rebeccamonchon

Good day 🙂 I have a rescue dog which was found on the street beaten up at 4 months old, she was then after in foster care with one that just left her on the balcony for long periods of days where she had to poop and he never cleaned it up. I took her pretty fast. When she came to me she was pretty wild and biting me the whole time, so I walked a lot with her. The problem now is that every time she wants to go for a walk she has the connection with " i need to poop , so therefore i bite". So she bites until I will walk her. I tried many methods such as distracting her with playing games or walking away to another room and so on, but she seems to always find new ways so i won't let her alone. If i leave her outside the door she will bark a-lot (and i live in apartment so I cant let her bark that much). When I train her a bit to "forget the biting" she sometimes forget it, but 80 % she will start biting again because she needs to poop. She also bites my guests and other people when she is jealous or want to go outside, which is very frustrating. Some more info about the biting: So i know its either connected with that she wants to go out and really need to go or connected with a-lot of guest and requiring attention. She normally does not break any skin, so its "controlled" biting where it will leave a mark on your skin but its nothing aggressive to it. She goes after me and she even started to come after me and try to bite my legs if I would walk away. She is a 26 kg dog - medium sized mixed race dog. Is there any ways of training this? I have some more problems with her: 1. Sometimes when cuddling her she can "snap" and try to bite me when she doesn't like that i touch her in this instance - for me I know she never would attack me and its quite "innocent", but its scary for other people and I'm always nervous that she would do it with them. She can sometimes tell us with gnarling and making the sound to stop and most of the times she does it before she "snaps", so if I would stop cuddling she also would not snap in most instances. 2. I walked in a dog forest with many dogs, I think she met around 100 dogs or more in the total period, where she never had any issues with any dog. Many dog owners also told me she is so good socialized especially with puppies. After 1 month of going there nearly every day, she all of a sudden attacked 2 dogs in a row. She sniffed them and then went straight for the neck and put them down on the ground keeping on attacking them, In the end there was no blood and no damage, but it was quite aggressive and looked terrible. After this I am very nervous with letting her play with dogs as I dont know when it would happen again and it was so unpredictable. My veterinarian says she is not an aggressive dog, but that I need to learn to control her fear. 3. When going on leash with her she is 90 % fine and really okey with other dogs, I can pick up a treat and distract her and she won't react to any of them. There are some dogs which she becomes super reactive with. She barks and lunges and becomes aggressive to the point that anything which is in her way she attacks. She bit me one time in the leg and my boyfriend 2 times. Mostly it is with dogs which are coming with bicycle or together with joggers (running towards her). Sometimes it is when we are just walking normally and she really doesnt "like" this dog. I have no way to stop her and just have to let her bark. Its almost impossible to walk the other way, and I cant put anything in front of her then. I have to point out and say that the 3rd point is much worse now after she lives together and walk together with our other rescue dog (german shepherd) which she flips more when he is barking on other dogs. She is a very restless dog, highly active and always exploring new things. If I let her in a garden she will never just lay down, she goes around everywhere and won't be peaceful. Inside she is quite good and can relax alot, until she needs to go out.

When i walk and there appears another dog my dog just stops and i cant make here go anywhere (she lays down or just stops), then sometimes (especially if it is another female dog) she gets reactive where she starts to bark really "aggressively". I try to take her away from the dog but she is so stubborn and wants to wait until the dog has gone passed us and then she wanna smell the scents where the dog were. Normally when she is loose she is fine around other dogs, but there are some certain dogs she just gets really bitchy towards and starts barking and almost biting them. On the leash its the same, it really depends on the dog, normally she is fine with puppy and small dogs, but now she just reacted towards a 1 year old puppy. I think i have socialized her a bit badly and i get nervous around dogs now because of her "up and downs". How can i train this behavior? I don't have the possibility to take her to dog school right now because i live in a country where they dont speak my language and when i go home they are all in summer vacation. Just unsure where to start :) My dog is 2 years in september.

She used to be easier to train inside before, but maybe it is like you said that i ask more challenging stuff at home and maybe i expect to much from here at home without thinking about it and then i train in a non motivational way after when i do "easy" stuff so that she doesn't want to train anymore. Before she used to come very quickly and was eager to learn inside, but now i can barely make her do heal at home or sit which outside she does it really quickly! So when i mean outside its in a comfortable road where we have walked many times, but if i go to new areas she is more interested in everything else (which i know is normal)! But im thinking i require to much from her because im so used that she learns everything so fast but ofcourse i have to take in count that some things are harder to learn. Example with picking up toy and holding it and then giving it, should i work on picking up toy for maybe many days before she actually will know this? She will sit and do recall at home but she does it mostly very slow and comes when she feels like it! With to take away the snacks and word is i mean that she won't listen if i for example say sit without snacks (but the thing is she will listen sometimes when she feels like it). She knows the meaning of sit but at the same time she only does it if she feels motivated enough and she does it slowly :p For example before eating i say sit and wait and she knows the meaning of it and does it instantly without thinking until i tell her she can eat, but if i just do it out of no where she all of a sudden doesn't care or dont want to do it. I have read your article with fading away the treats and tried to do it it just depends on her mood if she want to listen then or not i guess. Also i was wondering if its possible that i have messed up a word like sit, if i misused it (used it to many times without her listening or something like this). BTW i want to tell you that the page is really nice and that its so nice with all the tips for training and brain games! :) So happy that i became a member of this site!

