing activity.

I could understand it if the poor thing was home alone for hours a day locked up or ignored and tied outside but that's just not the case. She's always had companionship around the house and was a lovely puppy but now...argh! I'm hoping this is just a really horrible stage and that we can work with her through it (before the landlord hears about this barking issue from the other tenants). I've always had such nicely trained dogs (which I trained myself so I do know something about this having rehabbed more than one abused dog) but none of the things I know are working here with her. She was not an abused puppy. We got her healthy and lovely but she's maturing into a seemingly very dominant minded female.

By the way, we don't give her food. We don't feed dogs from the table or from our hands while snacking. She's never had food other than in her dish or treats given during puppy training or the occasional special treat (in her bowl). She doesn't even beg for the food Wolfy, she goes after it in a very dominant attitude or simply makes so much trouble we cage her to get a meal in peace (not quiet though unfortunately). We cannot even have a bowl of popcorn watching a movie at this point because she simply will not heed any command to leave us be from the constant push for either food or attention (neither of which she lacks for).

Thanks goodness she shows no biting type aggression at this point. If she ever did, with kids in the house, that would have to be the last straw for me. Her dominanting behaviour though does not seem to go that far but I'm concerned that if we can't get her under control now...she may mature into a biter.

[Rapture]

It sounds a lot like you are trying to exercise her in the house... with a large dog like that, don't you think she could use some hardcore outside activity? Take her outside and play fetch with her for an hour or so if you don't want to take her running. Usually if I take my dog somewhere with me or do something with him that requires a lot of activity on his side, by the time we get back home or back inside... he's pretty pooped.