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  #1  
Old February 22nd, 2015, 09:29 AM
2dogs&acat 2dogs&acat is offline
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Piper makes our walks embarrassing.

We walk both the dogs daily where there is a lot of people walking and riding their bikes and walking their dogs. Piper is very friendly and loves her walks but very verbal and embarrassing when she sees another dog or person. She strains and pulls to get the person, yipping the entire time trying to reach them to get petted. She barks and yips at every dog we see. Since many people walk their pets there we can spend our entire walk with her barking and yipping making a fool of herself.
I have tried everything they suggested in puppy class. They said schnauzers are very verbal dogs and to just keep up with the socialization and correcting her with quiet and a snout hold but I see no improvement at all. She will be 7 months old in a week or so. Otherwise she is doing very good. Will this get better as she gets older or is it really just her breed and something we have to live with? There is no aggression in her bark to the other dogs, she wants to run up and play with them. But I realize most dogs do not want a hyper puppy charging up and leaping at their faces in greeting. Suggestions are encouraged and welcome.

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Old February 22nd, 2015, 01:11 PM
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marko marko is offline
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Hmmm - 7 mos is young.

I wonder if you could reward dooger when dooger sees another dog and is quiet. Do you have the budget for a 1 to 1 training session? I'd bring a pro on my walk if this were my dooger and I couldn't solve this issue. NOW is the time to solve it imo....while dogger is young and in her socialization phase.
Hope that may help
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  #3  
Old February 22nd, 2015, 01:21 PM
Barkingdog Barkingdog is offline
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My dog will bark at other people or dogs, I use a 4 ft. leash and harness on Marty to walk him . If I see person coming near us with a dog I will tell Marty
"To leave it" before he can either start to bark b/c once Marty start barking it take longer to get him to stop. I was told by a trainer you had to ell your dog " To Leave it" before he open his mouth. You have to be firm saying this , this worked with Marty but when winter come it's hard to get out so I have to start all over again in the spring retaining Marty to "Leave it" .
Marty was attacked by another dog and will bark at dogs that are the same breed , I think he is picking up on my fear too so I have to be careful about this .
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Old February 22nd, 2015, 09:03 PM
2dogs&acat 2dogs&acat is offline
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I bring treats and try to distract and then reward her when she quiets. The big dog is always quiet and he of course sits nice for a treat so I was hoping Piper would learn by his great example, but it is hard to distract her. I have not seen any private trainers in this town, sadly we lack a lot of things like that, but I will keep on working on it. Do you a daycare day at the spa would help her? We do have a couple of great places here if they accept a puppy so young.
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Old February 22nd, 2015, 10:41 PM
Barkingdog Barkingdog is offline
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A day care might help teach your dog more social skill but I would be sure your dog is with dogs the same size . Marty goes to doggie play group sometime and he in the group for small dogs , he does bark at bigger dogs more than small dogs. When you give your treats made sure he know why she getting them . She might think you're giving him treating b/c she is barking .


I met a woman and she said her dog would back in under her couch and start growling at her and the woman would give the dog treats and the dog would growl some more. The woman had no idea why her dog kept growling at her. She was training her dog to growl by keep feeding him treats.
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  #6  
Old February 22nd, 2015, 11:04 PM
Lynne&Co. Lynne&Co. is offline
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Consistency in correcting her is how I would proceed here. I'm wondering what type of lead you have? A collar could injure her neck with continued corrections. I used a "Gentle Leader" when training my last dog who was a big puller. The leash clip is in the front of chest so when you correct the dogs front end is knocked out of step so you get her immediate attention without hurting her.
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Old February 23rd, 2015, 08:02 AM
Longblades Longblades is offline
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My first thought is you got the lemon in trainers in your training class if that's what they told you to do and it was their only idea. I agree with the socialization, most any dog benefits from socialization and habituation.

I strongly, strongly, strongly urge you to find another training class, with a different trainer. Piper is just a puppy so it's not too late to teach her proper manners and key to that is YOU must learn how to make yourself more attractive to her than those other dogs and people. That's a very tall order.

Some ideas:

How much off leash exercise does Piper get? Terriers have a lot, a LOT, of energy. Leash walking alone is not sufficient for most dogs. A good run off leash DAILY will help take some of the starch out of her and make her more likely to listen to you.

