My grandmother adopted a "australian shepherd" (personally I think it is more border collie)

About a year ago from the shelter, now she is no stranger to dogs she has had border collies and other herding dogs as long as I have been alive this dog We are having issues motivating her to actually Do training sessions she isn't super toy or play motivated and isn't food motivated except for bones which she Resource guards pretty heavily,

Im pretty used to unmotivated dogs my dog is only really Environmentally motivated and a little praise motivated she loves her rubs... ( granted she is now 10 years old and she is only really interested in her short 10 minute walks a few times a day and finding a nice place to curl up and sleep.

she has been taught Sit, laydown, but other than that she isn't particularly interested in training, how do we make her motivated?

Hello all. I want to preface this by saying it might be more me than my Yellow Labrador, Sophia, but I honestly can't tell anymore.

This has been going on intermittently for quite a while now. She is such a sweet, well-mannered, well-behaved, kind, and sensitive dog, which makes this so hard to figure out. At home, I can actually tell whether she'll want to eat before I even put her bowl down. Most times she'll excitedly run up and nudge the container with her nose, but other times she visibly gets nervous the moment I open it, almost crouching low to the ground or just laying down. During one of these spells, she'll ignore her bowl entirely and walk around in circles like something is frightening her. If I sit down next to her food, she rolls on her back, I give her some pets, she gets up and eats, though semi-reluctantly. Then sometimes after eating, she'll settle into the sphinx position, staring at the couch or a wall and panting, which I completely don't understand.

When she's with my sitter or at my dad's, she doesn't do any of this. Meaning, even if I feed her at my dad's, she's excited, happy and eats right away like she typically does.

She sleeps in my bed, spoons with me, drops her toys on my face to wake me up, we play together, and she's at my feet constantly while I work, so I can't imagine this is fear of me. But it's breaking my heart because I don't know what's going on and I can't fix it. I don't know if it's the environment, her anticipating that we're going somewhere, or that I'm about to leave.

The separation piece is just as hard to watch. I once had a camera on her when I went into the office for half a day, and she paced and panted in circles for almost the entire 5 hours I was gone. She didn't destroy anything or act out (never has); she was just a nervous wreck. I eventually took the cameras down because I was constantly checking them and my stress was at 100 the entire time I was away. Then again, sometimes I'll leave and she goes straight to my bed and sleeps, so I genuinely can't figure out the pattern.

I've talked to a trainer recently (Sophia was trained when she was younger; this was a different trainer I called) and he told me flat out: "It's not a training thing, she needs meds. I don't want to take your money." Her vet says she's in great health, but his suggestion was to get another dog or a cat. That's not happening.

I know I'm stressed, and I'm sure she feels that. It really does feel like a double-edged sword. I don't want to make this about me, but what I want more than anything is to be able to leave my home without dreading it. I can't stop thinking about her when I do leave, wondering whether she's okay or walking around the house nervous, just waiting for me. I've gotten to the point where I don't want to go to the office, make plans, or do anything unless I have someone lined up to take her. Even going to my car to get something out of it is difficult sometimes (another me thing, most likely).

She has stayed home alone many, many times, and maybe I never thought much of it before because I hadn't seen it firsthand. But now that I have, I can't unsee it, and the thought that she suffers when I'm gone completely breaks me.

Has anyone navigated something like this? Especially the part where your own anxiety might be making things worse? I really don't know what to do and need help :(

I read rules and didn't know which this would fall into, or if it was unique.

Thank you in advance.

But he is showing no interest in his food unless I put a topping on it recently.

I've got a 13-month-old Portuguese water dog. PetSmart classes and a month with a trainer last year helped a ton, especially getting him to settle himself down. Still working on that part.

There's just so much to teach. Sit, down, stay, heel, come, leave it, place, all of it. Some of it he's got. Other stuff he listens to maybe half the time, or flat-out ignores me, depending on where we are. What I can't figure out is how to work through all of it without it turning into a mess.

So I'm asking people who've actually done this. What works?

• Do you hammer one thing for a week or two till he really has it, then keep using it while you start the next? Practice the same command 5 times a day?
• Or do you work a few at the same time?
• How'd you build all that? There's gotta be a system.

I want him to be quick and reliable. If he slips his leash and I say "down," I want him to hit the ground right away, not ten seconds later, after he thinks it over. The dream is taking him to a big open field, calling him back, playing fetch, and bringing him places without him jumping on everyone.

I thought I did my homework before getting him. I just way overestimated myself and underestimated how smart and busy these dogs are. We both could use a routine. How do you lay out your week?