Thank you so much Adrienne for the answer :) Its good to know that its not just me that gets nervous and that people just shouldn't do this in the first place, im always feeling so overprotective and nervous but in these situation i know how things can end up and i would rather avoid it like u said! I will try to find some trainers where I live to train this with her so that she gets less sensitive around these situations, but for the most parts i will keep away where i know people bring toys and snacks :) Can i also ask you, as i said before that we also have another dog where i live (in Slovakia), and they got mostly used to each other, but now i have been back to my home country for 2 months and will go back there soon again and then they will live with each other again. I just wanted to ask you regarding the food and toys. They got used to having toys laying around and never fought of it, but what i noticed is that in some situations they all of a sudden fought feks if me and my boyfriend were eating than my dog thought we gave food to the sheppard and they had a fight (with teeth and some wound but not serious at all). But this came out of no where, so i just wanted to hear your thoughts about this and if we should always just hide food and everything. Maybe we can try to use the methods that you described over with these two also but as they already think its okey and it just happens in certain situation out of no where im not sure exactly what to do. Its a bit hard because my boyfriend thinks dogs just should solve everything themselves, but im not agreeing with this as i think we should see situations and separate them before things happens and rather teach them whats right and wrong.

Im recently having problems with the training, she seems very uninterested, before she used to love it! When we go for walks she is very active and wants to learn then i will feed her snacks every time she does something good - normally im trying to make her sit when joggers and other people walks by and walk on a loose leash and train heal, and also throwing ball and train recall with another similar ball so that she comes and also gives away the other ball. But immediately when we are inside she doesn't want to train anything, i tried training on different schedules and with different snacks but she seems to be bored easily and not able to understand what i want. Im for example trying to teach her to pick up toy - then i click when she smells on the toy and if she grabbs it, and try to make her grab it longer, but then she looses interest and only tries to pick up the snacks i have behind my back, and there is nothing else she wants to do. Not sure what i do wrong and how i should train her every day. I also struggle a bit with taking away the snacks and just using the word to make her do something. :confused:

When my dog was 6 months old she bit me until i started crying, nothing worked. And i tried everything like giving toys to her to bite on, which she denied and went to bite on me, then i tried to yell no and she got even more excited to bite me. After a while i tried method to leave the room every time she bit me and stayed in the other room for about 30 seconds, going in and out until she stopped with the biting and calmed down. This worked wonders for me, also i could see when she got more excited and would start biting so i tried preventing this by trying to do tricks. Also she was very active so she required alot of exercise so i also made sure she got enough. Now she would only bite if she really really needs to pee, and this dont happen often anymore (now she is 11 month). So dont give up and keep strong. Its a difficult phase!

Thank u for the quick reply! She will start growling when she sees a dog with another toy, and be more "aggressive" when she is in the possession of a toy and another dog comes close to her. Today i went to a dog park where she played good with other dogs and could even get treats from another man and that the other dog also could take the treat. As soon as other dogs came she also played fine with the dogs (the only thing is that she can become a bit barky and growling a bit, but i dont see it as aggressive), then a women started throwing treats to all the dogs so that they could all get, sometimes she didn't react to it but the problem was that she played where the women throw the treats so that there became a small aggression in this area. Also when a women threw a ball to her dog, my dog started growling and showing aggression because i think she wanted the ball. Also on a cabin where my family wanted to play with sticks my dog took one and another dog came over to take the stick, then she bit the other dog (luckily someone held her while this happened so the damage was only minor). Is there any way to train this? Or should i just prevent this by not going to the park. In my opinion this shouldn't be legal that they throw treats and toys but i think this rule is not here so that i cant prevent it. Normally i think she plays very nice with dogs otherwise when no factors are involved even though she became a bit "bitchy" towards some dogs, but quite few.

I have a 11 month old dog (mixed) found on the street beaten up. She lived in different homes at the age of 6 month and finally i took her in. Before her heat she was very curious and always nice to other dogs and played really good around them. Now we got a shepphard (2 year old) from shelter, in the beginning they fought over food and toys which i know is normal and then after a while it calmed down and now they can share toys. But around other dogs in parks example she starts growling (with teeth) at the dog if one is having a toy, and also if people throw snacks around them. Is this normal? And how can i teach her to be able to "share"? and not aggressive while others have toys? Or is this impossible?