For distraction like that I found Leslie Mc Devitt's book, "Control Unleashed" worked wonders for us. BUT, my dog doesn't bark at people. I think you'd need a good trainer working with you to make sure you don't inadvertently reward the barking.

I will see if I can find it, there are training sessions for exactly this kind of behaviour somewhere on the internet. One is at Sue Ailsby's website and maybe I can link it. There's another one where you need an extremely patient friend, a not well used place, and you simply have the person stop approaching you the nano second the dog begins to act up. It can take hours upon hours.

Here it is, Song and the Sheep from Sue Ailsby's dog training site. You will see this also took hours but it is similar to your problem:

http://www.sue-eh.ca/page24/page38/

Good luck. I wish my neighbour with the exact same problem would work on her big Goldendoodle. She is also embarassed but she doesn't seem to put any work into helping her dog at all. Rather be embarassed I guess.
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  #8  
Old February 23rd, 2015, 02:25 PM
Barkingdog Barkingdog is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynne&Co. View Post
Consistency in correcting her is how I would proceed here. I'm wondering what type of lead you have? A collar could injure her neck with continued corrections. I used a "Gentle Leader" when training my last dog who was a big puller. The leash clip is in the front of chest so when you correct the dogs front end is knocked out of step so you get her immediate attention without hurting her.
I am wondering if a Gentle Leader would work on a dog with a very short snout . There is not a lot room to put it on the dog . I used one on my Standard Poodle b/c I was told to by NEADS , they trained my hearing dog. The Gentle Leader did made it easier to walk my dog.
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Old February 23rd, 2015, 04:10 PM
Lynne&Co. Lynne&Co. is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Barkingdog View Post
I am wondering if a Gentle Leader would work on a dog with a very short snout . There is not a lot room to put it on the dog . I used one on my Standard Poodle b/c I was told to by NEADS , they trained my hearing dog. The Gentle Leader did made it easier to walk my dog.
Oops should have been more clear......I was referring to the "Gentle Leader Easy Walk Harness". Picture below is from their website.
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  #10  
Old February 23rd, 2015, 07:54 PM
Barkingdog Barkingdog is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynne&Co. View Post
Oops should have been more clear......I was referring to the "Gentle Leader Easy Walk Harness". Picture below is from their website.
I like that , I not seen that kind before , it might work better on my small dog than a harness . Harnesses don't fix my dog correctly in his shoulders this looks like it would.
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  #11  
Old February 24th, 2015, 08:00 AM
MarianE MarianE is offline
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I have an easy walk harness and I love it. I never understood how they worked but the Humane society suggested it for Carly and it works beautifully. I much prefer it to a halti type because I always worried about neck injuries with them if the dog did bolt and had its head snapped back.

I agree that marking good behavior is key to training. I haven't used clicker training myself but I have friends that swear by it. Carly used to whine a lot when we first got her, just nerves and being in a strange place, I think. I would wait until she stopped then say "Quiet" and give her a treat. I carried that over to her horrid behavior on walks by saying "Quiet" once and as soon as she stopped I'd mark the behaviour with an enthusiastic "YES!!!!" and treat her brains out. The thing is to only give the command once, according to my trainer. My dog is very, very food motivated and easily distracted by treats. So that helped a lot. May-be if your dog isn't easily distracted by treats, a small favorite toy might be some thing to try, especially if it has a squeaker.
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Old February 24th, 2015, 01:41 PM
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hazelrunpack hazelrunpack is offline
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On a different tack, one thing I taught Brier was "Relax". I started with a sit and combined that with a "look at me". When I tell him to relax, he sits and looks up at my face.

When my FIL was at the nursing home, I'd sometimes bring Brier along for visits. I realized how well the "Relax" worked one day when we were out for a potty break on the boulevard green space and an Amish buggy went by. Normally, Brier would have gone crazy barking at it, but I told him to relax and danged if he didn't just sit in front of me, gazing calmly into my eyes, until the carriage passed. Proud mama! Brier got lots of treats that day!

