Hi there, I am new to the forum so hello everyone. I am struggling with Jasper my 14 month old golden Labrador. He has this insistency on jumping up and biting. He has always been hyper but I wish he wouldn't jump up and bite the way he does. Most of this behaviour seems to be targeted at the Mrs and rarely at me. We have tried normal methods like ignoring the behaviour and leaving the room but for the Mrs this is hard to do, his bites hurt her so she reacts which in turn excites Jasper so she then tries to leave the room but he starts jumping up her legs and grabbing them as if about to jump which in itself causes a lot of pain. We did start to get a handle on this but for the Mrs it came back with a vengeance. Is there anything we should specifically try to get this under control once and for all? Many thanks Dan
Hi Daniel, I am new also, your concerned interested me as my newly rescued Lab is guessed to be around 14 months. At first my boy was demonstrating behaviors with me like Jasper is with your wife. I started walking him on leash each day and found the behavior quickly diminished. He listens to me much better after each leash session.
Try offering a different behavior, ie make him sit and reward. Then sit down and reward. Then offer toy he can bit instead. Clicker helps to speed up learning. Venture to say that you know when behavior comes so prepare for it. Redirection Works better than ignoring in my view
Normally I agree that redirection does work better but when he gets bitey he gets over excited and then just won't listen to anything you say so it becomes very hard to redirect
This is interesting, we walk him together most of the time but it tends to be a long walk every second day. I have however walked him several times on my own. Do you think that it was walking him on your own that helped with the issue? Or just the fact he was walked?
I think it was that I was walking him. I do walk him properly with a slip lead that I continually pull and release if he pulls the leash taut (which pulls me). After each session he listens much better to me and respects me more.
The quickest way to redirect is to throw a piece of kipple to the side. Any Lab will instantly react and chase the food. Now you have his attention and can properly redirect him and do some obedience exercises. Give it a try and good luck
Thanks for the advise. I had thought about this but was concerned he may learn that jumping up is making treats fly through the air, guess that was a silly thought
I think if you will try having your wife walk the dog - even just for 10 minutes- you will be surprised. If he won't walk politely for your wife, you could try having her hold a second leash (also attached to your dog) while you walk him on leash.
She had taken this advise and we are now rotating the walk. She walks one day and I walk the next. He is far from great on leash, on days I walk him I take the opportunity to train him on leash, he is to much for the Mrs so I give him a blast with the calming spray to calm him down a little for the walk when she is walking him. We have already noticed an improvement, not massive, but something and that is more than in the past
So, I am a few days in now and while he still has episodes where he bites the Mrs I am seeing something great. He is opting more often to go to his bed and relax, or to the sofa and relax. He will still bite a little but we can get this under control quicker than we used to. I have taken to calming him down then doing a training session with him, his ultimate reward is one of his jumbones which he's absolutely loves
Such good news! I'm so glad you are "seeing something great". My new Lab is finally making headway in breaking his chucker stealing habit. This was quite the problem as he even stole someone's else's chucker at the off leash dog park. I was quite embarrassed, I had been keeping an eye out for tennis ball chuckers to head off the problem by putting him on leash. Someone pulled one out of their coat pocket and mine raced across the park to get it. I have no idea how this became a habit in his before life. We have worked on it each day using "leave it" and today he finally paused himself and left the chucker alone. After putting several clues together, we have re-aged my new boy and refigured him to be around 8 months of age - this explains a good deal- especially- how he and other dogs communicate to each other. Adult dogs saw him for what he is, and he responded appropriately, he's just a large puppy. My older girl (pictured) has worked with him to curb what we now know are untrained puppy habits.
I'll be fair, we got Jasper at 11 weeks old. We are not sure what the previous guy did, he was a breader, but we got a fearful anxiouse and under weight dog. We cared for him and got his weight up, once he was fully vaccinated we tried to take him for his first real walk, he just froze and refused to walk. This took about 3 months to "train out of him" he now lives his walks. We have a 100 foot lead for him when we play fetch as his recall is just awful at the moment, we are just glad he is out really. He had seperation anxiety which took several months to train out of him, I know he had it still but he can cope now. The only anxiety he has now is confinement (when we leave the room but remain in the house) we have been struggling with this one and really haven't made any progress. Fur to the issues he had early on though, they kind of took priority over the basic training so he is behind on his training and with things like biting, it became an engrained behaviour that we have been struggling with. We tried the other day to throw treats down when he was having an episode, he completely ignored them, so we don't do that. What I asked my Mrs to do was stand up and just firmly ask him to sit (he has a good sit) once he does this, offer him a treat, then ask him to do something else then treat and so on. This just gets him to focus which means been calm. This is something that she could never do in the past but recently(since walking him on her own every other day (I take the in between days) she had been able to get this level of control. He really had a long way to go, but from where he started to where he is now he has done amazingly.
Just a thought but is your dog getting enough exercise? At 14 months I would have thought he needs 2 decent walks a day. Toby is 2 and goes out twice a day(45-60 min each) and much longer at the weekends. Taking it in turns every other day sounds like a chore rather than enjoying the fresh air together. Think that’s one of the reasons most of us have large energetic breeds. Would also give you more chance to practice heel walking etc.
He likely isn't getting his fill on excersise. We rotate because we both work full time jobs and it is just easier to rotate. Saturdays and Sundays he gets a few hours up Sutton park. In the week he gets anywhere from 30 mins to an hour depending on what it takes to "tire him out" he honestly doesn't take much to tire out. We play fetch and find it games in the back garden as well in the morning but need to keep the volume down.
He has relapsed a little bit now and is back to biting but this time he is biting both of us. I am still working with him to get him through this. We took him out on Sunday with us on the bikes. He really liked it but he is a massive puller so made my life really hard since he was tied off to my bike. When we went fast to make it a jog for him he payed full attention to us but we didn't like making him jog so we didn't do this for very long at all. He was pooped later that day though and gave us our best day with him yet. Because of this we are going to take him on a bike ride 2 to 3 times a week, train him to listen to commands like slow, left and right to make the experience better and safer for all of us, while he is tired he is so much easier to train so should help with the biting. Sorry to go on. I just like been detailed so if anyone else has this issue they can see what I have gone through
