Spanish water dog puppy, nearly 6 months old, has a few issues I would like help with please. She jumps on tables to eat food when I am not in the room. She is also wary of strangers and won't really let people stroke her, only people she knows. She also barks when she sees people walking down our road and she has chased a delivery driver as well. Please help. I would like her to sit and stay when someone ring the door bell and not barks at them. Any suggestions thank you very much in advance
Hi Alice and welcome to the forum. 1. The first thing to do is to not leave food on tables when you leave the room. It is very important that your dog isn't able to self-reward (ie eat the food) herself for doing the unwanted behaviour. Then you can start work on the actual training - have some food on a table where she can see it but you can remove it if she moves toward it (keep in mind that dogs are faster than humans!) and then reward her each time she looks at the food and then looks away from it. 2. Many dogs are wary of strangers, especially the ones that go to pat them on the head without first asking your permission. It can be very difficult but initially at least you need to protect your dog by preventing people approaching without permission. This might even extend to telling people not to approach your dog for a while - you can simply say "Don't approach her, please, we are training." 3. The barking issue can be very difficult because of the self rewarding process again - the dog barks, the people pass by, the dog assumes that it has successfully seen off the perceived threat and so will bark again the next time the situation arises. Is there a way to block her sight of the approaching people, with curtains perhaps?
