Chris Duonola
Forum Replies Created
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Hello Harold,
Welcome to the site, you will find this to be a very helpful tool.
To answer your question, no letting them walk out in front of you when working a long leas like a flexi, etc. Will not effect your leadership with your little buddy.
Just make sure it is because you let them walk out in front and you are still leading the way. Meaning do not let your dog drag u and decide which way to go. When you hit intersections, they should be looking back at you as to which way to go. You always are leading the way, even from behind.Think of it like this, when you see a pack of wolves roaming, they are not I a single file line following the alpha, in fact they scattered around, but no matter where the alpha is, he is still leading the way and determining where they are going.
You can work a formal heel as your obedience moves along for when want your little buddy behind you.
Let us know if you have any other questions.
I Hope This Helps!
Chris
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Hey Dan,
It sounds like you are making good progress! 🙂
A lot the other stuff will approve over time.
You are on the right track with feeding her in the crate and giving her treats in the crate. Keep that up, but also start giving her something a little longer lasting. Have you tried the bully sticks or the frozen kongs? You can give her that in the crate so she will get used to bin th longer and longer. She keep increasing the spurts away from you and in the crate. As hard as it is, you really want her to start getting used to being away from you and over time it will get better.Well keep us updated and good luck!
Chris -
Hey Adam,
I will answer you based on my experience and knowledge to help you out until Mike is able to answer you.
For starters, I want personally applaud you for adopting a dog from a shelter as we all know they need homes more than anyone.The best place for you start will be to read the pack structure section under self help, but also the relationship building section under aggressive rehab.
Mike goes into detail in this section about building relationships, and most or it is geared towards shelter dogs.
This will help you with the get started with your little buddy. Specifically the section on who has the right to food.
important thing is to remember that you control the food and when he eats. So if you see him winning and going crazy for the food, wait until he is calm and go and get his food. Make him do something that he knows for the food, sit, down, etc. Then give it to him. The fact that he excited to eat is a good thing, you want them to eat what you put down right away, otherwise you will have to pick it up. Also, if they are very food motivated, this help with training. As far as I know there is no real way to make a dog not excited to eat. That’s like asking a kid not to get excited about candy or something. However, over time you will be able to control their attitude towards the other dogs with the pack structure, but for now consider it a management issue and just keep him away from the other dogs when there is food or treats out.
In regards to protection.. This Mikes expertise, so he will help you. But a experiened trainer should be able to train him to ignore food during an attack.
Just be careful with the protection with a shelter dog, especially if they have bite on their record already, not only for your safety, but the dogs to.
A rotti with a couple of bites on their record will be surefire target to be put to sleep. Mike does extensive work with shelter dogs e, so he provide a point of view from that angle as well.Lastly, I am sure Mike will appreciate your comments about the site. It is a very helpful tool. always feel free to ask questions.
I hope this helps for now!
Chris -
Hello,
The predictable chain reaction for obedience is set up the way it is to for the most effective outcome. Mike in creating this chain reaction, took a little bit of the best of both worlds (positive motivation and negative motivation) and then also within the training method he throws in the distractions, which give the best of all worlds.
See the Trinity chart and details in the “dog training articles” section under “Dog training forms and cheat cheat sheets” it is the one called “Dog Training Trinity”When training, he mixes all of the above so that the dog understands that there are consequences to their wrong actions, but also there is a reward to the correct actions as well. In using all three in the training allows for the dog handler to have the most effective control without the dog getting discouraged during the training. In realty, once the training is done and the dog fully understands the chain reaction and that they will get a reward with the correct action and a correction with the wrong action, you will rarely have to utilize the correction unless it is in an emergency or a situation that there is something new and intriguing to the dog where he is willing to test the waters.
Now, to go back to your question, Strictly positive motivation works to an extent, but unless you are going to always be in an empty room with no distractions, chances are there will be times where the dog will run into something that is better than what you are offering and without any consequences for the actions set in place, it won’t be long before you are outside with your little buddy and they find something on the ground (i.e. food, an animal, etc.) they are really interested in and you are trying to do a recall and they all of sudden became def and they are completely ignoring you.
Another issue that can arise with strictly positive motivation is, what happens when you do not have any treats, toys, etc. on you, are you always going to have treats on you everywhere you go every day. Dogs are pretty clever and once you do a couple of recalls with them and they are getting nothing in return for coming back to you, what will be their motivation to come back to you when they have a nice pile of cat poop on the ground or something else that they are interested in.
I Hope this helps answer your question.
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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
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Hello Dan,
For starters, congratulations on the new pup!!
When Mike, the head dog trainer logs on, he will be able to provide more insight, but just off of my experience it sounds like what is happening here is a case of seperation anxiety. This site actually goes into speration anxiety in detail, so you may want to read this section. This can be found in the members area on the home page click on “Start self help” then click on “Anxiety” then click on “seperation anxiety”. this section may be able to assist you.
