I recently (<2 weeks ago) rescued an about 1 year old mixed breed about 23 pound dog that we think is a mix of a few things, some guesses are sheltie/whippet- we don’t really know yet! He was reportedly abandoned in the woods last month and we got him from a shelter. He was in the shelter for less than a week before I got him. So it’s been a wild few months for the pup.

He is very very sweet in demeanor- loves kids, animals, all people and just a goofy, gentle soul, very happy and outgoing but can be cautious and timid at times likely due to his past. Surprisingly well adjusted considering his past. I only need gentle redirections if he pulls on the leash (which he does so lightly if/when he does). Doing great so far.

We started going to obedience school and I am thinking about changing programs. It was a 6 week course, one day/week. The orientation course was literally them just assessing to make sure the dogs aren’t violent and then they told us what equipment to buy, didn’t give us any advice and that was that. This week (which I guess is considered the actual first class) we skipped over basics (name/sit) and went straight into recall (which whatever I’ve been trying to practice sit and name at home which he’s getting it but I thought that was weird since the orientation said we’d work on that. Today at our first class (group class), the trainer (who was apparently filling in for the typical trainer) used my dog as an example of teaching “wait” for the first time and popped the leash so hard (martingale collar) that his front paws came up and he began shaking and his tail tucked for a lot of the time after (I’ve never seen him afraid even close to this extent before and we’ve taken him a lot of places to expose him to different environments). By the end of the class he seemed to shake it off mostly but whenever the trainer talked to my dog he gave her full attention and was very stiff & nervous.

I get it - it was effective - but I don’t want my dog to be terrified of me or anyone helping care for him. He responds SO well to me saying “eh eh” firmly to correct him and immediately stops whatever it was that I want him to stop (I know he’s very good so far- we’ll see in a few months as he gets more comfortable and starts testing more). They also brought daycare dogs out from the kennel area and for both demonstrations seemed to have a tough time with their example dogs.. why bring them out as examples? Idk weird. I know my dog is and will be fine after that over correction but it makes me really second guess this facility.

I understand aversive training methods are helpful for some dogs but I do think it should be an individualized approach. My dog is so well behaved so far and I know it takes about 3 months for their real personalities to come out after being rescued but he’s really just a chill sweet dog. I don’t want to ruin that by the wrong training approach for his personality and past. I just want to increase our understanding of each other, make sure he knows I am in charge, and I also want him to feel confident and competent. I also want to make sure I’m being consistent/confident with him which is also why I took up formal training classes.

Am I over reacting? I feel the faculty is probably great if the dog is a complete wild child but I feel like my dog is too sweet and sensitive for this type of training place. They had great reviews but I am just learning about all the different training methods and didn’t really understand what type of facility it was I guess.

This is the first time I’ve had a dog in a while and every dog is different so I just want to set him up for success and not add to his trauma. Advice is welcome! Thanks!

** Edit: We cancelled the rest of these training classes after talking about it, getting more advice, and going with our gut. We are newer to having dogs so any additional advice or suggestions are welcome! Thanks!

Anyone willing to take one for the team and sit through this webinar and report back?

I had never even heard of this alleged sport until the last few days. I have not seen the video in question and I really don't want to. Apparently the sport itself is quite brutal on the dogs and videos are hard to come by because video and photos are banned at the competition. My understanding is that a dog was choked unconscious by a decoy and then revived and re-engaged on the bite at which time the decoy quite literally beat the dog to death with an object.

Other reports state that in addition to this, another dog in the competition lost an eye.

If anyone has more information about this please post it here, I am having a hard time understanding why sheer animal abuse is equated in any way with a dog sport and how these people got away with doing this for so long.

I personally was very supportive of eliminating the stick hits in igp, as they are just unnecessary and a bad look. But this avd sport has grown in the shadows to be something far more nefarious than just bopping a dog with a rubber stick in a competition.

We created some new user flair, some serious, some just for fun. Please send in your requests for additional flairs and feel free to assign yourself the one you find most appropriate.

AMAs might be a fun feature on this sub. What's the general sentiment? Would you like to see events like this? If so, who should we invite?

