Hello everyone. I am seeking some advice on a couple of issues we are having with a 5 to 6 year old (SILVER) Labrador Retriever who has obedience issues. My wife is now pregnant and I have 7 months to try to get our dog to follow our commands the first time, every time. At this stage she does not really follow commands at all, especially when she is hyperactive. The only thing we can get her to respond to are these phrases -> She does understand "bed" and will run right into the room at night, "shower" she will run into the bathroom and sit on the floor mat, sometimes jumps in the tub and won't get out unless we put a baby gate near her, she does not like those but its a way we get her into the room we need her, she's to be watched 24/7 when we are physically in the residence. "Potty" She will start barking and looking toward the backdoor. She can perform paw without treats but she is food motivated, very heavily. If she knows I have a treat in hand, I can set the treat down and say "Kinsley, Wait" and as long as I am looking at her with my pointer finger pointing toward her. She will stay laying down until I say either "Kinsley, Go" or "Kinsley, Good Girl" For the first 5 years of her life she was at my in laws house, we stayed in the basement level and would keep her upstairs with her sister, mom and father when we went to work. We recently moved into our home about a year ago with a closed backyard for her. For 5 years she really only used a puppy pad. It only took her 24 hours to understand where to to go outside at our house and has NEVER used the puppy pads since day one. This was only a year ago. FIRST ISSUE: She seeks attention heavily and will wine, start to bark and will steal my socks, hats, towels, paper towels & food if me and my wife are talking or I go to sit down on the couch or if me and my wife touch at all. She does not get aggressive towards either one of us but will force herself between use to split us apart or do the mentioned behaviors above. She will be calm, relaxed and often does listen to my wife, when we aren't together (but not to the level that we need her to behave at) She will not drop the items and we often have to chase her and pry them from her mouth to get it out. We rarely use any physical interventions, although a slap on the butt sometimes is performed, this is infrequent as she normally does allow us to pull it from her mouth without issues or acts of aggression.We do feel guilty about it but we can not get her to stop her actions. She is a really good dog when she is not doing her "ATTENTION SEEKING BEHAVIORS" She often relaxes herself eventually if we ignore her or we have to scream at her. We do not like to do this at all but the behavior gets so bad we have to raise our voice. We need to avoid this with the baby for multiple reasons of course. I try to let her outside to burn off some steam, play with sticks or her big purple ball but she always wants us to be outside with her and will bark at the door and run back inside if we physically can't go out and play with her for whatever the case may be. So we do try to let her outside and play often but she wants to come back in with us or force us to go out with her. THE OTHER ISSUE: She does not like strangers, mainly ones who visit the house (I know this a protective thing). We have taken her to Hampton beach before and other public events and as long as NO ONE INTERACTS, LOOKS AT HER, OR GOES TO TOUCH HER, she ignores them completely but once direct eye contact is made then she gets anxious and barking. She does not typically lunge, attempt to bite but will bark excessively. There were two episode where friends did not listen and reached their hand out when she was in close proximity. She did lunge and attempt to nip. She was on a leash and I was able to quickly pull her back and my brother turned his back. She has not had any episodes where she initiated a dog fight. We have not exposed her to really any other dogs. We try to limit people interaction because this dog honestly is our life and we are afraid of her biting just one person or another dog and have her taken away from us. We really don't know if she is AGGRESSIVE or just scared. The only true trauma the dog has ever experienced is being bit by a smaller dog when she was a puppy. When they go around each other you can tell she is nervous around the small dog, does not get aggressive but will run out of the room if she sees the small dog. My dog will often get scared of her own shadow and run away fast from a particular location. She has not received any formal training. We looked into sending her to a boarding school but they wanted over $7,000.00 without guarantees of improvement in some behaviors. I understand this is always a risk with older dogs. I was looking into the HALO 3 collar for multiple reasons, GPS invisible fence & Training ability but maybe with advice from ya'll I can avoid a shock collar. As you can see, all of this is a BIG concern for when we have a newborn. She doesn't bark too much only when she wants the attention. It's usually one quick bark, follow about a few more until we jump up because we know she does have NEEDS. She's pretty good with telling us what she wants like the bathroom, shell nose bump her food and water bowl when she wants that and shell bring a toy when she wants to play. All of this is okay, but we need her to follow the stop, no, etc commands when we have to stop giving her attention for other issues at hand. I know a big part of it is mental stimulation and we aren't home as much as we should be due to our very busy work schedules, we are both paramedics and within the last couple of years our hours doubled to 84 hours a week, each. I know this isn't good for her and she does need more mental stimulation. We do our very best. When we are not home and she's alone she just sleeps and lays around all day. She is never home alone longer than 14 hours a day, at most. We are able to stop in during the day to provide her with her seizure medications, food, water and bathroom. She goes to the vet every 3-6 months for blood work (phenobarbital levels checked) and physical exams, so we do take care of our "Baby". I know a shock collar is on the cruel side but at this point I feel this may have to be an option. She is terrified of the BEEP from our rumba. She did have a shock collar as a puppy, so I think thats where the beep gets her nervous. She will actually run and lay down on our laps when the beep is activated. So it seems a BEEP would be some what effective. If training or the collar doesn't work our alternative would have to be to remove her from the home, this would break us but we would obviously take priority over the safety of our baby. I really hope you guys/gals can help me with coming up with a training plan / providing advice. I think I really summed up almost all of her bad behaviors. When she's a good girl, she lays and relaxes with us. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.
Hi there. It sounds like managing your pup is causing quite a lot of stress for you at the moment. The good news is that it sounds like there is lots you can do to help. I'm going to break my thoughts in to a few comments - please bear with me! First up I just want to address the shock collar, and the use of a slap to get her to let go of something. We don't recommend using any physical aversives like this at all - there's no evidence that they work better than positive training methods, and there is a lot of evidence that they can lead to other problems, like aggression. You can read more about this in these articles: Shock Collar Training: Is It Worth It? Punishment In Dog How To Discipline A Dog And Stay Friends
Next up - the reactive behavior out and about. Unfortunately the cause and solution to behaviours like this are really hard to advise on over the internet! So we recommend you book an in-person assessment with a specialist canine behaviorist to get some advice on this. They can help you work out the cause of her reactions, and make a plan with you for managing things going forward. Do make sure to pick a behaviorist that uses modern, positive only, methods. Your vet may be able to recommend someone in your area. If not, the websites https://iaabc.org/ (international) and https://abtc.org.uk/ (UK) are good starting points for finding someone suitably qualified.
Lastly. Attention seeking behavior at home can be so wearing for you. But it does sound like your pup is showing you that she needs more attention and interaction overall. Here is Pippa's article on leaving a dog home alone. It's so great that your girl is relaxed and sleeping when you are out, but that means she's storing up a need for social interaction and stimulation for the hours when you are home. To help her relax alone when you are home, we recommend arranging a good amount of stimulation and interaction for her while you're at work. This might be doggy daycare, a dog walker collecting her for a long walk, a friend coming around to play catch with her in the backyard, etc etc. We recommend that no dog is left home alone more than 4 hours without a bathroom trip - so if she's staying home she will need two or three visits during her longer days alone anyway. Aiming to make sure each of these visits includes at least 30-45 minutes of focused, stimulating, interaction with her will help her not to need as much of your attention when you are home. But these are still very long days - so I would also plan to build in a game/walk/training session before work, and two or more sessions like this spread through the evening after work, too, if you don't already. To balance this you can also start working on teaching her to relax when you are at home. Here's some more suggested reading! Attention Seeking Dog Click For Quiet How To Keep Your Dog Off The Couch I do hope that's helpful! Sammie
