I have always had German short-haired pointers, ever since I was a kid. I have had 3 of them and they were all great dogs and fantastic hunters. All but one were adult dogs from GSP rescue groups so I do have experience with rescue dogs, also including some non sporting dogs that were pets. My last GSP passed away 3 years ago and I finally could not hold off any longer, I don't feel whole without a dog. I no longer hunt and when I go out of town once and a while my parents, mostly my mother, would need to be able to handle the dog so I didn't want a puppy and I wanted a sporting dog but not one that needed constant exercise. I watched the local humane society website for months before I finally saw a dog I wanted to meet. Monday my mother and I (again important that it is a dog my mother can get along with and handle) made the 45 minute trip and got to meet Murphy. Murphy is a 6 year old yellow lab, obviously purebred and extremely handsome. Very muscled for a lab and his coat was perfect. He was happy to meet us and had the curiosity and life I was looking for in his eyes with no hint of wildness. The previous owners had filled out a survey when they surrendered him and said that he had diarrhea for 4 straight days and they could not afford to take him to the vet. They also said he was very skittish and scared of everything. We both loved him and even though we don't live in the same house, my parents' house is on the same property so we went back home and brought back my mother's 16 year old mini-pin terrier mix and my 12 year old son was home from school and of course wanted to come along. My mother's dog weighs about 30lbs and can be a grump, but they got along fine as did he and my son and I brought him home. First thing out of the car, Murphy met Chewy my 23 year old 20lb cat. Murphy ignored him but Chewy wasn't happy and got him a pretty good one under his eye. Chewy is mostly outside and he sleeps either in the garage or at my parents' place, it will probably be a while before he comes in my place with Murphy here now, but he will come around, he always does. (just and an aside just last month I watched Chewy fight a full grown raccoon and whipped him in about 30 seconds, he is the king around here lol) Anyway, on to the issues I am having with Murphy. For the most part he is really well behaved and loving. He does not eat very well, the HS had him on Purina Pro Plan chicken and rice, not a cheap dog food by any means but I am not sure he likes it much. The first couple of days I kept his bowl down all day but yesterday I started giving him 30mins in the morning and 30 mins in the evening to eat and removing his bowl the rest of the day. I am pretty sure he was fed table scraps as he waits for food when we eat. He won't get any from us though, with the diarrhea problem he had its dog food and dog treats only. He is extremely skittish, any unexpected noise and he jumps. Even if its the rattling of pots, trash bags or kitchen gadget. We have those stupid asian beetles this time of year and the only way to keep them in check that we have found are indoor bug zappers. They make a pretty good pop when they zap a bug and he jumps out of his skin every time it does. Anybody know how I can help him with this? Then today was the biggest issue. I have always used electronic collars for all my dogs. I don't like them but our road has cars that drive by way too fast and I would rather use the collars once in a blue moon then have to bury a dog that ran in the road. All my other dogs only took a zap once a year or so, once they knew what to expect the beep or vibration function was enough to stop them if they start toward the road. The first couple of days I thought Murphy must have already known what it was, if he started toward the road all it took was the beeping or vibration and he would stop and come back to me. This morning he took off after a deer that was crossing the road and there was a car coming. He didn't respond to beep or vibrate so I gave him a quick shock and he went insane! The shock lasted less than a second but he came running back to me and started jumping on me over and over and over, I am talking for over 2 full minutes and nothing I did stopped him from jumping on me. I am a big guy and usually I am not bothered when a dog jumps on me but this was nuts. He was flailing his paws and scraping me all over. Putting my knee up to try and stop him did nothing. He was biting too but not hard, more like nipping. It was like nothing I have ever experienced with a dog before. I managed to get the collar off him somehow while all this was going on, I though maybe it got stuck in stimulation mode but it wasn't and removing it didn't stop his fit. Finally I had to grab him in a bear hug and took him to the ground and held him. I had blood running down my arms, side and even one of my cheeks and I don't know how many bruises I will end up with. After a couple of minutes he finally calmed down. Since that happened he seems a bit subdued, but I did manage to get him to retrieve a couple of potatoes (trying to teach him to fetch, today was the first time I actually got him to bring a couple back) and now he is laying on my feet under the desk. I am sending the collar back, obviously its not going to work for him. I will just have to leash train him instead. Just wondering if anybody has ever had an experience like this before?