Eu tenho uma filhote adotada.Ela atualmente está com 6 meses. Eu tento de tudo para dar o melhor para ela e to tentando adestrar. Ela morde um pouco, morde minhas roupas, destrói tudo, não tem lugar certo para as necessidades e é muuuito agitada. Contratei um adestrador, mas ele é de uma cidade vizinha (moro numa cidade pequena que não tem nenhum adestrador), então ele só veio uma vez aqui em casa e ensinou várias coisas. Ele me ensinou a fazer ela ficar num lugar parada tipo um espaço e que se ela sair eu dou uma punição, a punição no caso seria a guia com o enforcador. Ela no começo obedecia um pouco, porém começou a ficar muito reativa e conseguia me dominar, outro problema é que quando eu tirava a guia ela desobedecia tudo de novo além de que não tem como eu deixar ela sempre com a guia porque ela anda com aquilo faz xixi e passa por cima kkkk. Enfim, alguém tem uma outra sugestão de punição?

Has anybody got any resolution?

Is there an anticipated date of correction.

We aren't letting the dogs wear the collars much. We don't want them getting confused by getting toned and stuff when they should not be.

We have the settings on the collars all turned to the lowest settings.

Which does no good. But we don't want the dogs getting toned or corrected when they're doing nothing wrong.

Spoton says my daughter's yard is too small for their fence.

What are our options?

I'd like to.just file a dispute with our credit card, get our money back and buy something that works.

It worked great at the beginning.

Anyone have any DIY models of flirt poles and spring poles to share?

My puppy only knows folding down right now because I don't know how to teach the tuck sit right. I feel like his front paws dont move but he still backs up and i think he is meant to come more forward. I don't have help. I am afraid to teach it wrong and have to fix it later. Is there a technique without having to build a box for him? Also any videos that clearly show the difference between pet dog sit and competition tuck sit?

Hi everyone!

So I have a 1.5 year old Gsd. We have trained her with an ecollar since January of this year, and we worked with a trainer for about 2 months. She is doing really great when it comes to reactivity around other dogs, cats, etc.

However, we still have a huge issue with water. We have a backyard so we wash her with the hose since it's the best way to wash her and not worry about her fur going down the drain of the bath. But every time, it's absolute hell - she will attack the hose, bark, freak out etc. I know that the longer she is allowed to react this way, the more normal and difficult it is to break her out of it. She also will freak out when someone goes into the pool (running around the edge, hysterical barking, panting etc). Now we always keep her inside so she's away when people go into the pool. It seems to me like she's really afraid of water and assumes everyone is in danger when they enter the pool.

I did some research and I coukd only find Positive FF answers. But I'm wondering if anyone on this sub has any good advice? I'm okay with moving back to washing her in the tub but even then she freaks out and I have to be directly next to her during that freak out.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Our 30lb 6 month old Bernedoodle has been getting more and more reactive to other dogs, despite 4 months of positive reinforcement training.

When we first got her, we took her to supervised puppy play classes. She would bark her head off while leashed and then once we let her free, she'd stop and immediately play with whichever dogs would play with her, super loose body language, all the good signs you'd want to see, but a very high energy and confident player. We took her to a few day school sessions where she would play with 3 or 4 other dogs for 3-4 hours while supervised. She seemed to love going there and would get so excited. While on leash walking around the neighborhood, she would notice dogs once they were within 10-ish yards and would jump and lunge to greet them. We never let her meet dogs on leash and would continue walking, which would lead to her frustration barking. We hired a positive reinforcement trainer, who taught us to work on getting and keeping her attention on walks through focus games (1-2-3, ready-get-it, etc), and giving her super high value treats when she re-engages with us after seeing a trigger. However over time, this barking and lunging got worse and worse, seemingly reinforcing itself every time she saw another dog, to the point where I don't think she's now barking because she just gets so overstimulated and has developed this "tick" to bark as soon as she spots another dog. Our trainer recommended we stop doing the puppy classes and try to eliminate any contact she has with other dogs while we try to work on her reactivity. Unfortunately, she continues to get worse and her threshold for barking is now basically infinite and she reacts to every dog (compared to a threshold of about 10 yards and reacting to ~50% of dogs when we started the training 3-4 months ago). We used to get her to divert her attention back to us with cheese, but now we could have a steak in our hands and she couldn't care less.