But if Brier can ignore something as tempting as a buggy, maybe that would work for Piper, too? You'd just have to get her in the 'Relax' mode before she gets close enough to the other people or dogs to trigger her greeting behavior. Sometimes they just need something else to do...
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Old February 24th, 2015, 06:51 PM
Longblades Longblades is offline
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LOL, a joke for you all. I have a relax word too, but the word is EASY. So what happens one day when my dog is a puppy and another puppy comes tearing out of her yard right at us and I'm telling my dog easy, easy? Turns out the other puppy's name was Izzy. The more I said Easy, the more the other puppy got happy and the more distracted mine became. LOL, but I wasn't at the time.

My sister's word was Settle.
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Old February 24th, 2015, 08:57 PM
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So did they become best of friends?
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Old February 24th, 2015, 09:01 PM
Longblades Longblades is offline
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She was only two months younger and they were both Labs so it might have been a good friendship. We did some field work training with her owner when they got older but they never had the opportunity to play together.
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Old February 26th, 2015, 12:04 AM
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Dog Dancer Dog Dancer is offline
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Cute story Longblades, I could see that happening.

I have that easy walk harness for Nikki, a born and bred puller! Sometimes I love it, other times not so much. The Malamutes tend to walk in front of me, when I walk them together it's very hard to keep them right close. They don't pull too bad most of the time now, but even that easy walk harness doesn't help a whole lot when he decides he's going to pull. lol

Fortunately they're not vocal dogs at all. Sorry no real advice, but I do agree a leave it, or easy, or something with a "look at me" would help. I use "focus" also.
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Old February 26th, 2015, 04:11 PM
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Marty11 Marty11 is offline
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Oh I am afraid my Marty is terrible on the leash when she sees other dogs. People are afraid and all she wants is to meet them. I have no issues if a dog came over into her yard to play, but the leash? It is terrible. Embarrassing too! She could be in an arena full of people and noises, but that one dog coming towards on the leash is the problem. I could use some advice too. I use the gentle leader as well.
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  #18  
Old February 28th, 2015, 10:49 AM
2dogs&acat 2dogs&acat is offline
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Thanks everyone

In class we tried a gentle leader on Piper and it worked great for her pulling, it worked fine with her small snout but I like the halter one better. The halter we are using now snaps on the back. My husband walked both dogs at our state park the other day and it was a nightmare. Piper started in on a couple with their dog and then our big dog Hoss also started barking and lunging. He weighs 81 pounds. I thought we had broken him of that a few years back, apparently the puppy is teaching him bad habits.
I agree with not giving her a treat when she is behaving bad. I thought it might distract her but can see how she would treat it as reward. I told my husband from now on no walking the both of them together alone and I will look into the other halter. She is a stubborn little hairy thing and although smart, she can learn a new trick in minutes, training her on some things has been extremely difficult.
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Old February 28th, 2015, 01:16 PM
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Yeah, pups are famous for that--they touch the Inner Puppy of the older dog and years of training go right out the window In this case, though, it might just have been Hoss trying to back up his little buddy? But yes, separate walks would be good, at least till Piper is solid on the leash.
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  #20  
Old February 28th, 2015, 03:15 PM
Barkingdog Barkingdog is offline
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Marty bark at dogs and people to protect me , do you think your dog is going that too?
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Old March 5th, 2015, 02:43 PM
Loki-dokey Loki-dokey is offline
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My 7 mo old mix is awful on leash too. Only he's a big boy and doesn't mind jumping up to smell a man's face (not a woman, but that's another story).

My trainers advised that I take him out more frequently and do nothing interesting. Just go out to the end of my driveway, give him his kibble and then go back inside. Eventually it's not so exciting to be outside, it's just normal-ish. Loki's great at the end of the driveway now - buuuut not much further. We do little tiny jaunts a few driveways at a time, with a treat in his face, encouraging words and the "heel" command, and then head back home having had a good "heel" training sesh. It's a process!

Another comment/suggestion they had is to walk him in a cemetery - it's easy to move away from approaching people because the line of vision is so good, there are still squirrels and interesting things to look at and become desensitized to, and it's quiet.

Our dogs are still pups - curious, excited, sniffy, and easily distracted. It'll get better, but we have to show them how to get there by setting them up for successful walks so they don't learn another way (that might not match our goals for them).
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