tags - painsandfears dogs
“I am 16. I just took my large dog for a walk and he pulled and would not stop barking at this other dog, and it was a bit scary. He’s four. My parents had always spanked them to train them, and I just found myself hitting him for it once I immediately took him back. Just to let you know, I have tried positive reinforcement but the dogs just do not listen at all to this, unless I am teaching them a trick. (Not when it comes to sensory things). My other little puppy…my mom always yells at her when she uses the bathroom in the house now. We had tried positive reinforcements beforehand and they did not do anything at all…so we’ve resorted to this. I know I’m awful and wrong but I just don’t know what to do. I want to be able to take my dog on a walk and show them places, or allow them to be in my room without using the bathroom anywhere they please, but nothing is working and now I’m a monster. Positive reinforcements/other trainings we/I have tried: For walking: Stopping & having them sit down if they pull. If they bark, I sternly say their name, and then I will begin walking back. My big dog, however, is, well…big, and I can’t pull him towards the house very easily (I can hold him, but it’s hard to move with his pulling in the opposite direction). I’ve tried a red can that stops him from barking in the house (it exerts air pressure and results in a high, ‘scary’ sound) but it does not work on the walks. I’ve tried to keep his attention but he doesn’t look at me. I really want to be able to show him places and take him with me, but I don’t know what to do. He is generally very good otherwise—he listens well, can do some tricks. However, with people…he is very hard to control. He just gets so excited and happy to see people. Next is my small puppy…I haven’t really been training her, my mom has. She pees and poops all over the house, wherever and whenever she wants. She also eats my other dog’s poop outside. What we’ve tried: (1) giving treats after she uses the bathroom outside, (2) when we see pee or poop, we show her it then put her outside, and say, “You pee/poop outside!” (3) positive words when she uses the bathroom outside. I just don’t know what to do. Please, please help. I love them so much and I can’t believe how horrible I just was to my big dog. I really smacked him across the nose, like three times. He doesn’t deserve that, he is wonderful and incredible. I feel so awful. Please, please, please help me.”
“My (since Monday) wife, Samantha (who still needs to update her Quora profile to her married name!), and I have recently adopted a pure bred, pedigree, 100% muppet. Luna. Luna had almost no training when we got her. She was vaguely house trained but no real commands. After two weeks we couldn’t get through to her. We signed up to puppy training class. It was quite an experience with Luna, who is a fairly big Lurcher. The other dogs in puppy training are a lot smaller. To give you an idea of how small, Luna took a poo during the first class, and if that poo magically turned into a puppy, it would have been the second biggest dog in the room. Anyway, the dog trainers would frequently say “does anyone have a dog who is particularly unresponsive to [insert command]?” and I always put my hand up. Within five minute she was doing sit, lay down, stand, and waving on command. But how?! Dogs learn hand signals faster than verbal commands. That was the first thing that we learned which helped. Take a dog treat. Let the dog sniff it. Now, lift it directly up, in a straight line from the nose as you say “sit”. The dog will sit to better look up at the treat. Repeat hundreds of times. Every time they sit to see it, feed them the treat and say “good sit!”. Eventually phase out the treat. Then phase out the hand signal. Stand was similar. Let them sniff the treat (while sitting) then pull your hand back towards you. Imagine pulling them to their feet by their nose. The dog will follow the treat, by standing. Feed your incredibly well behaved dog their treat, and say “good stand” while you weep in disbelief about how easy it is to make a start on training. For lay down, make them sit, then draw an L from their nose, down to the floor and along. Repeat until they lay down, then praise and reward. Continue ad nauseum. It’s about starting off small, rewarding with food and praise, and building up. We also covered stay, wave, roll over, walk to heel, speak (which Luna won’t do, she doesn’t bark for anything!), and a few other things. But find a trainer locally and they’ll help you.”
“How do I train my dog to come? He is 10 months old and has been trained by my kids in many things: sit, lay down, stay etc. Inside he comes when commanded, but outside he just looks at you and says “screw you” and takes off!”
“How do I get my dog to sit right away? It sometimes takes 10 seconds for my dog to sit after I tell her to.”
“How do I train a husky to ignore other dogs (or small animals) during a walk? I adopted a 3 years old husky a few months ago. It’s extremely hard to train him not to pull, especially when other dogs are present.”
“What do I do with an untrainable dog? He’s 5 months old, and showing absolutely no progress in any areas at all, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve spent so much time trying to train him that my fiance feels neglected.”