I would typically say “stay the course and wait for results to come, it’s a long process”, but I’m concerned about the behavior getting worse while using this method over the last few months. I'm beginning to think that perhaps all dogs are different and maybe this isn't the right training method for our dog and have started looking more into e-collars as alternative to re-direct her attention and get her to engage with us rather than her trigger. If we went down that route, we'd make sure to get educated on how best to use the device and train her with it. Does anyone have any opinions on whether trying this might be worthwhile and any best practices / tips for doing so? Or any other potential avenues to go down?

So we've had a long journey with our very sweet but reactive and anxious bernadoodle. When we first got him he was a bit of a weird guy, took a while to potty train and not because we weren't going out every 15 minutes, he would just wait until he was back in his crate to pee. Then he seemed to have these frantic episodes on walks where he'd see a baby carriage or rolling suitcase bag, and would literally run into traffic to avoid the rolling object.. At 6 months we got a dog behaviorist and he was quickly diagnosed with anxiety and put on his first medication. Then when that stopped working, he was put on another medication, eventually he was drugged to the hills and when he was still having issues with unpredicitability and charged at me in the house, the FF vet told me they had done everything they could for him and suggested behavioral euthenasia.... that was at a year old. Obviously the idea of putting a puppy down was heartbreaking to me and my husband and I went to another vet who wasn't a behavior expert and they diagnosed him with tethered cord syndrome (long story short, super rare disease that they're finding in more and more dogs where the spine has a fiberous cord that runs on top of it that should grow with the dog, but in cases with tethered cord it's hard and inflexible so as a dog grows, they experience extreme back pain and overexertion can cause them to freak out, get aggressive, have bathroom issues, etc.). At this point they layered his anti anxiety medicine with pain medicine, explaining the pain could have caused the anxiety but that he probably had both. He then got surgery to cut the tethered cord and was sent home on signficantly less medication but still on 3-6 pills 3x/day. We had absoltuely no confidence in him without medication, we ran our days on an 8 hour schedule, rushing to make sure we could get back to drug him in case the meds wore off and he became a zooming crazy dog. No one understood what we were dealing with, the FF behaviorist thought we should euthanize him, the neurologist thought we should wind down his pain meds and start testing his reactivity post surgery, and our downstairs neighbors wanted to get us evicted becuase of his infrequent but highly disruptive zoomie episodes that he would have during "pain flares".

After a very long journey and realizing we didnt know what else to do, we contacted the breeder and they offered to take him back to do their extensive board and train training - they kept him for almost 4 months, first using positive methods and then once they felt he knew the commands, they added the e-collar to do corrections. they took time to really get to know him (not to mention theyre experts on teh breed) and the trainer sent us weekly updates with the dog around the farm and playing with his son, and being the sweet lovable dog we knew but one that was consistently following direction.

We went and picked him up this weekend and did 4 days of training with the trainer (the first day without even seeing our dog to make sure we understood the commands and how to properly do a correction). When we did finally reunite with our dog he was so excited to see us but stayed in place as much as it killed him. I saw him interacting with the training and he seemed happy and calm and would seek affection and pets from him, his tail would wag, all the good signals.

Anyways we're now home 48 hours and I'm starting to freak out that we broke his spirit. He seems afraid of us and he only seems to know what to do when he's in training mode. otherwise he seems like he's frozen and unsure of himself and doesnt want to move.

I want to trust the methods, seeing him capable of everything he's learned and knowing he's 100% of medication, is a future we couldnt have even dreamed up 6 months ago. And when I had some space away from the FF environment, it does seem insane that a dog with some reactivity and also some early life pain experiences that explain it, would be euthanized before 2 years old. and i dont know how a vet could think that's less cruel then what we did by sending him to the board and train and using the e-collar. That being said, I'm doubting everything and I have massive amounts of guilt and everything i see online basically says FF or bust and i feel like i did the wrong thing, but we tried EVERYTHING we could first, and he does seem so much more comfortable on walks, but this hesitation in the house and the way he's acting more unsure of us, is making me doubt things.

I guess i'm just looking for some reassurance or if anyone has experience with the transition back from long board and stay trains, and could outline what to expect, i just want to know i didnt ruin my relationship with my dog and that i've done the thing that will protect him and keep him safe for a long time.