Welcome to the forum. Good on you taking on a rescue dog. They can be pretty much an unknown quantity. Sounds like you may have a bit of a training project on your hands. First of all, may I say we are a positive training forum, promoting training without aversives, and the use of such tools as shock collars, for whatever the reason, we cannot support. Good! Although hopefully leash training in this instance isn't tying him to a long rope outside. Hmm....4 days of diarrhoea and they surrender their dog - not sure I would believe that. I suspect the "scared of everything "bit is more relevant. He might need some careful handling, a bit of nurturing. That sounds like he has been scared by something or someone and it is a characteristic of a very fearful dog. I guess he may have been mistreated, but not all "scared" dogs have necessarily been badly treated by any means - sometimes it can be in their nature rather than their upbringing. As I have said above, this type of training is completely against the positive training ethos of our forum, even though used with good intent, seemingly for the dogs protection. It sounds like your rescue has been so completely stressed by the whole experience of the collar that he has pretty much freaked out and become uncontrollable, overstimulated and frantic. I am so glad you have abandoned it. Now, I am definitely not the person to give training advice, others on here are much better than me regarding this, but perhaps you need to go back to basics and start by building up a really good bond with this scared boy. Have you ever hand fed a dog? That could be an idea to build up your relationship. And work hard on slow socialisation - taking him out to acclimatise him to the sights and sounds in your area. How is he on a leash? I hope you manage to get things resolved. And hope you aren't too battered and bruised. jac
Hmm this seems an odd stance to take considering this is a sporting dog (lab) forum. I can understand it if you are training a lab for being a pet, but I think it unwise and very dangerous to be completely against using a tool that can (and HAS) saved my dogs' lives on more than one occasion. When a dog is hot on a scent they can be oblivious to dangers around them and if they are in the moment enough no matter how much training they have had they may not even hear you issue commands. For example the collars on my GSPs have saved my dogs from falling off a cliff, charging a bear, crossing busy roadways, getting torn up in fences and one time from getting trampled by cattle. I am not saying they are the end all be all, but I would never take a dog into a field without a leash without one on. Its a safety net for the dog, I know of no other way it would have been possible to keep my dogs safe in the situations I mentioned, except keeping them home. I will not be using one with this dog though, so I guess I don't need to harp on it. Not at all, I very rarely tie up dogs and when I do its just while I need to be free to do something, and I would never do it unsupervised. He pulls hard on a leash, I am going to start training him on that this weekend. I have a good harness coming that has hooks on the front and back, I have had really good luck with the front hook leash training when combining it with dropping treats behind my foot to get them to learn being there is a positive thing. He does love his treats, I need to get some liver from the store and cook and chop it for small treats. The bond was actually immediate. The previous owner had a loud house full of kids and its pretty obvious this guy prefers having just one master and my quieter house. He follows me everywhere and will politely go to my son or one of my parents when called, but then he comes right back to my side. His behavior is really great, I left him for 4 hours yesterday free in the main part of the house (it was windy and my bike ride took much longer then I had intended) and he didn't disturb a thing. I have left him for 10 mins to 1 hour as well with no issues. I am so glad I won't have to deal with a crate for him. My first GSP was that way, my others had to be crated when left alone. Thanks! I just got done taking a shower and I am black and blue and have scrapes on my stomach, sides, back, arms and face. Nothing that hurts much though, its a good thing he wasn't trying to hurt me. I am glad it was me it happened too and not someone smaller and weaker.
Hi and welcome to the forum. Good on you for taking on a rescue dog, he sounds lovely. I think it always takes a bit of time with a rescue dog for everyone to work out their new relationships, but he clearly has taken to you. As Jac says, the use of aversive training methods is completely against our forum rules and principles, and I am so glad you sent the e-collar back. You obviously have a sensitive dog there, and I am sure you can train him without it - e-collars are illegal in the country where I live (Germany), so all dogs, including hunting dogs, are trained without them. I am a trainer in the Deutscher Retriever Club, and compete with my dogs in Germany and take them shooting when we are in the UK. We don't have bears where I live, but we do have lots of wild boar in our forests, and I have trained all my dogs a reliable stop whistle, using positive-only methods. As you say, it's imperative to be able to stop your dog, as this could be a life-saver. In situations where you can't be completely sure, then you have to be proactive to keep them protected - for instance last week I was on holiday in the Alps. We took both dogs with us, and they were off leash a lot of the time, but where there were steep drops I had them on leash and walking to heel. Better safe than sorry! I hope your bruises fade quickly and that you go on to develop a real close bond with your new friend Murphy. I look forward to hearing more about him, and your journey together.
I have had five GSPs, all worked and all never had an electronic collar on! It sounds as if your dog was terrified when the collar was stimulated and ran back to you as his safe place but unfortunately was in such a state he was scrabbling at you. My present Lab is a bit of a pain because he has such a good recall, if we are walking with friends and they call their dog, he comes as well, even when I don't want him! I trained the recall with the reward of a tennis ball.
