Help me! What I'm doing is not working... bad behavior in my puppy.

Hi All,

My puppy is now 13 weeks old. She is sometimes so sweet but often so naughty and I'm reading all I can find online to know what to do and nothing is working with her.

She gets lots of exercise chasing balls and toys. She has many different kong toys, stuffed toys, balls, and bones and even gets big beef bones from the beef shop now and then. I use treats for her to reward when she sits and pet and praise her for all good behavior.

But the bad stuff is this...

She jumps up on us and jumps up with her paws on the couch and paws on our bed. My husband does not want her feet on us. I'm used to dogs so it doesn't bother me as much but he wants us to teach her not to jump up. We use the same word every time "down" and make her get down. We do it immediately every time and pay no attention and don't play when she does it. But she's not getting it. We will push her down and say "down" and not pay attention and she will do it again and again and again and even get to the point that she will start growling and trying to bite me for pushing her down. When she growls or bites at me I put her on her back like a mother dog would with my hand on her throat. *a friend who has a lot of dogs told me to try this. She's not trying to tell me she wants to go out or that she's hungry or needs water. She's just doing it for attention. And I would understand if she were a neglected dog getting no attention. But she does this constantly and despite her behavior, we do play with her a lot.

It has gotten so bad that if we are just trying to have a conversation or read something and she's constantly jumping up and not obeying, we have to put her in the crate.

Another issue is she eats everything she sees outside. Swallows leaves and sticks and seeds from trees whole and runs from us if we tell her no to try to take the things from her. We had to get a muzzle to be able to take her out without worrying she will swallow something. We only put it on to go outside and we go out with her so its not like she's keeping it on all the time. But I hate having to do this. She just does not obey at all when we say "no".

Another issue is that she runs from us if we call her. She's not afraid of us because she lays on our feet most of the time and gets lots of love and attention but she just doesn't want to obey anything. If she's off sniffing something and we call her, she ignores us. Is she deaf? I don't think she's hard of hearing but it seems like it because she just does not listen at all.

My husband never had a dog before. And I never had a puppy. Only adopted older dogs from the shelter. I keep telling him she will be a good dog one day and reminding him she is still just a baby. But he's so frustrated that nothing we are trying works. I want him to enjoy her as I enjoy her but with her behavior right now she is making it hard for me to convince him that having a dog really can be wonderful.

 

Hi , lots of issues to address here ! But first of all , please please ignore your friends advice and don't put your puppy onto her back and hold her down , this is a very outdated and old school way of dominating your pup , we tend now to understand that these methods are wrong , and prefer a kinder way of training , using positive methods and not negative ones . Your puppy isn't being naughty , she is being a very typical puppy , she doesn't understand the ethos of naughty , just fun ! Can I suggest you purchase the Happy Puppy Handbook , written by Pippa , owner and editor of this forum ? I think its saved the sanity of countless new owners , and shown them the best possible way to raise and train your puppy , using positive methods , you really will find it invaluable , good luck !

 

Thank you! I just went to Amazon.com and ordered it for my Kindle

 

OK, let's start with this. So, you're saying "down". You're pushing her down. That is giving her attention. You may not think it is, but it is. Dogs (and Labs in particular) love the pushy game. So, you're actually rewarding her for jumping up when you do this, and it's why she gets more worked up and start biting. She's just playing, like a puppy does. Instead, you need to actually ignore her. That means, not saying anything (not even "down"), not looking at her at all. Turn your back, cross your arms, and be mute. The instant she stops jumping up, engage with her, tell her she's amazing, play with her.

Yeah, stop doing that. You're asking for problems with this. It sounds like your friend got caught up in the dominance method and didn't move on when it was proven that's tosh - and potentially dangerous. Dogs who are physically punished like this are far more likely to develop aggression problems.
When your puppy is growling and biting at you, she is just playing. Holding her down is not appropriate at all. And, even if she weren't playing (she is, it's normal puppy behaviour), the last thing you ever want to do it punish your dog for growling. Growling (for an adult dog) is a way of communicating with you that they feel threatened. That gives you the opportunity to do something about it. If you punish a dog for growling, when they feel threatened, they will have no choice but to skip that step and go straight to the next - which is an escalation, probably to a snap. Punish that, and you end up with a dog who bites you as his first line of defence. No, never punish a dog for growling. Try to work out what is making him uncomfortable and either remove that thing, or work on making him more comfortable in that situation.

I'll continue with the other issues in a second post...

 

Great , it will help !