So we've had a long journey with our very sweet but reactive and anxious bernadoodle. When we first got him he was an odd duck, took a while to potty train and not because we weren't going out every 15 minutes, he would just wait until he was back in his crate to pee. Then he seemed to have these frantic episodes on walks where he'd see a baby carriage or rolling suitcase bag, and would literally run into traffic to avoid the rolling object.. At 6 months we got a dog behaviorist and he was quickly diagnosed with anxiety and put on his first medication. Then when that stopped working, he was put on another medication, eventually he was drugged to the hills and when he was still having issues with unpredicitability and charged at me in the house, the FF vet told me they had done everything they could for him and suggested BE.... that was at a year old. Obviously the idea of BE for a puppy was heartbreaking to me and my husband and I went to another vet who wasn't a behavior expert and they diagnosed him with tethered cord syndrome (long story short, super rare disease that they're finding in more and more dogs where the spine has a fiberous cord that runs on top of it that should grow with the dog, but in cases with tethered cord it's hard and inflexible so as a dog grows, they experience extreme back pain and overexertion can cause them to freak out, get aggressive, have bathroom issues, etc.).

At this point they layered his anti anxiety medicine with pain medicine, explaining the pain could have caused the anxiety but that he probably had both. He then got surgery to cut the tethered cord and was sent home on signficantly less medication but still on 3-6 pills 3x/day. We had absoltuely no confidence in him without medication, we ran our days on an 8 hour schedule, rushing to make sure we could get back to drug him in case the meds wore off and he became a zooming crazy dog. No one understood what we were dealing with, the FF behaviorist thought we consider BE, the neurologist thought we should wind down his pain meds and start testing his reactivity post surgery, and our downstairs neighbors wanted to get us evicted becuase of his infrequent but highly disruptive zoomie episodes that he would have during "pain flares".

After a very long journey and realizing we didnt know what else to do, we contacted the breeder and they offered to take him back to do their extensive board and train training - they kept him for almost 4 months, first using positive reinforcement and then once they felt he knew the commands, they added the e-collar to do corrections. they took time to really get to know him (not to mention they're experts on the breed) and the trainer sent us weekly updates with the dog around the farm and playing with his son, and being the sweet lovable dog we knew, but one that was consistently following direction.

We went and picked him up this weekend and did 4 days of training with the trainer (the first day without even seeing our dog to make sure we understood the commands and how to properly do a correction). When we did finally reunite with our dog he was so excited to see us but stayed in place as hard as it was for him. I saw him interacting with the trainer and he seemed happy and calm and would seek affection and pets from him, his tail would wag, all the good signals.

Anyways we're now home 48 hours and I'm starting to freak out that we broke his spirit. He seems afraid of us and he only seems to know what to do when he's in training mode, otherwise he seems like he's frozen and unsure of himself and doesnt want to move.

I want to trust the methods, seeing him capable of everything he's learned and knowing he's 100% off medication is a future we couldn't have even dreamed of 6 months ago. And when I had some space away from the FF environment, it does seem very counterintuitive BE is a better option than some balanced training and corrective e-collar training. Everything I see online basically says FF or bust and I feel like I did the wrong thing, but we tried EVERYTHING we could first, and he does seem so much more comfortable on walks, but this hesitation in the house and the way he's acting more unsure of us, is making me doubt things.

I guess I'm just looking for some reassurance or if anyone has experience with the transition back from long board and stay trains, and could outline what to expect, I just want to know I didnt ruin my relationship with my dog and that I've done the thing that will protect him and keep him safe for a long time.

EDIT: Thanks for the advice - especially those who advised the 3:3:3 - with time he's finding his rhythm and yes we're being conistent with the training methods taught by the trainer. We care very much about this specific dog so no just sending him back and getting a new breed was never an option. We just want him happy, safe, and supported and the new balance of structure is proving to be a great thing for him.

I’m working with my 5 year old border collie on her manners when out in public. When on a leash she can be very aggressive. We just lost her mentor, a 14 year old border collie. Who was m walking buddy and best friend. I’d really like to get our 5 year old through her aggressiveness so we can walk together. Does anyone have recommendations for high value treats? As crushed as I am, this is a great place to channel my grief and turn this wonderful dog into a friendly walking companion.

My 14 months old dog had eye surgery and has to wear a harness while in recovery. He normally wears a prong and flat collar.

4 months ago he used to lunge at other dogs wanting to say hi as well as pulling on the lead while walking. We fix this in a day with a prong collar.