Yes, an excellent stop and recall are essential - and easy to teach totally positively and reward based. Pippa’s Total Recall book is marvellous and I re-read it with each pup.
My guess is that he's been taught, using the shock collar, that on a recall he'll keep getting shocked until he gets back to the human. That is probably why he came running back on the shock and was so frantic when he arrived. If you want to desensitise him to the bug zapper here's what I'd do: 1. Make a recording of the bug zapper on your phone and put it on a loop 2. Turn off the bug zapper and keep your house closed up to keep out bugs (this step is temporary but you will need to have the zapper off while you train him to be ok with it) 3. Get a big bowl of treats...this can be his normal kibble 4. Play the recording of the zapper at a very low level, so soft that you can barely hear it and at a level that he isn't bothered by. Immediately after each zap sound feed him a treat 5. Once he's good with that turn the sound up a tiny fraction. Repeat the above step with the treats. A treat must appear immediately after each zap. Not before - it has to be after the zap. You want him to think the zap makes the treat available. 6. Over the course of some days (or however long it takes) repeat this, grasually increasing the volume as he can handle it. You want him in a relaxed state about it before you increase the volume. Don't go too fast for him. Aim to eventually get to a sound level that is a bit above the volume of the actual zapper. This will work if you do it slowly and patiently enough and with food that he really likes. Don't turn on the actual zapper again until you have been successful in desensitising him to the taped noise. When you do turn it on again do the same thing you did with the taped noise - give him a treat after the zaps. You can gradually phase out the treats once he no longer cares about the zaps.
Thanks for all the replies and support! Thanks for this idea! Unfortunately this time of year I can't keep the zappers off, I would be overwhelmed quickly with these nasty lady bug wannabes. I do turn it off when he is going to be alone though. I will try your treat method with the live zapper, I can keep a little bag of treats with me and give him a treat when it goes off. I will also do some research and see if I can find an alternative method for keeping them in check, nothing else I have tried in the past works.
It is still worth using the treats when the real life zapper makes its noise. The more desirable the treats are the better it will work. Hopefully he's not too scared to take a treat (animals won't eat if they are really anxious) - if he's able to take a treat and eat it that in itself is a hopeful sign. You can try starting off in a more distant room, where the sound of the zapper is lower and where his reaction is hopefully also reduced. Another thing you can try is a technique called overshadowing. Put simply, dogs (or humans, horses, birds or any living thing!) can't respond simultaneously to two competing stimuli. The animal will respond to the more powerful (more motivating or more strongly learned) one and the alternative response will be de-trained and fade away. This is what is happening when a dog starts sniffing a fabulous sniff or eating a discarded burger and you call your dog and he doesn't come. Basically, if you give the dog two competing/incompatible cues it'll respond to one and the other cue/behaviour will start to fade away and will stop working. In the above example the dog will respond to the more motivating stimulus - if you haven't trained a great recall it'll be the fabulous sniff that wins. And if it's a Labrador then the burger will win no matter what Your recall will be detrained. Overshadowing can be used for good purposes in the case of undesirable behaviours, like a fearful response to a stimulus. You can overshadow the stimulus/fearful response (zapper followed by fright response) with a competing more powerful cue/behaviour (cue to sit, followed by sit). If the dog can perform the competing behaviour in the presence of the scary stimulus then the fearful behaviour will start to fade and the scary thing will effectively stop being scary. The competing behaviour can be anything that is not compatible with jumping out of his skin - could be heeling back and forth, a trick, repeated sit/stand/sit/stand. Whatever it is it has to be very powerfully learned first. What you want is for the zapper to be overshadowed by your more powerful obedience cue, not the other way round. So, start in a distant room and, while the zapper zaps, ask him to do your chosen incompatible behaviour - something he already knows and responds to very very well. If he can do that behaviour, the zap/fright connection will start to fade away, lose its power, be detrained. Using treats to reward him will speed things up. So, basically, the most effective combo is going to be getting him to do some basic obedience stuff or tricks, with delicious highly desirable treats, while the zapper zaps. It is ideal if you can at least start this at a distance where the zapping is detectable but not scary. He has to have the mental and emotional resources to be able to pay attention to you and take food, otherwise it won't work and the zapper will be doing the overshadowing.
