Hi everyone! Needing some help finding ways to sort through some conflict between our 20 week old puppy and our long term student border. For background, we have hosted international home stay students for several years. When the pandemic/lockdown happened a few months ago, our current Japanese home stay student opted to remain living with us in Canada. We've been happy to continue to support her learning, as finding another place to live during the pandemic may not be easy for her. Three months ago we brought home Eddie, our chocolate lab. And he thinks the home stay student is a walking, talking, very exciting human meat stick! He will not leave her alone - lunges at her, nips at her - and we can't get her to understand how to behave around him so that she's not so appealing. Last weekend we all went to our dog trainer together to set her up with strategies and ideas. We've given her a special toy and a jar full of food, so that she can distract him, etc. Unfortunately, she's still jumping around, running through the hallway, jumping up on chairs...it's so stressful. My main question is, is this something Eddie will outgrow? Or is he learning to always go after her? We've installed baby gates to help make the hallway outside her room a dog-free zone. Any other ideas anyone has would be welcome.
My 18wk GSP puppy is stair-gated in the kitchen. The only times she comes into another room, is when the doors to that room are closed and a person is there full-time to supervise her.... Almost all puppy problems people experience are because they give puppies too much freedom, too soon.
Unfortunately our home is largely open concept and we're unable to keep him in just one room at all times, although we do not allow him upstairs (gated off) and our hallways are also gated off with baby gates. So he is confined either to my office with me during the day or our kitchen/dining/living room. We're with our puppy 100% of the time he's awake, but still experiencing conflict because the student needs to enter the main living areas to access the kitchen - and she literally runs through the house (did this even before the puppy came into our family). We had been keeping him on a leash at certain times but our trainer told us to stop that and to give him more freedom in the house.
I'm not sure why your trainer said that, but if you can't contain him within an area (keeping him in your office with you sounds ideal), then the next best thing is for him to be tethered to you on a puppy house line. Sophia Yin was a great advocate of tethering for puppies...
Your student, running through the house is certainly going to make it more difficult to get your pup to ignore her. You pup will probably grow out of this behavior, but your student could help a lot by not moving quickly and using appropriate toys to distract your pup from biting. I think it is more a student problem than a pup problem. If your pup is not treating you the same way, you can see who needs to be trained.
