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Hey Dan,
Shes a good looking pup, judging by the sizes you gave up top, looks like she will be a pretty big girl!!
Sorry to hear about the bad days you have had, especially with a cranky neighbor complaining, you definitley don’t want that.
Is she an outside dog all of the time, or just portions of the day? When they are younger it will definiley be tougher to get them acclomate to being a full time outside dog. When I was younger, I had an outside dog too, but we got him used to be away from us while he was younger by living inside, so when we coverted him to an outside dog, it was not such a shock to him and he never really barked, so the neighbors didn’t complain. Like Mike said though, with German Shepards, this will be tougher as they are very vocal dogs. I am not sure of your situation, but if you are worried about your neighbors complaining, you may want to get her comfortable being seperated from you inside before you leave her outside if you can.
Have you started the shorter spurts yet? you know keep her in the other room for a couple of minutes and when she is quiet, go back in and keep increasing that? That should at least start to help get you on the right track.
Also, to manage it for now, have you looked into getting her items to keep her occupied when you are gone? (i.e. Kong, toys or even when she starts to get older and her teeth can handle it, bully sticks will help alot too.) they last a long time and they are not bad for the dogs. I do not reccomend raw hide, even though I know that is what most pet stores will push. They are not good for the dog, they can choke on them and they cannot digest them right.
For bully sticks, you can just search them and you will find plenty of places to find them. Here is one site that might help you. http://www.bestbullysticks.com/ NOTE: I just googled bully sticks and this was the first one that came up, I don’t really know anything about this site or anything, so if you find a better site and prices, you will want to use them. I was trying to help get you on the right track.In regards to your last question, yes you definitley want to reward them for being quit, but you want to remember timing with her too. Note: Dogs can only relate to something withing in the last 1.3 seconds, even better in the last half second. so if you say quiet and and she stops barking, you want to reward her immediatley, but if you wait 2 minutes and do it, shes not quite sure why she is being rewarded. But you are on the right track by only going out there when she is quiet, you really do not ever want to go out there when she is barking even if it is to tell her quiet or anything else, because she just wants any kind of attention and she will just learn by her barking that gets a reposne out of you (good or bad). I know this is the most difficult thing to manage in the begining.
Good Luck!! 🙂
Keep us updated
Chris
