My pup is 13 weeks old and we are doing great with housebreaking, sit, stay, no pull on the lead, taking treats gently, etc. One challenge I am having is if I she is barking at me when corrected. For instance, when she jumps up on my chair when I am working, I tell her off and push her off. Sometimes she will bark at me and run away from me, then come back and keep barking. I assume this is for attention, and I need to ignore it, however I feel like she is "winning" when she is allowed to bark at me. She definitely appears to be trying to be the boss. I appreciate any advice.
Hi and welcome to the forum! Let me set your mind at rest, first. Your dog certainly isn't trying to be boss. All ideas of the dog trying to be dominant have been debunked by modern behavioural science. Here is more information: Is your Labrador in charge? Should you dominate your Labrador puppy? By telling her off and pushing her away, you are letting her "win"; you are interacting with her. You're perfectly correct, that she is just after attention. Barking is working at getting your attention, so you are reinforcing that behaviour. You need to either train a behaviour that conflicts with what she's doing (so, teaching an "on your bed", which means she won't be on your chair, for example), or simply ignore the unwanted behaviour and it will diminish, in time, as long as it's not self-rewarding (meaning, she gets some pleasure out of doing it for its own sake). Think of it in terms of a baby. That's all she is - a little baby dog. Would you think a baby was trying to "be the boss" or be naughty if it was crying? No. You'd think it was after something - food, a cuddle, toileting. It's no different for your puppy. Are you giving her enough interaction time during the day? Just a five minute training session here and there will really wear her out, far more than any physical exercise. I can wholeheartedly recommend clicker training, which is positive reinforcement. It makes it very easy for the puppy to learn new behaviours in a rewarding way, making these behaviours much more likely to "stick". You can end up training very complex chains of behaviours as simple games that the dog loves to perform. Here's some information on clicker training: Clicker training - What's it all about? Ten good reasons to start clicker training/ For lots of ideas of games and behaviours you can train, even very young puppies, have a look at the Kikopup channel on YouTube. I hope that helps and gives you some ideas of how to progress to having a great relationship with your new puppy
