Aggressive Puppy

[dainerra]

actually, the easiest way to "teach" fetch is to simply use 2 identical toys. Throw the first toy, not too far, and wait for her to grab it. Then, start playing with the toy you still have. Toss it up and catch it, ignore her. She'll drop the toy she has in favor of the one YOU have. The instant she does "YES! Good 'drop it'" or whatever command you want to use while at the same time tossing the toy in your hands. Once she has gotten the idea of dropping the first toy to get the second one, you can refine exactly HOW you want her to bring it back to you. She'll learn quickly.

Mustang, if you can't commit to a weekly class, check into the occasional 1-on-1 lesson or drop in class. There is a lot to be learned, even for those of us experienced in dog training. A 1 hour class can give you lots of tools and info to work with until the next time you come back. Most importantly, it gives an unbiased look at the body language you are giving off subconciously. One of the most common problems with dog training is "your mouth is telling the dog to do one thing but your body is telling him another." Dogs read subtle body language a lot quicker than they learn voice commands.

 

[Eggsakly]

I think you have a few things going on and I think your approach may need to address a few issues. One, puppies learn bite inhibition by interacting with litter mates and mother, especially between the ages of 4 and 10 weeks. When one puppy bites another too hard in play, the hurt puppy will cry out and run away and not play for a very short time. In a litter, this will occur dozens of times a day, and puppies learn to play gently through hundreds of small, repeated interactions. If you played aggressively with your puppy when she should have been learning bite inhibition, yes, it was a mistake. She is smart, however, and she can learn to do things differently. The aggressive play behavior you describe is common in puppies removed from the mother/litter too soon, because they missed that crucial socialization that dogs do much better than humans do. And actually, for puppies like yours, trainers do advise allowing your young - 8 to 12 weeks - puppy to chew on your hands - to a point. When the puppy bites too hard, however, that's when you cry out and run away like a puppy would, to help her learn to be more gentle.

Your puppy is still very young. At one year of age, depending on the breed, most dogs are the equivalent of about a 14-year-old human. At 5 months of age, your baby is still a baby, similar to a 6-year-old human. She still requires lots of consistency, firm but calm direction, and structure. I don't know about pit bulls or bulldogs, but some dogs do take a very long time to mature. I have a Bernese mountain mix that is a classic Berner personality, and he was impossible until he was four. The last 7+ years have been wonderful, but the first four were hard. A dog is not considered a full young adult animal until age two, and some dogs take longer than that to mature.

I think I know exactly what you are talking about with your puppy's behavior. I have a 14-month-old pup that does exactly as you describe. She is very aggressive sometimes in play, and she gets worked up, but she is never truly mean or vicious. We had a period where I could not walk outside without being attacked, jumped on, and mouthed. I can see that she is way over excited, but even so, I'm never afraid she's going to snap and attack me in a way that would do serious harm. She is a Great Pyrenees-Karelian Bear Dog mix, and she was removed from her mother at 4 weeks. I purchased her when she was 8 weeks. All she wanted to do was bite me. It wasn't endearing. Outside of the house and on walks, she was worse!

She is not the least bit interested in being obedient, but it's getting better. That is typical of both of her breeds, both of which do their jobs independently from humans, and she is not particularly obedient or cooperative. She was the worst behaved puppy in her puppy class, and she has been hard to raise. But she is a character and I adore her! I wouldn't give her up for anything. She is so loving and hilarious and ornery (it's the spitz in her, I'm told) and smart. Once she had something she shouldn't have had, and I watched her snarl and growl at me sounding very vicious, and all the while she was watching me closely to see if I was scared or intimidated by her. I cracked up!

I use (1) controlled feedings, (2) timeouts when she gets too aggressive, (3) a prong collar for obedience training, and a host of other daily tactics for calming excitement and/or aggression, like making her sit and wait before I allow her in or out of the door.
Best of

luck to you and your puppy.

 

[mustangrooster]

Those are some awesome tricks!

If you have a hallway use that for teaching fetch. Then she has no where to go but to you and you can wave a treat under her nose and tell her "Give" and she will naturally drop the ball/toy to eat the treat. Start out small and she'll pick it up really quickly that if she brings you the ball, she gets a treat. Our dog lives to play fetch. She loves going up to the off leash area so that she can really stretch out and run to chase that ball. She'll run until she can barely stand and ignores all other dogs who might like to play with her.

If you put the effort into her training (which you obviously are) then she will come out the other end a well behaved dog. You just have to get through puppyhood and adolescence, and she'll get better and better as you go through those as well.

I cant say how much i appreciate this

Your making me feel like im actually doing something right....

I forgot to mention, she is from Hunting Parents. So that could be an issue...

 

[mustangrooster]

I think you have a few things going on and I think your approach may need to address a few issues. One, puppies learn bite inhibition by interacting with litter mates and mother, especially between the ages of 4 and 10 weeks. When one puppy bites another too hard in play, the hurt puppy will cry out and run away and not play for a very short time. In a litter, this will occur dozens of times a day, and puppies learn to play gently through hundreds of small, repeated interactions. If you played aggressively with your puppy when she should have been learning bite inhibition, yes, it was a mistake. She is smart, however, and she can learn to do things differently. The aggressive play behavior you describe is common in puppies removed from the mother/litter too soon, because they missed that crucial socialization that dogs do much better than humans do. And actually, for puppies like yours, trainers do advise allowing your young - 8 to 12 weeks - puppy to chew on your hands - to a point. When the puppy bites too hard, however, that's when you cry out and run away like a puppy would, to help her learn to be more gentle.

