GeorgiaRainer

Here's Rizzo the husky, Cocoa the little unique breed in the middle, and Suki the aussie on top.

Hi, Thank you so much for your response. I was not overwhelming at all. In fact, the more I read the articles and threads, the more confident I feel that we can have well behaved dogs prior to them being elderly. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond and provide additional information. You are totally right, the brain games are tiring them! They have even been sleeping later in the mornings after we practice some basic obedience and do some games during the day. They love the muffin game and the treasure hunt! We have started desensitizing them to noises, knocking on furniture and doors at random. They are doing much better about not barking or being anxious at these sounds. We also started desensitizing and counterconditioning Suki at the sight of strangers (all men, in this case). We often take them in the car when running errands so now we are prepared with treats. The other day I ran into Walgreens and there were several people around the parking lot and coming and going from the store. My partner was able to get her attention and give her a treat before she barked at any of the people she saw. However, she seems to have increased her attention seeking barking, as we are now totally ignoring her. I'm hoping this is part of the extinction burst. One thing I'm unclear about though, she seems to bark at the other dogs for attention as well. Like if they are playing together and then the other dog stops, she barks at them until they start again. She also polices them. So if we tell our other dogs "no" for any reason, then she will bark and bite them (not super aggressive but not gentle) as though she's enforcing our will. Additionally, if we give them all treats - so Rizzo the 9 year old Husky has a digestive disorder and is just generally unimpressed with food and often takes her treat and goes and lays down with it but doesn't eat it for a while, or maybe not at all - Suki and Cocoa harass her. Suki barks at her from a safe distance and Cocoa (the 1 year old rescue) jumps up and down and growls and shows her teeth. We usually try and make the little girls stop and give Rizzo time to decide about her treat. If after a while she still hasn't eaten it then we take it and put it up for her to have later. Or if one dog is chewing on a bone that Suki later decides she wants, she just continuously barks at them. I'm not sure what we are supposed to do when she's barking at the other dogs. Ignore it so we don't reinforce it with our attention or stop it so she doesn't keep rehearsing the bad behavior? Also, I'm not sure what to with Cocoa in certain situations. Cocoa was a stray living on the streets of Mexico City until she was about 6 months old. She had a broken leg that the vet said occurred from a dog bite when my partner's cousin found her. She lived another two months in Mexico as she recovered from her leg surgery and started learning some basic obedience. During her time in Mexico, she rode in a car several times (mostly to and from the vet and then to and from my partner's mother's house) up to an hour at a time and she never whined. We then had to transport her to the U.S. where I live with the rest of our animals as my partner travels often, and because she was too big to fit under the seat in front, she had to ride in the cargo. Since arriving here, she whines in the car every trip. Now we are speculating that maybe the plane ride was a bit traumatizing and being in a moving vehicle makes her anxious. You asked if she is crate trained and yes, she is, but now that she has proven herself to be trustworthy (not destructive and house-broken), she hasn't been using the crate. She was getting a little big for it and our other dogs don't use crates so we transitioned her out of it. We could potentially use the crate in the car, but I have a camry so we couldn't fit her with the crate and the other dogs in the car at once. I thought maybe we could countercondition her to think the car is fun, so we gave her treats while we were out running errands, along with Suki for not barking at people, but she still whined the whole time. I know she won't be fixed in one attempt, but is this a possibly effective strategy? Lastly, I'm unsure about what to do in the following situation. I mentioned before that Cocoa jumps like a goat and bites us. As soon as she gets excited, which happens easily, she's jumping and biting. When we wake up in the morning and we're walking to the door to the yard, she's jumping and biting. I started turning my back to her and when she sits I give her a treat. But what do I do when I'm just walking through the house and she's excited for whatever reason and jumping and biting? I did like you demonstrated in one of the videos where I acted excited and she's understanding that if she resists the jump she gets treats, so that is going well. But now she runs and jumps on my back, well sort of parkours off my back, and then sits and I give her a treat. After a few of these times though I felt like she was thinking the back jumping is part of the ok behavior, as long as she sits after. So today I was walking in the yard trying to practice "come" with them. She knows I have treats and she's jumping and biting my hands and arms, and jumping off me like a weird springboard. So I hold up my arms from her reach (which she can get to nearly my shoulder even though she's pretty small) and turn my back then she sits and I give her treat. I take another step and it repeats, jumping, biting, sitting. Is this just the process of her learning that sitting is what gets rewarded or am I accidentally reinforcing the whole pattern of behavior? Meanwhile I'm playing fetch with Suki and practicing "come" and "drop it," but Cocoa doesn't leave my side and just keeps jumping/biting. Maybe she's frustrated that the other dogs are getting treats too? Or the distractions make her act crazier? Ideally, I'd like to train them together as much as possible since it maximizes my time, but maybe that's not the best idea yet? I can't be sure if it's the other dogs making it worse, in general Cocoa is super food motivated so she easily gets ecstatic when there are treats involved. Many of the games we can play with just her own food and she's happy about it, but I was trying to use higher value things for commands like "come" that I really want them to do better. Any advice you have on the above issues would be greatly appreciated. We're having so much fun with the games and I'm very grateful for all the resources you provide here.