 

Thank you everyone. I learn so much from this forum!

 

Firstly, I'd like you to try to alter the way you look at her behaviours as "obeying" or "disobeying". Get rid of the whole idea of issuing "commands". In modern terminology, we use the word "cue" instead. This may seem like semantics, but it goes a lot deeper than that. If you "command" someone to do something, then if they don't do it, they are defying you. Well, that's not how dogs work. They aren't motivated to defy you. So, we use "cue" instead. If you give a cue and your dog doesn't follow it, it's because they don't understand, or you haven't proofed it enough in different scenarios. The emphasis is removed from the dog and put where it should be - with you, the trainer.

So, when you talk about saying "no", tell me, what training have you done to teach her what "no" means? Roll back a second, what does "no" mean? We throw this word out all the time, but it's so, so imprecise, how on earth can we expect a dog to understand what it means - especially when none of us actually train it to mean anything?
Dog is barking - we say "no" to mean, "don't bark".
Dog picks up a stick - we say "no" to mean, "don't pick up that stick".
Dog paw at you - we say "no" to mean, "stop pawing at me".
Dog licks your face - we say "no" to mean, "don't lick my face".
Dog pull on lead - we say "no" to mean, "don't pull on the lead".

See how confusing it is?

So, forget "no". Of course you will say it from time to time, we all do. But understand when your dog doesn't respond to it. Unless you have very specifically taught "no" to mean something, then why on earth would your dog do what you want when you say it? You might as well be saying "turtle".

It's actually really quite difficult to train someone to not do something. It's far, far easier to train them to do something that means they can't do the thing that you don't want them doing. So, if your dog is pulling, you train him to walk to heel. If your dog is fussing when you eat, you train him to go to his bed.

In your case, it sounds like you need to do two things - train a leave and a give.

Here's a video that has the early stages of leave:


If you are chasing your puppy to get things out of her mouth, you are teaching her that picking something up and playing keep-away results in a marvellous game of chase! Chase is one of the most rewarding things you can do with your puppy. So, if she gets that for something you don't want her to do, you're reinforcing the unwanted behaviour. Best stop that
And taking things that she likes away from her - yup, you're teaching her that, if she comes close, she loses the things she likes. Yup, definitely not going to return when called, then.
Can you see how, when you look at it from a motivation point of view, that it's actually your behaviour that is reinforcing her unwanted behaviours? Don't feel bad, this is hugely common. We believe our dogs should BEHAVE and BE OBEDIENT and, somehow, just fit into our beautifully structured lives. And they can be brilliant companions, it just takes a little bit of a jiggle in our minds to get into the mindset of how to train the behaviours we do want and let the ones we don't want fade away.

So, let's go back to "give". The trick here is to set up scenarios with items she's allowed, at first. A toy, maybe. Have a (gentle) game of tuggy with the toy then let her have it. A positive interaction, and she gets to win the thing she likes. Yay. Every game doesn't end with you taking it away. Do this a lot.
Next time, try holding up a tasty treat, so she drops the toy. Give her the treat and then immediately give her the toy back again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Don't associate a cue at this stage. If you do this ten times and on the last time you take the toy away, it means that she has had ten goes where she has given you the toy, she has had a treat and got the toy back. And only one go where she still got an amazing treat, but sadly lost the toy. That's a great reinforcement history right there and means she is far more likely to give you that toy in the future.
You can pretty quickly drop the bribe, and it's important that you do so, otherwise your dog will only ever drop the toy when you have a treat in your hand, which may not be possible and, even if it is, you will have a dog who weighs up the value of the treat to the value of what she has in her mouth - you can bet your bottom dollar that the disgusting thing she has picked up will win eventually! So, we're after what's called a trained response. At first, you will need to "fake" the treat in your hand. So, just hold your hand exactly as you did when you were showing her the treat. When she releases the toy, you show her that hand is empty, but it's OK, there's still a treat coming from this pouch... and then, she gets the toy back. Repeat, repeat, repeat. When you can guarantee (would bet £100) that she'll drop the toy when you hold your hand in that way, you can introduce a verbal cue. "Drop", "give", it doesn't really matter. For me, "drop" means "drop it on the floor" and "give" means "put it in my hand", but it depends what you're after. I'm going to say you're using "give"...
So, what you do is say "give" immediately before you hold your hand in the "faking the treat" position. At this stage, "give" is meaningless. It's the hand that is cueing her to give you the toy. But, do this enough, remembering to give the verbal cue before you move your hand, and she'll start to associate the two. Then you can pause between the word and the hand. See if she responds to the word. Give it a couple of seconds. If not, repeat the verbal cue - visual cue a few more times before testing again. When she does make the connection that the word "give" means the same as the hand, and she drops the toy on cue, throw a party. Reinforce that amazingly. Don't expect her to have it 100% at this stage, and at the start of every training session (which should only be a couple of minutes long, max, at this age), go back to making it easy again.