“How can I train my dog to alert me when she needs to go outside? She is a scary dog who doesn’t bark that much and she is scared of many sounds so I don’t think the bell method will work. Any tips? PLEASE HELP! Any advice will work at this point.”
“Yes, when he wouldn’t come back, that was very frustrating. He also has a habit of lying down when it’s time to leave the park and refuses to get up. Also when we are just walking past the park. He does it to be stubborn and he knows I can’t move him until he gets up.”
“How do I crate train my dog? He absolutely hates it, and refuses to go in, even when I give him treats, and put toys inside. I try to be patient, but I need to leave the house nearly every day, and I don’t know how to handle it.”
“Why is my dog dragging himself on the floor and licking the carpet? There’s nothing on the carpet at all. He does this with other carpets as well. He just started doing this.”
“Why does my dog excessively lick everything in my house, from the carpet to the pillow? Even if I put my hand in the way she continues licking my hand.”
“Why does my dog do ‘the thing’ where he goes crazy on a carpet or bed and rubs himself everywhere? Pretty self explanatory. Sometimes he does it after a bath to wipe water off but sometimes he’ll do it out of nowhere so what causes this to happen?”
“How can I train my dog to avoid people’s picnics in the park?”
“Why does my dog constantly lick the floor or carpet? Is this something I should be concerned about?”
“Why does my dog lay on the floor then scoot (crawl across the floor)?”
“Regarding leave it, my puppy will leave any food I throw down or from her bowl or while on a leash. But at random times (sometimes even right after she ate) if she sees the door open, she makes a run for the nearby apartment building trash cans. They have this big apartment building trash cans that everyone leaves open and cats ravage through and leave a bunch of trash on the ground, and just goes through it and licking everything and it’s a pain in the ass to get her back. I need to bring some squeaky toy with me as food will not entice her.”
“We’re trying to teach the difference between “up”, “down”, and “sit” with food, but she’s so focused on getting the food itself that she don’t even hear the word and just immediately goes for what she thinks we want (like going “down” instead of sitting, “up” if we correct her, etc). It was both funny and painful seeing someone at the park hold a stick for her to fetch and tell her to “sit” and she slid all the way “down”. She will actually sit when commanded if there’s no food involved though, so honestly I just think she’s an adhd little fatty, haha.”
“Any tips on the ‘leave it’ training? My dog is not aggressive at all but has toy guarding issues. Literally will only growl at another dog if they try to take “his” ball. GSD, 1 year 2 months old.”
“Dude thats amazing. Can I ask how you went about training your dog to heel? Mine does really well with most things but heel is proving to be a pain in the arse.”
“My 11 month old dog knows how to sit after I tell him to sit 7 times and give up asking and walk away.”
“I can’t even get my dog to stop humping the kitchen table leg and there’s other dogs like this out there.”
“I guess that’s impressive. I taught my puppy how to poop on the living room floor, and I don’t even have to command him to do it.”
“My dog is having the hardest time learning lay down for some reason! He’ll follow my hand into the position but just saying “lay” doesn’t work :/”
“That’s amazing! I can’t even get my 11 month old American bulldog to respond when I say his name…”
“Hey guys! Ive been teaching my puppy the basic commands like sit stay down , but he does it when he wants to do it, not everytime i ask him to. What routine should i stick to to train my dog? Do I have to revise a truck if he already knows it? How many times a day should he be trained? How long should the sessions last? Sorry for asking a lot of questions in advance!”
“That’s amazing! My dog only knows one trick, the prairie dog, when he begs for food. He is able to stand up on his hind legs for a an impressive amount of time. He doesn’t even sit when I tell him. His previous owner was French speaking so maybe he knows a lot of commands and just doesn’t understand me.”
“This is amazing, my dog is 3 and he can do most but definitely not that fast! Do you have any tips on leash training? My dog practically chokes himself on every walk the entire time!! and when I try different tactics like changing direction when he pulls he doesn’t stop pulling at all and sometimes pulls harder! I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve also tried chain collars and harnesses. Currently I’m stopping whenever he pulls and make him come and sit in front of me but he has shown zero improvement.”
“I feel like it’s a cattle dog trait to be reactive. My Texas Heeler (ACD/Bluey) is very friendly and really doesn’t understand that not all dogs want to be his friend, so if he can’t get to the dog because leash he immediately starts going apeshit. I’ve tried a muzzle to curb the barking but he was still able to bark (loudly). He’s never bit another dog, thankfully, he just scares them and their people with how crazy he gets.”
