I have an eight month old yellow lab. When we are sitting and watching tv , for no reason she will jump up and bite and growl sometimes. Why is she doing this?
Hi Joolie, and welcome to the forum First of all, don't worry! I would bet a million dollars (actually, make that a billion) that your dog is not being at all aggressive - she's actually just trying to get your attention. I expect that when she jumps up and grabs at you she does rapidly succeed in getting your full attention (even though you might not be very happy!) and so, from her perspective, this behaviour works beautifully. So she does it again and again. Here are a few things that will help: 1. Introduce more activity and attention from you into her day. A good way to do this is to have short training sessions, using food treats, where you teach her something that is fun and interesting for you both. That will help to stop things getting to the stage where she starts demanding attention. Other interesting things to do are walks where she gets to sniff a lot, daycare, hide and seek games, play dates with other suitable dogs... 2. Reward her with attention when she's quiet and not demanding it. That gives her another way of getting your attention that involves a behaviour you like and want to encourage. 3. If she does jump and grab, get up and leave the room, shutting the door. Say nothing and do not look at her. Wait 5-10 seconds and come back in. Repeat as often as necessary. Recognise that this is a sign that she needs more interesting stuff in her life and think about how you can introduce this as per point 1. Tell us a bit more about your dog and her day? What's her daily and weekly routine like? And what's her name?
Thank you for replying back! Our labs name is Hattie! We usually take her for a short walk in the morning and at night and tie her outside during the day at different times. This is our second lab.(our last one died last year at almost 14 years) She is a very busy dog!
Sorry that you lost your first dog who I'm sure you miss a lot. I'm sure Hattie feels like a big contrast to your mellow old doggie too. I'd say that if Hattie is spending time tied up in the yard there might be a couple of consequences of that. One would be that she's not getting the company and mental stimulation she needs. Another would be that she's not learning how to just chill out and settle while humans do their own thing. I'm thinking that might be the case by comparing Hattie with my own dog, Obi. When we got him he was 9 months old and had spent about 80% of his time in the back yard by himself. His experience with humans was of them coming into the backyard to play or to take him for a walk or to take him to dog training. He didn't have much experience of hanging around people in the house while they did people things. So his life was either 'alone being bored' (most of the day) or 'with people and having fun' (a smaller part of the day) . He didn't know how to be with people with nothing much happening. So anytime we watched tv, ate dinner, read a book, used the iPad or computer...he'd try to get our attention by barking and grabbing clothes, kind of like Hattie. We did the things I suggested to you, (including daycare, interesting walks, lots of training and also lots of practice and rewards for chilling out in the house, or having breaks sitting on a bench with us on walks). It took time, patience and effort but it paid off
Yes we tie her out on a cable when we are working outside. We would love to let her off the cable but are afraid of her running off!
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