Your puppy is still very young. At one year of age, depending on the breed, most dogs are the equivalent of about a 14-year-old human. At 5 months of age, your baby is still a baby, similar to a 6-year-old human. She still requires lots of consistency, firm but calm direction, and structure. I don't know about pit bulls or bulldogs, but some dogs do take a very long time to mature. I have a Bernese mountain mix that is a classic Berner personality, and he was impossible until he was four. The last 7+ years have been wonderful, but the first four were hard. A dog is not considered a full young adult animal until age two, and some dogs take longer than that to mature.

I think I know exactly what you are talking about with your puppy's behavior. I have a 14-month-old pup that does exactly as you describe. She is very aggressive sometimes in play, and she gets worked up, but she is never truly mean or vicious. We had a period where I could not walk outside without being attacked, jumped on, and mouthed. I can see that she is way over excited, but even so, I'm never afraid she's going to snap and attack me in a way that would do serious harm. She is a Great Pyrenees-Karelian Bear Dog mix, and she was removed from her mother at 4 weeks. I purchased her when she was 8 weeks. All she wanted to do was bite me. It wasn't endearing. Outside of the house and on walks, she was worse!

She is not the least bit interested in being obedient, but it's getting better. That is typical of both of her breeds, both of which do their jobs independently from humans, and she is not particularly obedient or cooperative. She was the worst behaved puppy in her puppy class, and she has been hard to raise. But she is a character and I adore her! I wouldn't give her up for anything. She is so loving and hilarious and ornery (it's the spitz in her, I'm told) and smart. Once she had something she shouldn't have had, and I watched her snarl and growl at me sounding very vicious, and all the while she was watching me closely to see if I was scared or intimidated by her. I cracked up!

I use (1) controlled feedings, (2) timeouts when she gets too aggressive, (3) a prong collar for obedience training, and a host of other daily tactics for calming excitement and/or aggression, like making her sit and wait before I allow her in or out of the door.
Best of

luck to you and your puppy.

Thankyou for all this information, its amazing

Its good to know that im not alone. I dont know exactly how much pitbull she has in her, but she looks a mix of breeds, almost. If your pup is 14 months old and is acting like my 6 month, my puppy has a long way to go!

"she has been hard to raise. But she is a character and I adore her! I wouldn't give her up for anything." Exactly

Thankyou again for taking the time to write all that, apologizes for replying with not much words, but i cant think of much else to say..

 

[JaeG]

http://www.training-your-dog-and-you.com/

Just to give you more reading! But I came across this website and it's got some good information about mouthing, attention seeking behaviours etc and heaps of great information. It gave me some ideas too. Our dog won't jump up on us but she can get so overexcited when visitors come that she will jump up. She has a bed she has to stay on unless we say she can get off which helps as ignoring her does calm her down. It's just that initial excitement. But I like the idea of training her to do something other than leaping about like a puppy when excitedly greeting people. There's also a contact form where you can ask questions - the guy has trained military and police dogs and from the few things I've read on the site it sounds like he really knows what he's talking about. I've now bookmarked it so that I can go back and read more. Hope it helps.

 

[Eggsakly]

mustangrooster, my post didn't appear very helpful, I don't think. To add to it, I agree with the other people who recommend assistance from a dog trainer, and even one session can make a difference. I am a very experienced dog owner, and even had a wolf-dog for 11 years, an animal that would have intimidated a lot of people. Even so, I took my new puppy to puppy classes. (I was also inspired by the fact that at 9.5 weeks she bit me as hard and as viciously as she could, something no other dog has ever done to me.) My girl was born to make her own decisions and to be a world class hard-head. There may be no single successful way to alter your dog's behavior over something like you are describing. Sometimes, just doing one thing differently will alter a dog's behavior, and sometimes it's a host of ways of interacting that you need to utilize with your dog to correct a behavior. There are certain behaviors, like aggression and excitement, that require the owner to interact completely differently with the dog when there isn't an obvious and immediate connection to the undesirable behavior, such as how you feed your dog, how you play with the dog, who goes out the door first, and a lot of other things.

Without knowing more than you can really provide here, it's difficult to advise you. So, I'll just commiserate and encourage you to keep trying. I don't know how rural you are, but I live near Big Lake, Alaska, which is pretty far out there, and my area is rich in dog trainers.

 

[mandelyn]

Really good info here! I wanted to add a tidbit about the biting. I have Shepherds, who can be prone to nips/bites in play. I squeak when they get me, saying "Ow!" like they hurt me and I end the game. If they come back for more, I grab their nose and give it a little squeeze and let them know I'm done playing. They fairly quickly learn that the biting thing isn't fun for me. I do the same for jumping, only they get a knee to the chest with a "No jump" statement said firmly. I learned a long time ago to not rough house with them, to not encourage nipping, and to teach them respectful behavior.

I have one excitable dog, the wolf/Shepherd who's 9 months old now. She jumps in the air next to me, having learned not to try and use me as a launch pad. LOL

Yesterday I was working on cleaning up the firepit, and everyone wanted to help. I half expected the wildlings to climb over top of me in the attempt, but instead they approached super sweet and calm and only had kisses to give. That was praised to no end!

We thought it would be a great idea to add two pups at the same time, 2 months apart in age, after the loss of our 11 year old female Shepherd. It actually turned out to be a great idea, as they learn from each other and us, as well as our 9 year old male Shepherd. They're turning out to be really good girls! Between the two of them we're only down 1 phone charger, 3 rolls of toilet paper, 1 shoe, and a bunch of cheap dog toys. The Kong balls last the longest! We survived the hard part though, the youngest is a super sweet and sane 7 month old now.