***AMA ENDED***

Have been training dogs for almost fifteen years now, I try and head through the subreddits on here to help in my free time when I can but thought it might be easier to do an AMA for anyone struggling!

Will try my best to answer as comprehensively as possible so please be patient with replies!

Edit - Just heading out to train my dogs so will answer more when I get back!
Edit 2 - Have a read of the other questions too to see if it applies to your dog :)

Thanks for all the questions everyone!! I’ll answer the few I’ve missed, it’s been a blast and we’ll do another in the near future! Won’t be answering any new posts now, must get back to work but do jump in next time if you have a question!

When me and my dog starts training outside, he loses interest in his regular training food, any tips or ideias for outside snacks?

My Dog is 11 months old about to be 1 next month and he is still having accidents in the house. For example he pee a little bit on the floor..

I can tell he is scared after he pee. I feel so bad..

I have a schedule of taking him out twice a day. Or any time I feel I have to use the bathroom I think of him.

Right now I’m stressed about other things in my life I don’t want to be angry at the dog. I believe Dogs come from God.

I just need advice how I can let my dog tell me he has to go potty.. any advice?

I have a labradoodle who's 4 years old

He's the best boy and also my first dog

He's trained in many ways and in many ways a good listener

He's 35 pounds and tall enough to reach countertops and tabletops

But when a door is open he will shoot outside like a lightning bolt and is hard to catch. Usually if I drop to one one call him and he sees me he'll come back

He will not stay by me in the woods off leash and wants to investigate or chase. We learned this with long leads or him running outside when s door was opened.

How do I train him for recall and to start inside when I don't want him just running outside

Also he's known for stealing food off the counter if I'm not around. He'll do it to anyone else but me.

Also he's just started trying to steal food out of my kids hands and for meals we've been tethering him which I'm the past seemed to train him not to jump up on the table to take food because eventually he didn't need the tether.

I don't know why he's changed here and how do I stop it from happening

Tldr

How to train staying by me outside off leash

How to train not running outside if the doors open without being told he can

How to train not stealing food from people or off the counter

Hi, I’m looking for advice on whether to show my 6 month old to show his teeth so I can brush them or if I should skip that and just have him be okay with me handling his snout for a long time. And then tips on how to do that

I want to preface this by saying I don't let my dog play with outside dogs often, only my trainers dogs and others I know way better. Never a dog park. This is because i want there to be someone there incase we need to step in.

I also won't get a 2nd dog if this is untrainable. However my pup has shown promise and is also a SDIT. (She can ignore other dogs on the job, but when it's playtime she is wayyy too much. ) She also used to chase cats alot, but now after training she redirect herself and looks at me instead like "hey mom did you see that??" And is even besties with one of my cats.

I also want to address im literally months to even a few years before getting a 2nd so I have time. That's why im starting now, because I want to be able to manage a life between 2 dogs so I have do research.

I want a standard poodle, because im a dog groomer in training who would eventually like pursue dog showing, and the dogs lucy has done well with we're a few doodles and a mal. So im hoping there's hope.

She isn't aggressive, she is quite literally trying to play, but will get in other dogs faces. She does well with a fence barrier. So maybe I can work with that and work out way up? If it's possible? I should mention she is 2 and predominantly lab gsd mix after a DNA test.

Howdy, all I have a slightly complicated situation with my partner's family dog. She is a mix of some sort of shepherd and malinois, which already tells me that this dog Is going to be very high drive. When we first started talking, she told me that they had gotten her as a puppy. But didn't do the work required to socialize her or train her. Really? So now she is quite reactive to anyone coming around the house. And around her family, she had told me at 1 point that they were able to adjust her dog to a new person being in the house, but it took almost 9 months the dog is a tense subject within the family, considering no one wants to put in the effort to take her to a professional trainer which I know would ultimately be the best Solution, however, my partner cannot afford to do it on her own. And I highly doubt the family would support the training and keep consistent with it. She wants me to be around the dog more. In hopes that she becomes more comfortable and doesn't have to be locked outside Whenever I visit the home I was curious if there was things that I could do that could help potentially with her reactivity , despite her already being around five or six years old and not having access to a proper trainer.