So, now you have a puppy who lets go of a toy in a controlled setting on cue. Brilliant! How to relate this to the real world? Here's where something called "proofing" comes into play, and that means gradually increasing the difficulty so that what your puppy has learnt on your kitchen floor with a fluffy toy will work equally as well with a rotting seagull carcass on the beach.
There are three things that make something more difficult for a dog, and we call these the three Ds. Distance, Duration and Distraction. For the give, we're generally talking mostly about distraction here. So, that will be the environment and the thing she is holding. When you make one thing more difficult, you have to take everything else back to basics. So, move from your kitchen to the garden with your toy. OR use a more valuable item in the kitchen. Not both at once. Whatever of these you choose, you'll probably have to go back to the beginning of the training exercises. You may be tempted to think "but she knows how to do it already". Wrong. She knows how to do it with that toy in your kitchen. Dogs don't generalise well at all, so asking her to do the same thing in your garden may be as different to her as asking her to paint your fence. Luckily, you should find that it takes a lot less time to work through the steps, as she starts to make the associations. The more you play this game with more variables - different locations, different objects, other distractions around - remembering every step of the way that you only change one thing at a time, and you always take a few steps back in your progression as you do - the more she will learn that "give" means "give whatever I have in my mouth, regardless of what it is and where we are".

Wow, that was War And Peace. It's really not as difficult as I've probably made out, but it's important that you have an idea of the principles involved to work out why things aren't working when you believe your puppy is "disobeying" your "commands".

 

This one is easy. Buy Total Recall. Work through the steps. You'll have a dog with a pretty bomb-proof recall

 

Puppy classes. A good class will show you in person how to handle many of the things you are having problems with. They help socialize puppy, help bond her to you and the best (maybe the worst you will see every one has these problems. Though with a Lab puppy you might the only one to have them ALL.

What's her name? What colour is she? Photo? Love to see.

 

Welcome to you and your puppy! I hope you're not feeling too overwhelmed by all the information above, it really is good stuff. Look forward to hearing more about her.

 

Welcome from me and Lilly!
It is all a bit overwhelming, and difficult to know where to start.

My tip would be for both you AND your husband to read/watch all the info so you both know what you are doing and why. And a diluted version for anyone else that may be in your house.
So much easier than learning it all yourself and then having to train your OH.
"Sing from the same hymn sheet"

Stick with it - the forum mantra......"this too shall pass"
jac

 

It is a life saver.

 

Her name is Pepper. My husband named her. She's spicy alright! I downloaded and started reading the Happy Puppy Handbook last night. I had a lot of other work so I've only made it through a little bit of it. Have been thinking each time and paying attention to the outcomes she is getting from the behaviors she is exhibiting. I totally see how she thinks pushing her down when she jumps is a fun game and how much she thinks its a fun playtime to run and be chased since we do run with her and chase her and let her chase us just for fun. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into the book for some solutions. I wish we had puppy classes here in India. Maybe there are some in the big cities but we are a 5 hour drive from the nearest big city. The training I've heard about here for dogs seems pretty cruel so I am trying to learn how to train her myself.

This morning I tried Snowbunny's suggestion of ignoring her when she jumps. We had just come back upstairs from about an hour of playtime, chewing a beef bone, and then a bath outside. I was hoping she would be worn out! But when I sat on the couch, she kept jumping on me for more attention. I gave her a toy and sat back down. She kept jumping and even biting me for attention. I tried to ignore it but scratches up and down my arms and legs and 2 bites later my husband said obviously ignoring isn't going to work and he pushed her down a little roughly. I got a bit discouraged. This went on for a long time her jumping, me ignoring and her trying to bite and scratch and then going off to chew furniture instead of her bone and toys that were right in front of her. Of course I had to react to the chewing of the furniture. So I am a bit discouraged again. After such a fun playtime I was thinking we will have a good day, we will have a good day! And then this. Haha. Oh gosh this is hard. I love her and I'm determined. So sitting down now to read more of the book. I had to put her in her crate though or she won't let me read.