Update on Murphy. He learned to loose leash walk very fast once I switched to the harness that had the loop in front, actually the fastest I have ever had a dog loose leash walk. Within 2 days I had switched back to the top harness loop and he didn't pull a single time on a 5 mile walk. He also does very well off the leash, very rarely do I have to call him back for getting too far away. The bug zapper still upsets him, but he isn't jumping out of his skin all the time now. I am using the Blue Buffalo chicken training treats for now until I can get some liver to bake and use as treats, he likes them but I don't think they are his favorite. He is just so anxious all the time, anytime he is not in one of his "comfort" spots, either sitting on the couch with me or laying at my feet under my desk, he constantly pants. It was 60 in here this morning and he was still panting and last night I had to kick him off my bed because he would not stop panting (still working on him sleeping on his bed, he has a hard time not being close enough that he is touching me).
Hi there. It sounds like poor Murphy has acute anxiety. I can sympathise; I have two anxious dogs and one of them was having her quality of life impacted so much, I ended up medicating her against it. She's like anther dog now, it's been amazing. I would definitely recommend having a chat with your vet about it. I can understand if you're reluctant to medicate; I certainly was. But it's the best thing I could ever have done for Willow and she now lives a normal life. She'll always be a bit anxious, but the change to her quality of life is remarkable. It's not dulled her personality in the slightest; in fact, it's done the opposite and brought her out of her shell. Kate @Beanwood shared this comment with me on Facebook the other day. It's from a dog trainer who specialises in fearful dogs: "I was at a party last night and was talking to a woman about her dog (of course). She told me that the dog suffered from separation anxiety and "unfortunately" she had used medication to treat it. I asked if the meds helped, and yes they did. So what I asked, was unfortunate about it? Apparently nothing, other than she used MEDICATION (cue the dark music). Sometimes we have to give people permission to do what is humane, reasonable and effective. It may be using medications to address anxiety, or food to train. We still are dealing with the residual cultural beliefs that see med use as some kind of cop out, failure or conspiracy, and food use as bribery or pandering." For me, this is so true but took a while to get my head around. It did feel like a cop-out and that I just wasn't a good enough trainer that I had to "resort" to meds. But we have achieved so much in the short time since! My once terribly gun-shy girl can now sit, quivering with excitement, as a shot goes off right next to her. We currently have a big storm passing overhead and, where she would once be cowering in the corner and wouldn't be able to leave the house for several days, she's enjoying a frozen kong without a care in the world. It's not the right solution for every dog, but I'd urge you to have a discussion with your vet about all available options.
He sounds like a clever dog who wants to please you though, and he is obviously developing a good bond with you.
No-one should feel like this - it is perfectly normal to medicate people for anxiety, and so it should be for other animals. It's just harder to spot in our animals as they can't talk clearly. Lucky Willow has got you to understand her.
I have never heard of medicating animals for anxiety, what med do they use and would it not cost a fortune since insurance does not cover it?
The medications used are basically exactly the same meds used to treat humans with anxiety. I definitely agree that talking about this with your vet would be a great idea. Anxiety medication can hugely improve a dog's quality of life - and, as a result, yours too.
There are different medications depending on what suits your dog. Willow is on Fluoxetine (Prozac) and it is very cheap - a box lasts four weeks and costs about €3. It takes quite a few weeks for it to take effect. She was also on Clonazepam (Rivotril) in the early weeks before the Fluoxetine kicked in, but I didn't like that drug for her. If you're interested, I kept a journal of the early days: https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/willows-noise-phobia-medication-journal.18456/
There is a more 'natural' anti anxiety medication which my dog had when he became very frightened of the smoke alarm when the battery was going and OH's shoes made the same squeak. I bought it from the vet and I think it was called Zycline (not sure that is the right word but it is near!).
There are also loads of things like Rescue Remedy (the dog version), Adaptil (in several formats), NutraCalm, Scullcap & Valerian etc etc. Most are far more expensive than "real" medication and didn't touch my girl's anxiety. All worth considering though, but I'd still recommend talking to your vet.
Thanks, I will talk with my vet next week. I need to get him in for a check up anyway, always should when you get a dog from a shelter. Its almost 80 here today and those stupid Asian lady beetles are out in force. My bug zapper is going off about 10x a minute, I hate that I can't turn it off for him but with these kind of numbers I would quickly have beetles in my drinks, food, hair, etc. without the zapper. Next year I am going to have the outside of the house sprayed in late September as a pre-strike to try to keep them away. If you have never dealt with these nasty things count yourself lucky!
Very glad I don't have to deal with these beetles! As a kid we went on a family holiday to a tropical rainforest (Daintree National Park) in far north Queensland and at night the air was absolutely living with insects, many of them huge and prehistoric looking. Going inside the caravan was no help - there were almost as many in there (attracted by lights). It was unbelievable. So, that is what I imagine when you describe your beetle problem!
