a friend of mine has a 7 year old lab. Unfortunately, when the dog was young, his father in law threw a bunch of pine cones for the dog. The dog is generally very well behaved. The dog also acts "normal" when only the owner is around. If guests come by, the dog becomes obsessed with getting the new people to throw pine cones for her. Any suggestions?
Hello there The thing would be to either stop throwing pine cones for the dog and/or or to train the dog to do something else instead of pestering people to throw pine cones. Lie on a mat, sit quietly etc. They could use the throw of a pine cone as a reward for this alternative behaviour if that tended to improve things rather than make it worse. Whatever they do, it must be consistent. It's common to see this behaviour on the beach - a dog barks madly to get a ball thrown. The owner is annoyed at the barking but eventually throws the ball to get the dog to stop barking (for a bit, anyway). The dog learns that if it barks, the ball gets thrown. It also learns that sometimes it has to bark for a very long time to get the ball. The answer is to throw the ball when the dog is not barking.
Good points, thanks for the input! I also think that he will need to pick up ALL of the pine cones in the backyard before his father in law comes back to visit .