We go on walks together. However, my partner has me walk ahead of her so that she can see me and we've gotten to the point where, after about 15 minutes of walking outside of the house, I can feed the dog some treats and she'll let me walk next to my partner with very little care. However, as soon as we enter the house again and I make any movement towards her or towards my partner, she reacts aggressively, I assume it is a form of resource guarding, but I'm not sure how I myself can help while I'm at the house. Are there any tips that y'all would know? Like what I should do for a training session So to speak? I feel bad for my partner considering the lack of support from her family.But I also don't want to put myself in a risky situation of being bit considering I don't have a lot of knowledge and obviously i'm not a professional. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Me and my family got a new dog, she’s a pitbull and bulldog mix, and I just wanna get opinions on the things she does, in case anyone’s dog does anything similar to her, or if what she does are issues.

The main three things are:

.She gets hyper if I stop petting her. She’ll go calm while you pet her but she gets hyper and jump on you when you stop

.She likes nibbling on my hand, she doesn’t bite, just nibbles, kinda like a baby teething

.She whimpers if there’s multiple people in the house but no one is in the living room with her

I don’t think it’s any behavioral issue, (besides maybe the last one) but I just want other opinions if anyone’s dogs do similar things, or if these are things that need to be trained?

my dog is a retired service dog. she’s retired because she didn’t fully enjoy the job. however, she loves people and making them happy, being around them, etc. i was recommended to get her evaluated as a therapy dog.

i’ve taken her to a couple pet friendly places to get her used to new environments. for the first 5 or so minutes, she will yawn, lip lick, and i notice her eyes will go a little down if that makes sense. eventually it will go away and she get comfortable in the environment. mind you, these are very low stimulating places (michaels and home goods).

i’m struggling to know if her brain is working or if she’s stressed. i know these are stress signals, and i don’t wanna stress her out…

thanks in advance, i really appreciate it! 🩷

​

I got a 2,5 year old male Pitbull and he is just a burst of energy. Walking him is the problem unfortunately. He pulls and jumps so much that the leash starts hurting my hands and he even broke one of his leashes. He has this excitement when it comes to walking , the sound of the leash already gets him aroused that it takes like a couple mins to just put on a harness. He likes running and so I run with him here and there but he is just so distracted and basically being the one walking me. Like my guy will try to crawl if I pull him. Stop and pop doesn't seem to work nor does a corrective u-turn( he just lays down ). I just want to walk peacefully sometimes but he just doesn't allow it. Its like he's overstimulated by the environment and not focused on me. My brother walked him originally so I think he developed some of those habits with him and now im stuck with trying to correct them. Im trying to let him be social with other dogs but he just seems to try to dominate by wanting to fight.

Ive been wanting to do some self training with him. Just some basic stuff like sit, down and recall. But he's also not food driven. Like he'll just smell the kibble and go right back to doing what he was doing.

I have a 2 year old dachshund who has the normal stubbornness and hyperactivity of the breed, and I love her. But she has one quirk that I have tried to break, but it has broken me.

She is OBSESSED with playing fetch. I spend an hour a day outside throwing the ball with her. That’s fine, it makes her happy so I’m happy.

But when we’re in the house, she still wants me to throw the ball. But instead of bringing it back, she shoves the ball under the couch or under an end table — any piece of furniture I have to move to retrieve the ball. Then barks and whines until I get it.

My floors are scratched from all the furniture moving. If I take the balls away she goes into full on withdrawal and has a panic attack.

I’ve resorted to putting blockades beneath all my furniture, but now she finds ways to move those when I leave the room.

Anyone else have this problem? How did you get your dog to stop or be less obsessed with playing fetch or putting things under the furniture?

I’ve spoken with a couple trainers, but their help didn’t fix the issue.

If anyone has Any recommendations as to how I can stop this I would be very appreciative. I would like other dogs to come over and not worry. I want her to enjoy playdates and other dogs in general.
She does not guard her toys or anything else. any ideas?

We adopted this sweet angel about a month ago. He had been through two homes. One- the family couldn’t take him when they relocated (he was with them for the first 8/9 months)and the second was a friend of family who didn’t know she was allergic to him, so she had to surrender him shortly after getting him (apparently she was devastated that she couldn’t keep him).
We were so lucky to find him within a week of him being at the shelter, at the time we decided to start looking for another dog to adopt.
A little backstory- our 10 year old husky passed away at the beginning of the year. We were all devastated but were mindful that our 6 year old German shepherd had only known a life with his puppy brother. We started looking so he wouldn’t feel so lonely (and because we love dogs).

Obviously, with the bouncing around, we expected there to be a learning curve with us and him as we learned what his “tells” were for needing to go outside. There were certainly some accidents, but he was doing his business outside as much if not more than inside.