“Mine is the exact same way, but he causes fights now. If I let him near another dog, there is always a scuffle. If we slowly introduce them (hours) they will be fine. But he even got in a fight with my girlfriends family puppy and now it has a little scar on its eye 😞. The sad thing is that he never used to be this way and it just started randomly one day.”
“One issue I’m facing with my dog is that his reactions are very context-dependent. If I have high value treats with me he’ll be way more likely to just ignore other dogs, but the moment I stash them away or forget them at home he’ll revert back to his old reactive behaviours in no time. It’s quite frustrating because we have been training for more than a year, and it seems all the approaches we’ve tried only work as a management tool to distract and not to actually change his behaviours.”
“Man that’s awesome. My pup won’t stop biting everything it’s driving me insane. She’s still getting her adult teeth so I hope it ends then”
“My 5 moth old heeler isn’t super fond of her crate. Does yours sleep in it over night? Any tricks you’ve learned?”
“Yeah! At first it was a nightmare, he would cry all night as soon as he was in but he likes dark little places so I put a big blanket I think helped. We had pee pads in there but take them out during the day so he wouldn’t associate it with a potty place. We also gave him a lot of treats in it during the day and a few meals so he’d associate it with a good spot as well as just hanging out with him with the door open so it wouldn’t always feel like a prison. I’ll admit I did spend a few nights with a pillow lying on the ground for half an hour until he fell asleep and then sncuk away. He’s only 9 weeks now so I still get up once a night to let him out to pee, but he’s already trained to not go in the crate at all anymore! Good luck! These little heelers are cute little monsters!”
“Holy heck that’s impressive! My six month old pup won’t “leave it”. Loves food treats too much”
“I’m a first time dog owner. Everytime I call her to come with treats she will just stay still or walk backward lol I adopted her last year Sept.she can do other tricks or commands like sit,let’s go,paw,guess treats on my hands and high five except the word come.If we get near her, she will run away but she will come to us with no problem when we are in couch or bed.🤷♀️I even have problem calling her to come and eat her food.I had to get near her and hand feed her few bites then she will eat her food.Thank you so much for the tips I will try my best 😁”
“Nice! I can’t even get my dog to lay down”
“I can’t even get my dog to come 😭”
“I’m worried our dog will be jealous of baby. I’d hate to have to re-home him if he tries to bite.”
“I love them so so so much and don’t want them to feel left out or neglected (when baby arrives). It’s been worrying me a lot lately.”
“I feel terribly guilty about this but since I brought my newborn home, my tolerance for my dog has completely gone!”
“Having them together (baby and dog) makes me really nervous.”
“He’s eating the baby’s toys if we don’t put them away.”
“(I’m worried about her) chewing the kitchen up!!!”
“As soon as Shelley fell pregnant, I said we’re going to have to, and we didn’t, seriously consider getting someone in. Just to look at where we live, or what we’re doing wrong, or what we could do right. But we didn’t, we didn’t, because I didn’t feel like we needed to, as time went on, I thought ‘you know what, I think we’re doing everything right anyway, I don’t think there’s a lot we’re doing wrong. Maybe we could have done, maybe we still could.”
“Following on from our conversation about my dog Kiwi, I was just wondering if you knew anyone who helped to get dogs adopted. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and feel that it would be best for Kiwi if she were somewhere that she could have regular walks and runs. Unfortunately I am unable to give her the attention she needs due to illness and have tried to contact adoption centres. They don’t want to know due to Kiwi’s issues with other dogs. We would be prepared to pay whoever took her on £30 a month to help cover her care. Just thought that I would run this past you. Sorry it came out of the blue but I feel guilty every day. She is in a loving home with a garden so there’s no rush. She just needs more input.”
“Constant insanity, playful biting, grabbing at clothing. We were desperate.”
“This is a smart, determined little dog and she wasn’t falling for anything in my bag of tricks.”
“The challenge that I didn’t really get results with from D.D. was with pulling on the leash. She only does it when she’s really excited and knows we’re going to the dog park but I’m still struggling a bit with that one.”
“My German shepherd won’t sit unless she’s on a leash and I have food, same goes for paw.”
