I'm new here and hoping to get some help. My family adopted a 2-year-old female Lab three weeks ago. She has a delightful personality (as they do), but has been allowed to develop some habits that we are struggling to change. She was taken to our local animal shelter by her previous owners because they believed she had "brain damage" (their words) because she didn't do what they wanted her to do. My husband and I both have a good deal of experience with Labs, and felt comfortable in our ability to teach her. My husband is also experienced with gundog training. (All of that to say this is not our first trip out of the gate with Labs.) She is quite smart and has learned basic obedience quickly. The issues we are having now are barking, jumping, and nipping/biting/mouthing. Last night she bit our son (I don't think it was intentional aggressive biting, but it doesn't really matter; we can't have it) and we are at a loss. We are committed to doing everything we can to make this work, but we need help. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Hi and welcome. What is her name? It usually takes a few months for a rescue to settle in to a new home. With rescues I've had, I have used a crate for timeouts if certain behaviours persist, such as nipping. You need to go back to basics in terms of training - train as if she were a new pup - lots of fuss and treats when she does something you want her too. If she jumps, turn your back and ignore her, or leave the room. You need to be consistent and she will learn quicker. Does she have a 'quiet' place she can go if she's overtired?
I agree with Naya. It does take a long time for rescue dogs to settle down, and you can see all sorts of odd behaviours emerging in the meantime. Like Naya we have always used crates, and encouraged our fosters to see the crate as a great place to be, and a safe haven. One of the most common undesirable behaviours we have seen, has been the dogs difficulty in controlling impulsivity and arousal levels. This for us has taken the form of several behaviours, such as barking and or lunging, restlessness, snatching at toys, mouthing. The huge positive is the fact she is keen to learn, and has picked up some new skills very quickly. She is still very young at 2 years old. My advice would be to take things super slow, work in quiet environments with low distractions, the sort of things you guys are very familiar with of course. What is your home set up like? Is this where you concerns mainly lie or is it outside? Teaching a dog a settle on a mat/crate quietly I found enormously useful. Plus I had a freezer full of kongs I would pop in their crates mats
Hi and thank you! Her name is Honey, and she is really a wonderful dog; we're all just figuring each other out, and I guess sometimes we're doing it more easily than others. We are definitely concentrating on basics--I think her previous family was overwhelmed by her after they got her because she was a cute puppy, but they didn't have any experience training dogs, especially big ones, and they thought she would just know how to behave. Fast forward a couple of years, and she was big and jumping and nipping and barking and they didn't know what else to do, so they surrendered her. All that to say that she is responding well to the treats and loves fuss , which is a great fit because we love to fuss over her. We do turn away when she jumps, and it works well with my husband, but with me she jumps on my back. She loves our son (he's ten) but completely overwhelms him sometimes in her excitement. I will definitely start leaving the room when she jumps. Thank you for the suggestion, and for sharing your experience with rescues. She is not our first Lab, but she is our first rescue, so we definitely have a lot to learn.
Oops--sorry, Beanwood, I hit "reply" before I actually replies, and didn't see a way to edit. I forgot to say that we do use a crate with her at night, and for timeouts to settle down when she's nippy, but not for punishment (I hope that makes sense). The first week or so she rarely barked, but at that point she really started barking a lot, especially in her crate at bedtime. Her crate is in our bedroom. I get up with her a couple of times a night when I hear her moving around but before she barks, and take her outside. She goes, does what she needs to, and kennels again with no problem. Bedtime, though, is another story. She barks and barks and barks. Outside she is a delight--we walk her first thing in the morning after her first trip out in daylight, and play ball for 15-20 minutes when we get back in order to let her work off energy. My husband walks her 2-3 more times a day (2-3 miles each time), and we play ball/play in swimming pool/other outside activities. Inside is our concern. She does well overall but barks when she wants attention--meaning someone looks away from her --and then at bedtime. Today I've taught her to speak in hopes that we can build to "quiet" from that. We need to work on "settle"--we have a mat for her for each room, but she was eating them so we moved to crate-only. Maybe it's time to reintroduce those? Thanks so much for your help!
I thought I'd update--we have seen tremendous improvement in the past couple of days. I taught her "speak" and "quiet," and the barking has diminished a lot. She has even had a couple of encounters with one of our cats with no barking (she still gets really excited, but the not barking has helped, and the cat is not hissing at her all the time, which is nice for them both ). We had been allowing her get on our bed and the couch in our bedroom (she tended to jump from one to the other), but changed our policy to "off" all of it. I have no idea what exactly has worked since we started several things at once, but I'm happy to say that last night we had zero barking!
Great news! She's learned in her previous home that jumping, biting, barking etc are all ok and fun things to to (no doubt they all caused a big, loud human reaction, which can be very reinforcing to a dog). She's had two years of practice at it too. She just needs time to learn that in her new home these things are not done anymore and will actually result in attention being removed. You can also train her that doing something else, like sitting or lying down, is a much better alternative and will result in lots of attention and treats To reassure you some more, when we got our dog Obi at 9 months he was the same. Attention span of a juvenile gnat, barking constantly, leaping up, grabbing clothes and hands.... You couldn't put your head near him or suddenly you'd have his jaws wrapped around your face with a great view of his tonsils. Although he 'bit' quite firmly it was a 'play hold' type of thing, not actually 'biting'. But it was pretty bad still! We adopted the strategy of removing all attention (walking away to another room, or shutting him in another room) for a brief time (10-30 seconds) and also rewarding with treats for lying down (because that gave max distance between his mouth and human parts). Lying down is now his default 'please' behaviour. He got better quite quickly and is now great and also trustworthy around little children.
This morning I woke to find a big sweet dog chin resting on my cheek, just patiently waiting for me to wake up and greet her. (And by "patiently" I mean she was there for 15-20 seconds ).
