Help! Dog training question . . .

[scrapbookbuzz]

We adopted a one year old dog from the pound this past June. While she is fabulous with our immediate family, both adults and two kids, she is not so nice to our guests. Since June she's nipped at three people we've had over. Twice the first layer of two of skin was broken. We'd like to be able to train this out of her. Any ideas?

[TravelingChris]

What type of dog? That would influence my answer.

[LuvingLife]

What type of dog and can you explain a bit more about what she does when your guests come over? I can help you if you explain her behavior, amount of exercise she gets, how you guys have trained her, etc. Please let me know!!:bigear:

 

I have trained my dog from the start and he is pretty good, so I have had experience and I know a dog trainer that is excellent at training all sorts of dogs!

[Bird Girl]

If she's biting hard enough to break the skin, you have a serious problem on your hands. You need an outside trainer or behaviorist to help your family--reading posts on the internet, or even books on your own, will not be as helpful as a couple of sessions with a professional.

 

Can you ask the shelter where you adopted her for a list of trainers or behaviorists that they recommend? (Even better would be if they have such a person on their staff.) For a fearful/aggressive dog, I personally would look for a behaviorist or trainer who used conditioned response (treat-training or clicker training) rather than someone who uses a pack-model or alpha model (corrective training.) You already know that your dog has a low tolerance for handling and poor bite inhibition, so pushing her through corrective training could be a recipe for disaster.

 

All dogs benefit from the Nothing In Life is Free discipline program (you can Google it.) Basically, it requires that the dog in question perform a command (sit, or down are most common) before it gets anything: before you put down the dinner bowl, before you open the door to the backyard, before you put on the leash. Constantly requiring that the dog perform a submissive behavior before rewarding it with the good things in life reassures a fearful dog of your leadership and re-negotiates your position with an aggressive dog; either way, it provides a healthier dynamic. But this alone will not help you; you need to identify your dog's triggers and desensitize her, and you need professional help to do this.

 

It sounds like you are taking her problem seriously--it is serious. You are liable for injuries she causes (and it sounds like she's well on the road to injuring someone) and attempting to re-home a dog who bites usually results in euthanasia--good shelters won't take a dog who bites, and bad ones destroy more animals than they can help. Good luck. With good help, you can continue to enjoy her companionship without worrying that she's a ticking time bomb.

[scrapbookbuzz]

Thank you for your answers and insight so far! She's a medium-sized (about 25lbs) mutt. If you look at her profile (side view) she looks like she has the outline of a coyote, but she's black with white on her chest and down her stomach. ( I call her our upside down skunk. :^) We don't really know her provenance. When we adopted her this summer, her information said she was turned in as a stray, and you could tell she'd been on her own for awhile: dull fur, eyes a bit gunky, and really skinny. Now, her fur is shiny, eyes are bright, and not too skinny, a healthy weight. She may have some shepherd (German or Australian) or Belgian Malinois. She's very agile - leaps up to the back of our couch as if she were a cat. Very fast! Once she got out the door to chase the cat and I was amazed at how fast she ran!

 

 

She does weight to 'go' outside, so that's not an issue. It's just that right now, we can't 'comfortably' have guests over. Thanks and keep the good advice coming!

[Bird Girl]

She sounds like she could be part Australian Kelpie--they're like a lighter-weight Cattle Dog, and they come in black and white and sometimes tan. We had a Kelpie rescue--he was a wonderful dog--definitely too smart for his own good.

 

The Nothing in Life is Free plan is not about training the dog to obey any command as much as it is about encouraging the dog to bond to you and think of you as the Lord and Master of your home. (Or lower-case lord, if that seems better to you. :001_smile:) When the dog bites your guests, she's telling you that she has been alerted to a threat in your home, an intruder, and she's going to handle it herself, since she obviously doesn't think that you are capable of dealing with it. This reveals either her opinion of your leadership (low) and/or her sense that she is in danger and needs to protect herself (a high level of anxiety.) She did not develop proper bite inhibition as a puppy, and so she's biting hard enough to break the skin.

 

You need to assure her that she is safe with your family, does not need to defend herself, and can accept your decision about who is OK to let into the family home. As to the specific constellation of events that led to her bites, that's hard to say, and to a certain point, irrelevant. Dogs can have sensitive spots on their bodies, they can guard their food bowls, they can panic when people move their hands near their faces, there are a million reasons. She needs to be desensitized to guests in your home and all their many movements. That's why having a professional is so helpful; they can help you build your dog's trust and her tolerance so that she doesn't bite anyone else.

 

In the interim, does she have a crate? Teaching her to accept being crated will protect your guests until she is safer.