Dog troubles.

[Bumbus]

I have just recently, maybe six months now, gotten a dog. She is somewhere between 1 and 2 years old, I am not exactly sure because we got her from Save-A-Pet (animal rescue place) and they could not tell me her exact age; they only had her for about a week. Also I cannot be sure of her exact breed, but she defiantly is part Labidor (not sure if that’s spelled right) and I am almost positive she is part pit-bull.

I have never owned a dog and I am asking for suggestions or maybe web sites that can help deal with her. She is a good natured dog but she is very…hyper and playfully aggressive. She is a very gentle with my youngest son (1 ½), but when she plays with the older boys she often hurts them. There is no way she is trying to hurt them, but she jumps up and scratches them and when plays, she bites. She does not bite hard but sometimes, when she gets overly excited, she does go too far.

She also will not come to me, or my wife, if she gets loose. She has never run away, she just really likes to run and explore so she does not come back for usually a few hours. I would really like to be able to let her run around for a while, but since she will not come back when I want her too I don’t. When she goes out she is on a chain or a leash. The house I am renting does not have a fence and I am pretty sure even if it did she would jump it.

The last big problem I have with her is she digs in the garbage. There is no way she is hungry and we do not feed her people food, but whenever she is alone for a little while she tears the garbage cans apart. If we all leave the house we put them where she cannot get them, but she will get into them even when she is alone in the room for a while and we are all home.

Just so anyone who wishes to help knows; I do not hit her and I will not try to alter her behavior by hitting her. The place we got her from suggested “positive reinforcement”, but I honestly do not know how to alter the behavior problems I mentioned with rewards and such. Thanks for any help.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

Hey Bumbus,
We changed our TV provider a few months back. We now have National Geographic channel. We watch "Dog Whisperer" every day at 6pm AST. I definitely recommend it if you have it. In almost every situation, it's the people, not the dog that need to be trained.
It's fairly quick to train them to know who is boss.
You may even find tips online. The host is Cesar Millan. He is the one the stars call when they're having trouble. There have been several shows with various celebs. on.

You have to be the pack leader. Don't be afraid of pinning the dog down if they are being aggressive. You're not hurting them, just showing them who's boss. Make sure she stays down, until you tell her to get up.
Make sure you walk her a lot to release her energy. Cesar often trains the dogs to use the treadmill if people have one. He sets it at a normal walking pace.
They are far easier to train than people!

[VulcanRider]

Sign up for an obedience training class. Like Variol said you'll both learn from it. She just needs to learn a few basic commands like sit, sit/stay, come, heel, down, and No.

[SpiritWarrior]

Yeah the Dog Whisperer is great training although do not rush into anything as you don't wanna accidentially hurt or frighten your dog with what you think is discipline. I'd even get one of his books, they're really good and his stuff truly does work because it is all there as instinctual nature for animals.

A high-energy dog needs to be walked daily, no way around it.

[Bungleau]

It's all about behavior training, both for you and the dog.

Dogs generally aim to please their masters. Knowing what pleases them... there's the trick. Like humans, dogs work on a pleasure/pain basis. Pleasure and pain are the two primary things that will motivate them to change their behavior.

Yipping and snapping behavior can be avoided by taking away what they want. When the dog bites too hard, scream loudly (more loudly than necessary), pull away, and either ignore the dog or put it in its crate. After a few tries, it will make the link between biting humans and losing fun time, and it will realize that these humans are pretty fragile things, and need to be treated gently. Excess biting should go away at some point thereafter. It may take a little longer since it's not a new puppy, but that's the same kind of behavior that goes on in the pack - play too roughly, your friend yipes and won't play any more.

As for coming back when you call, that's another learned behavior. Start out by giving a reason to come back - a treat. Dog learns quickly... come back, get a treat. Dog comes bounding back eagerly.

After a while, don't give a treat every time, but instead, give physical affection - patting, scratching, and so on. Spend a good 15-30 seconds doing it... dedicated one-on-one time, if you will. Not as tasty as a treat, but still pretty nice.

At some point, you'll just need to give a treat to reinforce that coming back to you is a good thing.

As for the trash cans... I'm still working on that one, personally Our hound likes to empty the bathroom trash cans periodically when he's bored... and that's just wrong in so many ways Keeping them unavailable is what we've been doing, but my brother has had some success with punishing bad behavior by immediately putting the dog into "time out" - in its crate as soon as he sees something wrong. It took several weeks, but now his first dog will indeed leave the second dog's toys alone, because my brother has asserted that he's the alpha in the pack.

All this is fine for me to say from way over here. If I were you, I'd check with a couple of places in the area that do dog training and go for a class or two. It's not much (dollar-wise), but it helps train both you and the dog, and you'll also have an experienced pet-handler to bounce questions off of.