(Closed) Any good tips on getting my dog to stop freaking the fuzz out?

• Hyperventilate
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: December 2012

I suggest teaching your dog “leave it” (Leave it orders the dog to disengage from a person/place/thing.)

It’s pretty easy to teach, too.

Start off with a treat on the floor. PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT (This is important. You are claiming ownership of the treat.) Tell the dog to leave it and remove your foot.

If the dog takes the treat, immediately remove the treat from the dog’s mouth, tell the dog “Wrong” (sternly, not angrily) and put the treat back down and repeat the process. When the dog successfully leaves it and doesn’t touch the treat, pick the treat up, hold it to your chest and say “Share.” Then give the treat to the dog, rewarding them verbally.

This is just the foundation. Once you master leave it with an object, you can move on to persons and places.

Take your dog for a walk and wait for them to get interested in something (A neighbor’s cat, a spot where another dog peed, something rolling across the street, a noisy child, etc) and tell the dog to leave it. If the dog does not turn their attention to you, tell them “Wrong” and lure their attention to you with a treat.

Eventually, the dog will take “leave it” as “I better look at mom now.”

It won’t be a short process, but it’s relatively easy if you can concrete the foundation of “leave it” in your dog’s brain. My dog took two and a half weeks to learn to leave it. Now, if I throw a treat on the floor, tell him to leave it, I can walk out of the room and come back and it’s still there.

Once the dog gets it down, you can tell them to leave it when people come over. If the dog doesn’t respond (Excitement does that sometimes), the dog goes in time out for 15 minutes (Not in a kennel, not someplace they call “home” or “safe” like a crate. Try a garage or on a patio or a balcony or something) and then try again.

Best luck to you… my dog is hyperactive and over-friendly. Leave it worked wonders for us.

ETA: “off” is good for jumping. Start little by teaching your dog to get off their bed, or off the couch. Put the dog on the bed/couch and tell them off. If they get off, they get rewarded. Same with jumping. If the dog is jumping, tell them off. If they sit/get off, they get rewarded.

• kinneybride
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: September 2012

Dogs are extremely submissive to please people. Correct him and let him know his behavior is unacceptable. Even though he is adorable, he is controlling you. Its ok for him to be super excited, however let him know that is it not ok to jump on people etc.. when he has that feeling. You have to be tough and stay consistent or he will never learn. Don’t let up- not even once, if he is behaving this way. 

• FutureMrsphD
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: July 2013

Exercise! especially before you know people will be stopping by.  And above all whatever you do be consistent at it.  We trained our dog to sit on “his” rug when people come in the door, then once in he can greet them.  Start with just you or someone you know walking in and out of the house repetedly, eventually he will become disinterested.  Try having him sit and stay at a particular place and hold him there, eventually moving farther away while people come and go.  Training takes a lot of time, consistency and treats are they key.  It just takes a lot of patience and repetition. If jumping is the problem I’ve found that a strong knee to the chest when they jump up on you takes care of it.  It should only take once or twice if you do it right.  

I’ve trained a couple dogs and helped out other friends, also working at a veterinary clinic for many years.  I have other ideas if theres something in particular that you’ve tried or want more advice for.

• Hyperventilate
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: December 2012

You need to take ownership of anything you want the dog to leave it. So, if your friends are comfortable, you can put a hand on their chest/arm/whatever and say “Not yours.” meaning “It’s not yours, it’s mine.”

Dogs are very posessive minded. Alphas “own” everything and betas only “own” what is given to them.

• Hyperventilate
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: December 2012

It was the first thing we were taught.

Sit the dog down and hold a treat to your forehead. Tell him “watch me.” The moment he looks you in the eyes, they get the treat. It’s so, so simple and it brings focus to YOU instead of whatever they were looking at.

My dog, like I said, is hyperactive and over-friendly. He is a 80 pound 1 year old black lab and he is a lot of dog to handle. I pounded “Watch me” into his little head, and now even if he is chasing something through the house (like the cat), if I yell, “Orion, Watch me.” He will drop tail and look at me. He picked it up REALLY quickly, but it was something I continually reinforced because it is very important and I want him to make sure that when I tell him to watch me, I need him to listen, or I’m going to ask him to do something.

• megz06
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: July 2012

I would try using someone you know and working the command “sit” with your dog. It is going to take a long time and a lot of hard work, but have someone knock or ring the doorbell. If you can get him to sit, have him sit and give him a treat. Tell him to stay and open the door. The minute he gets up the door needs to be shut (even with the peson still outside) and he needs to go back to sitting position where he was. Keep practicing with that and eventually he should stay.

Then you are on to no jumping. Once he starts jumping the person needs to leave and he needs to go back to sitting position again. Keep repeating this and I think it may work. We had to do this for my parent’s black lab. She will, every so often jump if she hasn’t seen you in a really long time, but otherwise she stays down.

• Hyperventilate
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: December 2012

My dog, however, is a success story! No one (Not even my mother who attended training with me) helped train him, and he’s a pretty well behaved dog. He does have his times where he acts out and goes spazzing around the house like a moron, but that’s partially because he’s still very young (He’ll be 2 in July.) but the training has given him a good foundation, and reinforcing it will be good for him.

My husband is generally noncommital when it comes to what Orion does. He will help me out if my dog is attempting to hide (When he does, very rarely steal something, he will attempt to hide under my husband’s desk from me) and he’ll catch him and order him out of the room. Orion defintely takes orders from me better, but he is intimidated by my husband, so he listens more often than not.

Just be firm with the dog an establish yourself as an Alpha. Then it isn’t going to matter so much if your husband is an Alpha, too. It’s ideal, so you can both work together, but a dog needs at least one Alpha to take orders from.

• MM423
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: November 1999

At the recommendation of our trainer, we’ve done things like put our dog on a leash inside, tethered him to a piece of furniture (with access to food and water, where he can still see everyone), or have kept him secured in a separate room/area or weather permitting, in the yard. Usually we are able to include him once he has calmed down, but we’ve had to learn that we need to be in control of the situation and not let his behavior be an uncertain variable.

Now usually we can just give him a rawhide when there are guests at the door, but it is an ongoing process to be really mindful of how he is interacting with the guests. The trainer also suggested practicing having a guest come to the door (knocking or ringing the doorbell) several times to work on your training/routine with the dog for greeting guests.

• Hyperventilate
• 8 years ago

• Wedding: December 2012