Hi, we have three dogs and two of them are young (1 and 1.5 years). Suki, the 1.5 year old Australian Shepherd, has not been adequately socialized with humans. We got her right before the pandemic began, and when she was about 5 months old she stopped seeing other people. Now she is only comfortable around youngish women. She barks very intensely towards men and children. We have had a hard time taking her to dog parks because she will chase men and children barking at them aggressively (especially after about 20 minutes when she starts to get tired after running and swimming - it's a great dog park!). Now we mostly take her hiking, but she pulls strongly on the leash. We are now starting the training to heel, but in the meantime, how do we exercise her? I understand the she needs to be desensitized to men and children, but I don't currently have any male friends in town (they moved home during the pandemic) or friends with children for her practice with. She has barking problems in general. She barks loudly and intensely when she goes outside in the corners of the yard (right next to the neighbors), when she's playing with our other dogs, when she hears any noise that she's unsure of its origin (often it's a noise we make by setting down or moving an object or when I call someone on the phone and they answer), when we arrive home, when people or dogs walk by the house or the neighbors are in their own yard, or occasionally for attention. I have taught her to "speak" on command and then to be "quiet" but it only works sometimes and after I reward her for being quiet she immediately barks like crazy again. Now we have another young dog, Cocoa, that we rescued (thinking more with our hearts than our heads) who is about a year old. When we got her she didn't really bark, but she has quickly learned from her sister that she must now bark at everything. As soon as she goes outside she barks, no questions asked. She also barks at people now even though she loves people. She barks with her sister in solidarity and then goes over to receive pets from the stranger. Additionally, when she's excited she jumps up and bites our hands/arms/shirts and legs/ankles. She's a small dog but she bites hard enough to hurt. We're trying to ignore it but it's really difficult when one dog is barking like crazy and the other one is jumping and biting. Lastly, she whines the whole time we are in the car. We think it's because she's so excited we're going out (it usually means we're going to park or going hiking) but we're not sure. We haven't taken her on any longer trips until this weekend where she whined for about an hour of the 1.5 hour trip. We went canoeing and she whined the whole time in the canoe. We went hiking to tire her out and then set up camp and she whined at the campsite. Then she and Suki hear an owl or any other creature and go crazy barking. We want to be able to take all of our dogs to do the outdoorsy things that we enjoy (as we have with our other dog that is 9 years old and very obedient and dignified) but these two are making it really difficult. They both have thundershirts, which has helped some, and we just started this training program, so hopefully things will get better soon. We will follow the training program, but if you have any advice in the meantime, it would be greatly appreciated.