Reply To: Mouthing – Quick Fix for Shelter Dog Handling?

[George Halet]

Thanks Mike! Great reality check and reminder not to be lazy and do what’s easy for me at the expense of making things worse for the dog.
The dog we have now (Arlo) is actually pretty easily redirected into a sit and his mouthiness is only annoying.
Some ideas I’ll try as a result of your advice:

• Making a toy more enticing by putting some peanut butter on him while I gear him
  Maybe a little surreptitious tug  😉
  (his coat is so long it’s hard to do gear him quickly)
• Having an air interrupter as  backup
• Take Arlo into the yard with a slip leash and put more gear on him once he has burnt off a little steam

Poor Arlo is restricted to the indoor yard now (no outdoor walks because he gets rowdy outside) and yesterday he played well for about 30 minutes before I put him back in his “dorm” using the trick below.

Neat trick
Knowing that others have had problems escaping, I used a neat trick I picked up from an IAABC Shelter Dog online course I took a few years ago: putting a leash on the loop of a slip lead so that it can be removed from outside the dorm. (found the same trick here)
Then I go back in to fill up his water – having a watering can makes it hard for him to be rude and he learns that escaping is not so easy – over time, they give up being pushy.