[Curbside Prophet]

I don't think that the pulling is unusual, or necessarily breed specific. Please feel free to correct me, I'm here with an open mind!

Certainly not breed specific, any breed of dog can be a puller. Though some breeds as you know, are better and even may be required to pull, or to lead. Mushers and SAR dog owners can attest to that.

Dozer herds in two different ways. One is by getting under your feet until you move in his direction (inside the house) and the other is by physically throwing his shoulder against your leg/ankle until you are where he wants you…I *assume* that this is herding behavior. Again, if I'm wrong in my assumptions, I beg to be corrected.

I’d love to see exactly what he’s doing. You wouldn’t happen to have video of this, do you? At the risk of being anthropomorphic, I’ve met quite a few dogs, some pitties even, that want to be lap dogs. They’ll run into you, nudge you, get tangled up in your feet, all for the attention. So, without seeing it I can’t call it herding, but I can see the logic.

I didn't teach "sit," so unfortunately I'm not 100% sure on how this was taught.

So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he’s doing exactly what he was taught. Regardless, new dog, new teacher, I’d start from scratch. And if you were to teach sit, how do you want to teach it? By luring, by capturing the behavior, by physically manipulating the dog?

During training I use calm praise (I don't want to get him riled up, it would defeat the purpose). After the training, we have a rousing game of fetch or tug of war, his two favorite things in the world. This works with NILIF.

With any dog I prefer to use food. It’s an excellent motivator for most dogs…until we meet your dog. I have two approached that I’d use, and I’d probably combine them together. 1) I’d praise the dog every time the dog offered the behavior on its own. This is called capturing or all-or-nothing training. Where the dog gives you the behavior or he gets nothing, no attention, he’s basically ignored until there’s something done by him worthy of praise. 2) I’d control his food. I prefer hand feeding a non-food motivated dog, as it seems a dog’s nature to work for food. If the dog isn’t accepting the food, I wait until his next meal before trying again. Unlike water, dogs can go for days without food, and at some point he has to get hungry. I’m hand feeding, so there’s my opportunity to train with food.

Of course, you should consult your vet before withholding food from your dog.

I tend to move slower and try to communicate with Dozer as a dog would communicate with him. My husband is more inclined to give verbal cues, and as I've said, Dozer is quite a visual dog. I forgot to add physical to visual earlier, though.

Your dog is relatively new to you. Four weeks isn’t really a long time. And it’s hard to say if you’ve noticed any results due to consistency. But I think we can all agree that if both you and your husband are using different methods to communicate with your dog, the understanding in your dog will take longer, and your dog may always tend to seem confused. What is the possibility that both you and your husband to be aligned in an approach?

You’ve mentioned a few times that your dog was visual… What exactly do you mean by this? Are you saying your dog learns by mimicry? Or that your dog is looking for differences in your appearance (body postures)?
It’s actually not a surprise to me at all that the dog may be more attentive to visuals cues versus verbal cues. If the dog hasn’t been properly taught a verbal cue, and if the dog has been taught to follow common human mannerisms, I do see how he may more obedient with you than your husband.

I know what you mean by "stinky," but how stinky are we talking? Hot dogs? Cheese? A bit of peanut butter on a cracker? I've tried all of these with no luck, and I don't think it gets much stinkier than cheese.

Oh, he *does* really like cat food, but... Well, I don't want to mess with his health just to train him!

At the risk of being anthropomorphic, hot dogs and cheese are not very aromatic as, say, fish. Savory, maybe, but certainly not stinkier. Though I’m sure there are some cheeses the smell more like dirty feet, but I’m not feeding that to my dog…yet.

The cat food, actually, is probably worse for your cat than it is for your dog, but that’s a discussion for a cat forum. If the dog really likes cat food, and I can lure him with cat food, I’m using cat food. I’m only using the food as a reinforcer for behaviors until they can be attached to a verbal and visual cue. I have no intention of using the cat food as a life reinforcer, like you would a game of fetch.

But there are dog treats, healthy dog treats, that are so potently stinky, that I’ve had a classroom of puppies all want my dog’s treats. You’ll have to see what’s available in your area and request to do sniff tests. Anything that doesn’t make your nose curl, may not be good enough.

But if you position a dog who is being trained to the *side* of you when teaching them to sit or lay down, then they learn to sit or lay at your side rather than right over the top of your feet.

Yes, I think we are both now assuming we know how the dog was taught sit, or at all. I don’t think we can make any assumptions of what the sit-on-feet behavior means until we know he knows our command for the behavior.

[ghosthunterbecki]

CP,

A lot has changed since I joined yesterday, to be honest. Not in the dog (of course, he hasn't had any time to make significant changes!) but with my mindset and what I'm seeing from him with regards to specific behaviors.

At this point in time, it's going to be significantly easier for *me* (I'm either just plain slow or that pregnant!) to break things down into smaller portions so that they are more easily digested. I don't suppose that I can expect the dog to learn three or four commands consistently within a two day period, and the same really does go for me.

What I'm going to do, when I'm not working hard on my own site (should be another hour or so) is to go ahead and start a new topic with what I'm seeing as the most significant of our current problems, and go from there. Things kind of "erupted" yesterday and got out of control, and I know the reasons why (and will provide that information).

In short, the issue is no longer about "general integration" with the family dog, but about obedience training to make everybody happier. Because I want to treat problems and not symptoms, the step-by-step approach is going to help me more in order to make this work for all of us.

Thank you! I will address your specific points as they come up in the future, as I'm sure they will again

ETA: Fish isn't a horrible idea. We've been needing to add some to the cats' diets in order to help them with shedding issues, so I think that's something very do-able. And I actually prefer the smellier cheeses, so if he likes them and the vet says they are okay, I don't see why not

[bella and lolas dad]

i need some tips on walkin w/o a leash. my pomeranians are great on 1 but it would be nice to walk w/o one

[Lonewolfblue]

Originally Posted by bella and lolas dad

i need some tips on walkin w/o a leash. my pomeranians are great on 1 but it would be nice to walk w/o one

Not really recommended, too many things can happen. Unless you are at a dog park, the dogs should always be on a leash. They could all of a sudden do something you don't expect and end up under a car, or trigger an attack by another dog that ran loose from their owner.