“The trigger for our rescue dog are birds on the fence or in the neighbour’s tree (we have only a court yard at the back) and no possibility to draw curtains to the floor length glass door. Also we have a doggie door and she is out in a flash when she sees the birds and barking until they have flown away. Any suggestions How to deal with it?” https://susangarrettdogagility.com/2019/04/train-my-dog-to-come-when-called/?_ga=2.99447710.1416084485.1621424727-856476775.1619031407
“Wow this is truly a great topic. I am at that stage with my 14 month old mini aussie. She and I have attended obiedence class and her recalls were getting really awsome, She would even come when we were at agility classess where she could smell other dogs and treasure hunt for treats. Well in the last 3 weeks or so, she has just started to ignore the recall. I am just befuddled not sure what to really do. Sounds like there are some games you play as I read the blogs. Would be great if anyone could share them . My plan right now is to go back to the obdience training that I know and see if we can get back on track and to also play more with something that she loves and brings back well.”
“My dog’s recall is a work in progress. I would say that he doesn’t have a good recall. However, I look at where he’s come from to give me some real perspective on what we’ve done with him. I’ve had him for less than a year. A 4.5-year-old shelter dog, he’s a BC mix with a strong herding instinct and it turned out that he was extremely reactive to other dogs, bikes, motorcycles. He’d go from being wonderful on the leash into a barking frenzy, spinning around and straining at the limits of the leash. This would happen even if the dog or cyclist was all the way across the park! Thanks to an excellent trainer, we’ve made great strides and he no longer does this. In general, under certain circumstances and under specific types of distractions, his recall is surprisingly good, considering his reactive nature. He’s now able to function well enough around other dogs that we’re attending agility group. There’s no barrier separating him from the other dogs, yet it seems that as long as he’s the one working, he’s happy to be directed from obstacle to obstacle. I’ve seen him start to get excited about going toward the other dogs, and called him back to the task at hand. At times like this, it seems as if his recall is great. But that’s deceptive. If someone were to come in with a new dog, he’d break away and run toward the other dog. It’s happened twice, once in group and once at a training session. No amount of calling brings him back. And that’s why we’re now training the recall as a basic handling skill.”
“smells, yummy things, even dry bread left out for the crows by the crazy neighbours. Also, balls being chucked by someone else at the park. She does not like to play with other dogs but does like to retrieve the balls thrown by the owners. She gets fixated on that and will not change focus. I need to go out there with equal value or more value toys so she will play with me! Finally, sheep poop at the farm where I am learning to do herding. she loves to roll in the sheep poop or eat it! Yuk!”
“My oldest seems to be getting worse with his recalls these days — no doubt because I have done diddly-squat to reinforce them for some time (I obviously took him for granted!). Even still, even at his absolute best, there is pretty much nothing I can do to call him off squirrels, deer, birds and other fast-moving things that prompt him to give chase. My 11 month old Border Collie has a fairly crappy recall, mostly because she just follows the older guy wherever he goes. They are great about coming in the yard and they stick around off leash on walks — until something rustles in the bushes and takes off. My third dog rarely goes off leash because he is a running breed. I have worked his recall long & hard — and it has worked in emergency situations when he has gotten loose (wind blew over our tent at a trial once!). But more or less, I choose not to test him very often, unless we are in a very safe area away from traffic.”
“the opportunity to run free and smell everything. he started out as a street dog for the first 1-2 yrs of his life and although he’s come a long way, he still will revert back to running off at times esp if I havent given him an “outting” recently. would love any help/suggestions!!”
“Susan, do you ever train a “panicky” recall? I learned that in my very first training class, and it saved my dog’s life, I believe. We were walking off-leash in a fenced city cemetery we went to daily when a woman (who we knew only slightly) joined us with her MUZZLED recently-rescued German Shepherd. After only a minute or two, she allowed the shepherd off-leash, and he took off instantly (and aggressively) after my shy 30# dog who was only about 1 year old. Annie ran like the wind trying to get away from him, spotted a depression under the fence, and ducked under it onto a sidewalk along a very busy street! Thanks to my trainer, Annie returned to me INSTANTLY despite her fear of the other dog. But I’m sure my voice was about as panicky as it can get. The teacher made the point that our voices may be different in a situation of danger, so the dog may not come because of the fear in the handler’s voice. I still practice it once in a while 9 years later, and it works for me! (Love your blog, BTW!)""
[#sethiZTL]: Ramit Sethi: Zero To Launch.