Well, been very busy lately so I didn't notice that my SIL inavertadly taught Duggan "keep away" I'm quite angry. He is meant to be a duck dog. I just couldn't hunt him this fall. I've been extremely careful to prevent this from happening. I don't even let people play tug of war with him. I used to be able to amble up to him and take anything out of his mouth and any time. Regardless of what it was, including yummy things. Now he just runs away. With the items and won't release anymore. Very frustrating cause I have to go away for a month and can't work on fixing this. Seems like I'm always fixing behaviours others teach my puppy. Anyhow, is this going to be an easy fix ? Will he just forget over the month I'm gone and go back to normal? SIL leaves tomorrow also so it won't continue. Very frustrating cause he WAS great at giving up everything I asked for.
I guess I'm having a bad puppy night cause now he just came and vomited all over the only place in the house that can't be easily wiped up then ' food guarded' it. Quite a scary moment when your always happy great tempered puppy growls at you and shows that body language. Even more distressing is that we have a 4 months old baby... need to do some research to break this ASAP. Is it possible we taught him this by asking him to leave us alone when we eat and open our fridge door ?
Also, noticed lots of apple skins and seeds in his vomit. Is that harmful to him. We have lots of apples that have fallen on our property. He likes berries in the summer too. I guess my work is just getting started with this one. We've had it pretty easy so far.
As regards playing 'keep away' with objects, you can definitely solve this (and playing tug is irrelevant as I play tug with Molly but have a 'ready' cue at which she drops the rope.) We live near the beach and in winter there are often dead seagulls lying around. I had a big problem with Molly picking them up, running off with them, tearing them up and sometimes eating bits of them. I solved it by sounding really pleased and excited when she picked one up. This meant that she was willing to come to walk by me, but I didn't try to take it, just got her to walk next to me carrying it. Eventually she did drop it - and then i picked it up and gave it back to her. We repeated this numerous times. It took several weeks and a lot of patience but she will give me anything now. Before this I had taught the usual 'give' cue which worked on things in the house and garden but not on dead birds. I hate to say it but I also had tried getting cross, shouting etc and that just made things worse, which was probably why it took so long to change the behaviour.
