Hello everyone! I’m hoping some of you can give advice as I’m starting to run out of hair to rip out my head! I have a 4 month old redfox lab called Ollie. Unfortunately the day we got him we noticed signs of Parvovirus and had a tough time nursing him back to health over a couple of weeks. Thankfully he is great now and loving his little life. Ollie is great at times, especially when he’s sleepy or wanting to listen. But it’s starting to feel that most of the time he is looking to lunge at me or my partner and it’s getting worse. First it will start with a slight nip and then in to full blown lunging / latching on / growling and jumping up. It’s got to the point when we try to walk in to the other room he holds on to the back of our legs or clothing and rips in to them. The second we leave the room he barks and growls. We’ve left it 10 - 20 seconds before going in the room on advice from our dog trainer and he still remains the same.. if not worse. The hairs on his back completely stand up and his entire body language changes. This all seems to happen just before bed. He gets out on a good 20 minute walk around a field, he chases after the ball and we do a little recall each night with him. He’s excelling in his training however the downside is you never know when he is going to grab you. As I said it’s night time this happens, and when we get in to bed (he likes to sleep on the floor and sometimes jumps up) he then attacks again until he’s completely fizzled out. We did have him in his crate sleeping at night but he does so well during the night we have stopped this. Each morning around 7am his little face peers at the side of the bed looking to go to the toilet or he sits by the door, he’s fully trained toilet wise which is superb. We absolutely adore Ollie and spend as much time as we can with him trying to show him new things, play with him and let him chill out too. Sometimes he can show a lovely side but at the moment all it seems is that he wants to really REALLY fight with us & have us chase him with normally something valuable in his mouth. I have been at home each day for the last two months with him to get him settled and now I go back to work next week (I work from home 3 days & two days have a dog walker arranged) Any tips or guidance would be appreciated! We would never give up on our boy but it’s getting very tough at the moment to remain positive.
Hello and welcome to the forum. This is pretty normal puppy behaviour. The good news is that it sounds like it's predictable with Ollie in that it always happens at night. He's probably over-tired - just like toddlers, puppies who are over-tired can be little monsters and there's no point trying to train them in that moment, because nothing will go into their butterfly brains. I wold reinstate the crate, or a pen, as a place he goes to be calm. Pop him in there with a frozen kong for him to focus his energy on until he falls asleep. As for the behaviour of "stealing" things, you can see my advice here: https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/teaching-drop-give-and-leave-it.21345/#post-326288
I have similar with Ziggy although luckily for us he's nowhere near as aggressive. He'll get a wee bit bitey, steal slippers, chew flowers, not listen etc. As @snowbunny says it's a sign he's tired and need to go for a timeout in his pen. Most of the time he settles immediately and can get let out a few minutes later for a cuddle or left to snooze. SB's advice on give/drop is top notch, I also used the following video and his drop/leave it is getting fairly reliable
Thank you for your advice! We did think it was because he was tired and I think we’ve taken the wrong steps by trying to let him play in the hope it will make him fall asleep. He loves his crate so today i’m keeping him in it more as he does get out a lot to be in the garden or around the house with me, meaning he isn’t sleeping. The normal time of the ‘attacking’ is about 8/9pm. May sound silly but how much sleep should a 4 month old be getting daily? Thanks again!
Hi. Evenings can be frantic with pups as they are like overtired babies. If you know it’s goung to happen during this time period, preempt this by doing some short, calm training sessions. This helped us.
