My husband's mother breeds English labs. She and I do not necessarily share the same viewpoints on raising dogs, yet my husband received this puppy from her around 8 wks old and I doubted it would be a factor. Her dogs are all large and in charge, to be blunt. She talks to them all in baby voices and I want to lose my mind. My husband was, however, going through a bad break up when the puppy (Ben) arrived, and Ben was rarely disciplined and did not have much attention. This situation only lasted about 3 months as my husband moved out and into his own apartment. He did, however, stay with his father for some time who spoiled Ben, and also would keep Ben for multiple days at a time in which he refused to crate him, did not effectively house train him, refused to discipline him, and overfed him. The result was a very fat and bratty dog that ignored me. We did get another lab, Leia, who is about 5 months younger than Ben. While he was the runt, not very intelligent, and quite frankly a pain in the ass ( to no fault of his ), she is beautiful, strikingly white, intellectual beyond belief, and incredibly sweet. They become best friends immediately, although she has clearly been the easier and smarter dog. Our dogs are now 4; Ben is a complete asshole. I question if he honestly has a mental defect. He jumps on strangers, does not listen to me at all, has a strange high pitched whine similar to an out of tune piano, and is not at all athletically inclined. We adopted a senior corgi and he would not come out of the crate for probably 10 days. He seems to have accidents in the house on purpose at night to spite me. He growls at me anytime I go near him. I have never had a dog hate me before yet I really feel this dog does. Our other lab is a joy, so sweet, so kind, so smart, and so willing to please. As Ben is no longer a puppy, I am not sure if his behavior is able to be corrected, or how to respond. He does not act in such a manner when my husband is around either, and my husband believes I hate the dog. I have spoken to trainers and gotten no great suggestions or plans, and therefore have not listed any professional help. He has never attacked me or anyone else; he seems to just despise me. Wondering if anyone has any suggestions?
Hi there, I'm sorry to hear you are struggling with your dog. I can absolutely promise you he doesn't hate you, and that he doesn't need disciplining. I would go back to basics and start to form a good bond with him around positive reinforcement training. It's a really different slant on training to traditional training, and it really works. As there is a lot to take in here, i'm going to give you some links to some information. If you want to read through it then ask us any questions, i'm happy to do my best to help you get on track and start making friends with Ben I am certain you can! Positive reinforcement training How positive reinforcement works Naughty dogs Jumping up Dog dominance You might also get a lot out of our Foundation Skills course over on Dogsnet. Now I'm definitely biased here, I help run it, but it sounds like if you are willing to give it a go with Ben it might be just what you guys need. You can check it out here. Let us know how you get along!
When I struggled with my young puppy’s biting behaviour I used to make sure I could separate her behaviour and her as an individual. It was her behaviour I didn’t like not the dog. I also found that she needed a lot more and frequent training than any other dog I had, she is a very bright dog and learned easily and loved positive training sessions. I did the course Lucy mentioned and learned a lot even though I had done a lot of clicker training and rewards based training with a few of my dogs. Hopefully with some reward based training your boy will get there and you will feel differently about him and things will be much easier at home for you.