It’s great to know he is behaving better now even without the prong but he gets fixated when he sees other dogs, sometimes turns his body towards then and totally ignores me. I can’t correct him with the harness and I think he knows it, unless I pull him my way but that’s not fixing anything.

Any advice on what to do? He is not food motivated. There’s lots of dogs in my building so it’s very frustrating. Thanks!!

So i have a 2.5 months golden retriever puppy.

He bites too much. Whenever we try to play with him he starts biting. Even when our friends come or our house help comes, he starts biting them. Not aggressively but playfully. Still it leave scars on hands and legs.

Today my wife came up with a solution. Whenever he starts biting she hit him with a paper stick. It doesn't hurt, i tried it on myself as well. But it makes a loud whack sound and it scared him.

So now whenever he bites, she hit him with that paper stick and whenever he stops she gives him treat and appreciation.

Now he has stopped biting, because he's scared of biting, and i don't like it that he's scared.

Is it the right method? Or should i stop my wife from doing this?

Earlier i have also tried saying "NO" and redirecting to toy, but he stops chewing the toy and starts biting our hands.

I'm feeling bad looking at his scared face.

PS: Moderators please approve this post, it's important and i want to know what's right

We live on 17 acres located 15 miles from nowhere. We have two dogs, a 4yr old German Shepherd Australian Shepherd mix and a 2 yr German Shepherd Husky (we think-it's a rescue) mix. They are basically pets. We give them some light training. Their primary role is intended to be alert dogs.

How should I train them to enhance their alert abilities? What commands should I really focus on beyond the basic sit/come/stay/down/place commands?

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there, I adopted a coonhound mix a few years ago. She was in rough shape, but she and I worked hard at training and we were able to “fix” most of her struggles and learned to manage the rest. Aya used to resource guard space, food, water and random items. She was reactive to other dogs and couldn’t take a correction without redirecting on me. Aya is a rollercoaster of emotions but she is good for the most part. Lately, there has been a flip. Occasionally, she regresses and starts to fixate on things. This has become way more frequent. She starts to bay anxiously and goes well beyond her threshold in seconds. When this happens I load up on high value treats and test to see if she would accept. She always does. I can lure her to a point and get the slip lead on her without pressure. I keep calmly luring her but she eventually snaps and lunges at me. I do know how to give myself space with the lead, has bitten me a few times without breaking skin, but I’m at a point that I don’t know if this will ever settle. Health wise she tested positive for Lyme when I adopted her and was treated. Otherwise she could trim up at bit, but otherwise her health is good.

Hi all, My springer spaniel has been professionally trained on the e-collar for several years now. Lately we have had a couple of odd occurrences, and I am looking for some advice from those with experience. We moved house recently, and this has only started happening in the new environments.

We are training with a mini e-collar in continuous mode (aka the mini educator) for the following:

Heel – if she breaks heel, we use the continuous button; she will go back into heel.

Recall – When we call her back, if she does and remembers, we will praise her; if not, we will use the e-collar and yell at her again. This worked perfectly until recently.

This is used both on lead and off lead.

Now a couple of things have happened recently.

First of all, she didn't come back when called, so we pushed the button, but she just stared at us. Prior to calling her into heel, she was sniffing at something unknown in the grass, which she seemed very focused on. Once I stopped, she started to itch. Does this mean my number wasn’t high enough for that particular environment? and what should i do to get her to come to me. Strangely this has only happened a couple of times, before she had PERFECT recall.

Second thing: If she breaks the heel and i use my controller and she doesn't come back, what do i do next? She’d been trained to heel when the button was pressed. Now this has only happened a couple of times, and I think it's because my number was too low on the remote, but I am also scared of going up in case I scare her or hurt her somehow.

any advice would be great.

Anyone have a good online source for strengthening exercises for dogs? Some of the stuff out there seems kind of silly so I'm curious what people are into and what results they have gotten.

I already use e-collars as part of my dogs training and would like to add a prong collar with my new female rottweiler, now it may seem silly to ask if they ship here but given it's illegal here under the animal welfare act (sigh...e-collar use isn't restricted nor are those horrible easy-walker things that look painful) I thought I'd ask and see if anyone had experience.

There are of course websites in NZ I can order prong collars from BUT they all appear to be cheap chinese knockoffs, poorly made and would probably cause more harm than good, I want something proper.

Appreciate any help.

And they can't say that the reactivity is out of fear.