Tom is having some trouble training his dog. I suggest he check out dogreader, which isn’t currently updating but has excellent archives on training issues. I also suggest he read an old post of mine.

Here goes:

Bite inhibition: I cover that in the link above, but here’s the relevant portion:

Biting, chewing and mouthing! That cute pup has big, gnarly fangs. Ok, they’re actually small, sharp teeth and they hurt. One school of thought is to discourage all pups’ attempts to touch their mouths to human flesh. It’s generally safer since you don’t want to encourage your dog to bite people. However, I realize that dogs experience so much of their lives with their mouths and it’s how they play. So, I teach my dogs bite control. They know they can nibble on me gently when playing. They learn the commands ‘Easy’ and ‘No bite.’ Teach them ‘Easy’ by giving them a treat while covering most of the treat in your hand so that they have to put their mouth on your hand to get it. If he bites hard, tell him ‘Easy’ and withdraw the treat. Try again. He’ll figure out that when he gently tries to take the treat that he gets the treat. Only do this with puppies. It’s dangerous to try to teach this to a full grown dog who has no bite control. Also, whenever pupster bites too hard, yell ‘ouch’ sharply enough to scare him and immediately stop playing with him. He learns that hard biting means no play time.

Jumping up: This one is easy. Pup jumps, raise your knee into his chest enough to knock him back but, obviously, not enough to do damage. In addition to you and the wife doing that when he jumps, get a friend that the dog is accustomed to seeing (and often excited to see) to come over periodically. Tell this friend when the dog jumps on him to knee him as mentioned above.

Heel: First, buy a choke collar or pinch collar. It is important in the case of choke collars that they are on correctly. When looking at pupster’s face from the front, the loop should look like the letter P. If the loop looks like a backward letter Q, you can damage pupster’s throat. And use it correctly. Don’t tug or pull on it. Merely snap it. The noise is mostly what gets their attention but it should be used to lead some times. By snap it, I mean raise the leash up quickly then drop the leash quickly (kind of like a whip). With a pincher, a quick tug is all you need.

Start with a sit command (it also helps to put some treats in your pocket). With the dog on your left, give a sit command (praise him for complying or give a treat). Give the heel command, snap the leash once, and start walking. Decide your comfort zone for heel (mine is about 3 feet). If he strays from that zone, give the heel command and snap his leash toward you. Repeat as needed. If pupster gets it right, continue to saying heel periodically and praise him.

Come when called: Another easy one. Buy a 30 feet long (or so) rope, nylon canvas ties will do. It doesn’t have to be too strong. Tie the rope to his collar. Put on his choke collar. Start with a sit and stay. If he doesn’t, correct him with a snap and tell him to sit and stay again. Take the end of the rope not attached to pupster and walk away from him, making sure he sits and stays. Turn around and give the come command. If he doesn’t come, snap the rope. As he gets closer to you, actually start walking briskly backward away from him. This will actually make him speed up to get to you. When he gets to you, reward him (praise or a treat). Repeat for about 10 minutes per day until he gets it.

Down: He may hate it but he needs to know who’s boss. My dog hates stay and down, but he does it. He whines the entire time but does it. Essentially, if he doesn’t comply physically put him down. You can do this by lifting his feet. The other method is to do it with his collar on and snap his collar down toward the ground. He may still hate it but he’ll do it. He needs to be taught who’s boss. Here’s some dominance advice from my previously mentioned post that may help in showing him who is boss:

Show the pup who is boss! Your dog thinks that your home is a pack. Every dog pack has a leader who is dominant. Your pup will eventually (unless you take steps) get to a point where he will try to assert his dominance over you. He’ll do this by humping your leg, nipping harder than usual to get you to say ‘ouch’, or just pouncing on you. There are two schools of thought on this, both of which (in my opinion) work. One is to display regular dominance over your dog by rolling him on his back, placing your hand on his chest, and staring him in the eyes until he looks away. Once he looks away, let him up and praise him silly. This seems cruel, but that’s what dogs do when they fight for dominance. One dog holds the other down and it submits. Also note, don’t do this violently. If you do this too harshly, your dog will let you know by pissing on you. Squirting urine during confrontations is a sign of submission, just like looking away. The other method (much more fun for you and your dog) is to start rubbing your pup’s belly. He’ll eventually roll over and willingly submit to you. The former method typically works better for older dogs who are unwilling to accept that they aren’t dominant. The latter works better with pups since you’re teaching them who is the boss from the start. Fixing your dog also curtails lots of these problems.

Eliminating hand signals: This will require re-training. The dog has already learned to associate the hand signals with the behavior. Hand signals are good because if the dog can’t hear (loud noises) it can still obey. Now, you just need to train him to sit, stay, etc. without using the hand signals. It’s good that he knows both.

Hope that helps.

Posted in uncategorized on April 14th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |