Aside BE and medications, how do you train a dog that is actively aggressive?
I recently ran into a dog trainer who said they are certified force free and don’t use any corrections. I think force free training is great for a lot of training! But do you think there are situations where force free is not adequate? If not, how do you handle situations like this
The controversy surrounding Denise Fenzi as a speaker at a balanced training conference got me curious so I looked at the rest of the speaker lineup. It seems to me it is 100% comprised of social media dog trainers, few of whom compete or have a significant history in the industry. Who are these people??? They're no one outside of social media, for the most part. People like myself who don't use facebook or instagram have no idea who these people are. Why should we turn the industry over to people with more facebook skills than training skills with more social media posts than they have titles or accomplishments with dogs?
Meanwhile there are many very experienced and accomplished professionals out there absolutely full of knowledge and experience whose contributions are falling by the wayside in favor of some random sitting on a stool in studio lighting running their mouth to the camera?
Is all you have to do to be a dog trainer these days is make a logo and a social media account?!? How can we preserve the vast amount of experience and knowledge that exists outside of the internet in our industry?
I have an ongoing issue with my dog, a one and half year old Golden Retriever.
The situation at home has become very frustrating for everyone, and this is honestly my last attempt to find a solution before we probably have to rehome her because my parents can’t handle it anymore.
Most of her bathroom walks are done by our maid, but I personally work with the dog at least once or twice a day, whether it’s practicing leash walking, playing fetch, or working on commands and obedience exercises.
The main issues are that she cannot be left loose around the house outside of her crate without constant supervision. Even with supervision, she touches and destroys everything possible even, beds we bought for her, our personal belongings, jumps on the dining table and counters, steals socks and random objects she sees, and chews on them.
The only thing that keeps her occupied for a while is a bone or chew toy, but eventually she gets bored and goes back to looking for other things to mess with.
Another major issue is that with everyone except me — like my mother or our maid — she constantly jumps on them during walks and bites the leash nonstop. Sometimes this causes scratches or accidental bites because she is trying to bite the leash and catches a hand by mistake.
She also pulls extremely hard on walks with them.
With me, she behaves much better. She usually walks nicely and doesn’t really cause problems.
In general, she is very gentle with people, extremely friendly, and has good intentions, but she is completely lacking direction and is very rough and overexcited in the way she plays and moves around.
I don’t mean aggressive in a dangerous or reactive way — more physically intense and out of control.
We contacted a local training business and she stayed with them for a month and a half in a boarding-and-training program.
It helped with some basic things, but not with the issues I mentioned above.
I understand that training at a facility alone is not enough and that the owners need to continue the work at home, which I do, but things still are not improving and everyone at home is losing patience.
She has already been with us for about a year and two months, and we still haven’t managed to make things work.
Pup is 6mo Labrador x Dalmatian.
I’ve been around the houses on training methods with him, and have landed on pretty much entirely positive for most obedience things. Loose leash walking is great, his heel is making leaps and bounds. His recall is fabulous.
His only issue is other dogs. I’ve prevented on leash greetings, tried to encourage neutrality using BAT 2.0 setups, rewarded for looking and then disengaging with dogs but… I’m not seeing progress. Things are actually getting worse.
Today I had a session with a force free trainer and four other dogs, where play off leash was encouraged, and then I was expected to call my dog back. He ignored my recalls, stopped taking treats, lunged, pulled on the lead, everything. He was on his harness as the trainer suggested and I felt powerless and like I had no control. The trainer suggested using tricks like ‘touch’ the ‘123’ method and throwing treats to get his attention. But treats had no value to him anymore. The training session was setup as a group walk, but to keep up, I had to allow the pup to pull. The trainer put it down to his just having an overexcited day, and being overwhelmed. But I can see this behaviour escalating.
He’s turning into a very big, very strong dog. I cannot have him behaving like this.
I’m here to seek the opinions of balanced trainers on what I can do encourage him to be calm around other dogs, in an age appropriate way considering he is still a puppy. I use a slip lead for gundog training, but don’t tend to use it for corrections, however I’m open to suggestions.
Is possible to teach a dog how to play well with others?
There is a new puppy in the family (not our household) an we’ve been introducing them slowly.
Whilst my dog is usually chilled, he definitely likes his own space when he’s around other dogs. He likes to play for 10-15 mins then be left for a bit. Then he’ll initiate play again.
Whilst I think we can manage the puppy, my question is around teaching my dog manners when it comes to playing with the new dog. When he plays with older/bigger dogs, they are very good at taking turns, letting my dog ‘win’ sometimes even though he’s smaller, giving him his space when he’s clearly had enough. My dog doesn’t seem to do this with the puppy, and while it’s not aggressive he definitely dominates the entire game without letting the puppy win. We watch them very carefully and obviously separate them when they need space.
Is there any way to teach a dog nice play manners? Our dog is an older rescue so we haven’t had the luxury of introducing him to new dogs at an early age.