I so appreciate the advice here. Especially when I hear that they will get better and there is hope and all the sweet pictures of your babies. I really love dogs and know how amazing and wonderful they can be once they are trained.

 

Snowbunny, I printed this for my husband to read too! Thank you!

 

If Pepper's had an hour of playtime it sounds as if she's perhaps overstimulated and tired when she's trying to gain more attention. It's important to train some quiet time too. Do you have a pen or a crate that she can use as a den? She can then have her beef bone to chew there. She's still very young and seems to be expecting fun and games when she's with you.

Do post some photos of her. She sounds lovely!

 

Lots of great advice already given above. Just wanted to say welcome to you a Pepper.
She just a normal puppy

 

This times a hundred and very well said.

I recently had a foster dog who loved "the pushy game". It was so hard to completely ignore him as it is human nature to react (especially when you are already frustrated), but once I did, it worked. It is really a case of training the humans (you) vs. training the puppy.

 

Yes. It's really quite hard to give no attention at all - no eye contact, no spoken word, no touch and back turned. It takes conscious thought every time. But it works really well if you are sure to reward them when they are doing the right thing - which also takes effort as we tend to ignore good behaviour!

.

 

OK, you need to control your husband.
The thing is, you've been consistently rewarding her by giving her attention for jumping up. She's learnt that jumping up gives her that, and a pushy game. So, when you suddenly don't give her that result, she wonders why, and tries again. And harder. And harder. This is perfectly normal - she's trying to get that attention. It's what's called an "extinction burst". This means that, before a behaviour disappears, the dog does it more; bigger, stronger, harder, longer, to get that reaction. Here's the thing - if you reward her for this, it will tell her that doing bigger, stringer, harder, longer works! So, in order to work through it, you will have to put up with more, and more, and more. So, when she does this, you have to be consistent. You have to ignore her. You absolutely cannot give in because she's learning all the time that being more obnoxious works. And what happens then to your husband's "rough" behaviour? At what point does it become so rough that it hurts her, because "just a little bit rough" winds her up more?

So - practical solutions. If it's so bad that she cannot be ignored; that is, she's damaging stuff, being a danger to herself, or causing you real pain (I mean over and above the bites, scratches and bruises that inevitably come with having a puppy), then simply pop her in a crate or pen until she's calmed down. If she's that frantic, she's probably over tired and needs a sleep. Just like toddlers, who become antsy when they're tired. If you don't have a pen or a crate, get one. They're sanity savers when you have a puppy. Make it a wonderful place, where treats appear, as if from nowhere. Where she feels safe and secure and knows it's snoozy time. It's never a punishment, it's a sanctuary, where she knows it's OK to be calm. Give her a stuffed kong and let her work on that until she goes to sleep.

By the way, if you gave her a beef leg bone, I wouldn't recommend them, as they're too hard and can potentially splinter the puppy's teeth - very painful and expensive - but raw rib bones are probably fine. You probably know this, but you should never leave your puppy unattended with any sort of bone. Kongs are generally deemed very safe to leave your puppy chewing.

Just be aware that she is a baby. These things take time. When we talk about consistency and these solutions working, we mean you have to be consistent for days and weeks, not just once or twice. Don't be discouraged. She's just being a normal puppy.

 

I just thought of a analogy for the extinction burst. Those annoying children who, when their parents are engaged with someone else, will say "Mummy" ("Mommy" if you're Stateside - sorry, I can't bring myself to ).
Mummy, when they're tiny, will immediately respond to this. As the children get a bit older, Mummy starts to ignore the first "Mummy". So, it turns into "Mummy, Mummy". Then, "MummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummy". Mummy loses her rag and says "What do you want?!". Child has learnt that being persistent works. Child 1, Mummy 0.

Next time, "MummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummy" ... Mummy sighs, rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath, determined to ignore the irritating child... "MummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummy"
... Mummy takes a swig of gin from a hip flask and continues to ignore ...
"MummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMummyMUMMYMUMMYMUMMYMUMMYMUMMYMUMMY"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT, YOU LITTLE <bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep>?"

Child 2, Mummy 0.

See how it works? I know nothing about children, so I'm assuming at this developmental stage it's not possible to rationalise with them and get them to understand the proper rules of engagement. Or overwrought parents just don't have the emotional capacity, maybe. In any event, the child and your puppy are being taught the very same thing. You can't rationalise with a puppy, so it learns in exactly the same way as that annoying child. Being annoying works, if the parent lets it.