Some pointers that I can provide you with for now based off of what are telling us with the background. It sounds like the dog getting sense of comfort when he/she is with you, which is good, to a point. The problem becomes when you are not around they start paniking. Sleeping with the dog will only increase their anxiety when you are not around. Also over petting them can cause this as well. I know we all love our puppies and want to just hangout and pet them all day, but in the long run this ends up hurting the dog more than anything. The rule of thumb is not to pet them for more than 10 seconds at any given time. This doesn’t mean that you can not play a good game of fetch or something with them for more than ten seconds, but you really do not want to throw on a movie and pet the dog the whole time during the movie or something.
The best solution for barking, is unfortunlitley not the best for the owners which ignore them. Once they realize that barking does not get them what they want, they will stop attempting it. What you should do is when you leave and go out, leave the dog with something that will keep them occupied, either a toy that they like and don’t get to have all the time, or I know when Prelude was a puppy, the best thing was a “Kong” we would fill it with chicken or something that is healthy and that she really likes and then freeze it and when we would leave give it to her and it will keep her occupied for a long time and by the time she is done, maybe you are home, or she may be tired, etc.. Antoher rule of thumb, is don’t have big “Hello’s” or big “Good bye’s”. If you make it a big thing everytime you leave, they will be anticipating this and start to get anxiety when it happens.
You also can start to leave them alone for short periods of time, like walk out of the room for a couple of minutes and then go back in and keep increasing the time. This way the little one starts to realize when you leave it doesn’t mean forever and you will be coming back. In the begining I undersatnd it is difficult, but it will get better I promise.Well I hope this helps until Mike is able to answer you.
Good Luck!! and check back with updates!!Chris
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Hello Watchmaker,
We will let one of one of the dog trainers reply as well, but as an owner of 2 APBT’s and 2 cats myself and going through the personal training with both of them as well, I will provide some advice based on my experience.
With Pitbulls, they will always have the drive to go and chase something or go and play with an another animal. It is the bread and you really will not able to just stop their want to go and play with other animals. However, you will be to chanel that drive by playing with them before you go out with them. They are very high energy dogs and will easily get restless spirit if you do not provide a way for them to release some energy. I have 2 cats as well, so my Pitbulls like to chase them around and even though they mean no harm, it still stresses the cats out and they run away. I find the best game for pitbulls is tug.. They LOVE it.. Mike refrenences some good tug games in another forum under aggression rehab and management which he goes into some good tugs and ways to play tug with your little buddy. The more tired out they are, the better chance they will not take off and chance another animal and also will listen to you more.Some ways to control this yourself as well is by working through the phases of training that they have on this website. Some good ones that will help you with your current problem is the “come” command, just make sure to work through the phases here and don’t skip steps. you will need patience here, but it will definitley payoff. My younger pitbull loves to play with other dogs and before we started the traning, if she started to play with another dog or something, she would never listen to me. well I went through the phases and have recently just got to phase 3 “comes” with her and the other day she was playing with 2 other dogs and the smaller one was starting to get scared and cry, while the other guy was calling his dog, I called mine and she immediatley stopped what she was doing and came right over to me with one command. I was actually very amazed myself as we just started to breach phase 3, but it definitley works.
Another command that will help you down the line is the “leave-it” command which I don’t think those videos are up yet, but it is the same concept and chain as other command. you know” name – command – no – comand+correction” with this though make sure to start slow and start with the phase one collar and make sure the dog understands what is happening before you move up. Also, make sure that you start light in a low distratcion area with like a treat or something where if they do get it, it will not be the end of the world. also in the begining, don’t freak out if they get the treat, they are learning, just start over and keep doing it. remember consistancy and poise is a key here. Maybe when Mike replies in will go into more detail about this, just remeber when it comes to traning a dog it takes patience, it will not be an overnight fix. but in the end, it will definitley pay off.I Hope that Helps!!
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Hi. In response to the greenies question, i dont know all that much about them but I do know that in the past we have had a lot of clients using them that ended up in the animal hospital for the same reasons you mentioned…they would choke on them and they seemed to have problems digesting them. Not to metion most of the people who used them would end up with diarrhea in thier dogs. I havn’t heard about them since they changed the formula though, so I cant really speak for them now. I just give our dogs bully sticks to chew on. They are highly digestible and all natural. Plus they do a great job of keeping our dogs teeth clean.
As for the agility Mike was talking about, we give it to our 10 year old pit bull and since using it we’ve seen a big difference!! He was running with our puppy like he was a puppy himself.
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Hey Mike! When we eat dinner our dog Prelude is starting to “silently beg for food” right in front of us on the floor. She never barks or makes noise but she sits as close to us as she can and just waits. We NEVER give in and give her anything off the table and we try to ignore her but it can be a bit annoying. Sometimes we try to give her a chew bone but she just wants to wait for something to hopefully fall from our plates! Even though we can tolerate it now, I dont want her to continue to do this if we have people over. I could put her in her crate where she seems to be ok while we eat but i’d like to try to get around that since she’s in the crate while we are at work most of the day. I thought maybe teaching her “place” would be a good alternative. What should we do?