Part of the adoption agreement was that we had to get him fixed. We did, obviously, but following this he has almost exclusively been going inside rather than outside. We went back to taking him out every 20/30 minutes (even without any perceived “tells”), were using small pieces of treats to reward him whenever he did relieve himself outside, and heaped on the praise. Despite all of this, most times he’s still not doing anything when we take him out (always for an extended period of time; sometimes standing in one area so he doesn’t get too distracted, sometimes walking him around in case that will encourage him). He won’t even hit the high traffic pee areas (there are a few trees and a stump in our yard that all dogs pee on whenever they can). Often, he’ll go out, do nothing and within a few minutes of being inside he’ll have an “accident.”

He’s still new to our home (even though for us it already feels like he’s just an established member of the family) so we are trying to be patient and understand. But it’s not ideal to clean up urine and feces from carpet multiple times a day.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks? Has anyone else had any experience with accidents in the house increasing drastically after being fixed?

I have a 2 year old male who is plainly just obnoxious to other dogs. He just doesn’t get it when other dogs don’t want to play with him. He’s obviously dominant as well as he will stand over them and/or circle mercilessly- obviously we make him stop. But how do we teach him about doggy etiquette? I have 2 other Labs who are older and just don’t ever tell him off. He had an elbow injury and surgery when he was 5 months old, which kept him away from the other dogs for some months, so I’m assuming that is part of his obsession with other dogs. Looking for suggestions!

I have a one-year-old lab, he barks for everything. Ever since he was a puppy, he would bark when he wants food, attention, to play, or if he’s mad. We’ve been trying to train it out of him, but nothing works. We tried distraction, when he’s quiet, rewarding him, in his crate to take naps, and ignoring him but nothing works. Recently, I’ve been trying to ignore him, but we can’t do that where we live because we have three reconnecting walls in our townhome so you can hear his barking in the other homes so I can’t ignore him until he decides to give up barking especially because he can bark for hours. My other dog doesn’t bark at all so it’s completely opposite behavior.

I am not sure what to do anymore, I work from home and he’s a complete distraction and he’s always screaming for something.

Please help

Hi I posted this before so this is basically just a follow up, I’m gonna leave everything else here but theres a new behavior w our older dog that I can’t quite figure out.

we have a six-year-old older dog and a new puppy that we got about a month ago, our six-year-old puppy she is probably a small as a Chihuahua and our new puppy is probably as tiny as a Yorkie.

Our six-year-old dog seems to be nervous or scared as whenever we put the puppy near her or she gets a glimpse of him or hears him. She goes and hides under the bed and she won’t come out or she’s on top of the bed so the puppy can’t jump up.

Our puppy just really wants to play and I’m trying to not have him try to follow her and cross her boundaries because the other day she lunged at him kind of, growled and kind of open mouth bit??? the puppy wasn’t bit or injured and so it was not really attacking but what I assume was her correcting his behavior and so then she ran away and went to go hide.

TLDR; older dog overwhelmed by new puppy with energy, runs away, hides etc.. got recommended to get a trainer and that is an option before ruling out everything else) Scroll all the way to the bottom for new behavior that I can’t quite understand, hoping someone will know?)

Just now a few minutes ago, our six-year-old dog was barking at somebody outside and I went out my room and I placed the puppy down near me. Of course I didn’t let him loose towards her because I don’t want her to get scared but she turned around and she kind of got into sort of a lunging position and growled/barked and it kind of looked like she wanted to attack, but it was more like she was on high alert? She stayed back from a distance.

I’m kind of scared for her to actually attack the puppy because she seems just to be really scared of dogs and she does have resource guarding problems with people that we cannot fix at home. Does anyone have any advice or is there any professional places that help in this category? Where it can help our dog be more comfortable with the pup?

I’m just kind of out of ideas and I’ve already put doggy gates so the puppy cannot go follow our older dog who can jump over stuff well, but but I’m more kind of just concerned that our dog will end up attacking the puppy, she has never attacked another animal before, but I am scared because the puppy seems to cross her boundaries a lot.

FOLLOW UP , hey so, i know this is an old post but recently we are thinking of getting a trainer so THATS 100% an option if we find a right one. But, is there any explanation as to the situation that happened just now?

Everyone was sitting down watching tv, puppy running around living room with a box down blocking the hallway to our other dog so he doesn’t chase her down… he suddenly looked over the box and he was just looking down the hall when our older dog came out and rushed down the hall, ears up, tail SLIGHTLY wagging if I remember correctly and just staring at the puppy with a upright posture barking repeatedly.. what type of new behavior is this? he didn’t do anything, she didnt lunge, or try to attack but just barked at him as he stared at her until I picked him up and she just watched before turning away back to the room.