THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Be consistent.  Be firm in your commands and punishment.  Dog’s do not understand cause and effect that well.  All punishment must be immediate.  Positive reinforcement can probably work even better.  A jovial praise and a nice chin scratch go a long ways, the reward does not always have to be food.  You and your family need to be the boss / pack leader.

When I was growing up we had an invisible fence for our dog.  It worked rather well in the rural north east.  The dog was quite trainable (Labrador) and got to the point where we didn’t even need the collar anymore, she just knew her limits.  They make GPS collars for dogs.  This does not prevent injury while escaped but does allow you to locate them quickly.  There are also range based systems that work like the vinisible fence.  We rescued a Beagle/Basset mix that was pretty much untrained.  We used an electronic training collar to teach her the “come” command and have been pleased.  The collar is only used now for emergency purposes should she decide to chase a rabbit or skunk.

You should be able to put your hand on the dog’s dish while it is eating and probably even be able to pull it away with out it even growling at you.  If that is not the case teach the dog you are the provider of food, take it away for just a moment and give it back.  If the dog growls correct him with a firm “no” and a tap on the nose.  If the dog behaves as it should give him a light and cheery “good boy”.

If you have more specific instances of issues, ask away.

I was thinking about the electronic collar.  Feel free to provide a recommendation.

I like the testing of the food thing.  Right now, we’re able to set food down, tell him “stay”, and he waits until we say “ok”, then he goes to the food.  Taking it away while he’s eating, just to show him who’s boss sounds interesting.  I’ll try that.

We use a PetSafe Little Dog Remote Trainer.  This is a training tool, not a punishment tool. I cannot emphasize that enough.  It is used to get the dogs attention through a means of stimulation.  If it is turned up too high it will cause pain.  I like this one because it uses standard batteries.  Others out there use custom rechargeable lithium batteries that eventually die and need replacement.  They tend to cost a few bucks and I don’t find them to be all that worthwhile, regular replaceable batteries seem to last plenty long enough. 

Our doggie-day-stay guy uses citronella spray collars for negative reinforcement (excessive barking).  They have zero effect on our hound, but your mileage may vary. 

As for an invisible fence I can not recommend any because I don’t have any recent knowledge of them.  The last time I used one was over 10 years ago.  If you can do it the buried wire works well and I’d probably opt for it over the simple range based ones.  I would probably only go this route if the dog is trainable which it sounds like yours is (sits and waits for an “OK” command with food).  This would not work with our former hunting hound.  With these systems it is all about repetitive training.  You should be able to walk past the white flags and have your dog stop at the line.  Eventually the flags can come out and your job is pretty much done.

If he actually is biting, he is a danger.  A dog should not bite unless he (or you) is attacked.  If he is biting, as opposed to grabbing you with his mouth, you should think of getting rid of him.

how old is he/she?

age is a key factor. though the aphorism about old dogs and tricks isn’t categorically true, it is far easier to teach a younger dog how to behave.

otherwise, lots and lots of trial and error. natural life might not introduce the requisite number of trials to learn the correct behavior, so you may need to construct the scenario over and over so they learn. i personally think the reward side is far more effective than the punishment side, but others may disagree.

Tom, what breed/mix is your dog, to the extent you know or have a guess? That info can sometimes help.

Not to contradict Steve’s advice in #1, but in my experience the results of “dominance training” vary widely with the individual. If you’re naturally the type that can maintain that relationship to your dog it may work great. If not, it won’t. One of my cousins is a professional dog trainer specializing in teaching hunting dogs, and he uses this method with great results. I tried using it on my own dog (a rescue who came with severe behavioral issues) and only made things worse. I’m pretty sure the difference between us is the handler, not the dog.

“Positive-reinforcement training”, especially with a clicker, is (IMHO) much more accessible to the average dog owner. It certainly has worked for us where other methods failed. Consultation with a good trainer (not the kind who teaches puppy classes at the local PetSmart) to show you what to do is worth the investment in my opinion, but that’s up to you.

Steve is definitely correct that punishment and reward must be immediate and consistent. My recommendation is to use a clicker as a marker for rewards to make the timing crystal clear to your dog, and to use timeouts as punishment, but other people may feel differently. If you do use a clicker, watch some tutorials on youtube to get the gist.

Rewards needn’t be food, as Steve said. For some behaviors we find that play was the best reward, but it varies for us. Experiment some. It helped us to think in terms of currency - some behaviors call for $1 bills as a reward (a basic treat), others call for $100 bills (fresh-cooked liver or something) and everything in between.

As for punishment, you can teach your dog the meaning of “no” as easily as the meaning of “sit”. This is the method I recommend: To start, give him a firm “NO” whenever he does something you don’t want him to do. After two “NO’s” (i.e. you said “no” and took him off counter, then he did it again and you said “no” again) he immediately gets a timeout, which means he is tethered somewhere out of reach but within sight (you will need to keep one or more leashes permanently tied to immovable anchors, such as a banister or very heavy piece of furniture). As soon as he has calmed down (he won’t like it but will eventually give up and lie down or sit nicely), immediately unhook him and all is forgiven.

The fact that you have taught your dog to stay until released tells me he is definitely trainable. You may just need to expand your mind a bit to move beyond that, as we had to with our own dog. Two years ago he seemed like a wild animal who would never even be housetrained. Today he knows over 50 commands, and strangers who see us working with him tell us he looks like a circus dog.

Cannot disagree with David/4 strongly enough…

Dogs bite each other all the time. This is how they teach/learn the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior with each other.

Dogs understand the variation in bite severity (both when giving and receiving). Unfortunately, we humans don’t, and the second teeth break skin we freak out, even if “breaking skin” means something that can be treated with a bandaid, not sutures.

There are dog bites, and there are dog bites. The vast majority of bites are intended to warn, not intended to hurt. If a dog intended to hurt you, you will know it by the fact that you required emergency treatment to stop the bleeding.

If the dog did not intend to hurt you (which again you will know by not requiring sutures to stop the bleeding), then most likely the reason you got bit is that you did something you shouldn’t have.

FYI, my last post on bites went through, though there is a prior post with actual training advice that was blocked as spam.

I had a slightly nutty girlfriend back in the day that had 4 malamutes. The smallest was 96 lbs. and two were over 130. As crazy as that was I learned a lot about dogs. Most people don’t have a pack of them to compare to.

1. Dogs vary a lot in temperament. You have four dogs and treat them all similarly. Some are easy to train and get along and others not so much. You should always entertain the possibility that the dog is not a good fit for you for whatever reason.

2. It is very important - with big dogs especially - to establish the pecking order. It needs to be very clear who the boss is (hopefully, the human). People sized dogs are able to use their physicality to establish dominance. You don’t want to go there.

I can’t tell if your dog is just food possessive or also eats very quickly. If your dog gobbles up all his food like it’s going out of style, they make special bowls that (kinda) force the dog to slow down. (Google “dog bowl to slow eating”)

My current dog is very non-food possessive - he barely cares about food at all - but trying to convince the dog that a) the food isn’t going anywhere and b) he has to eat slower may help with the food issues.

Also, I strongly agree with #5. When I got my latest as a puppy, I would set aside 30 minutes a night to train a specific thing (e.g. open crate door doesn’t mean he can leave, he has to wait for command). Repetition, in a condensed time frame, is important in my opinion.

I agree with mcbrown/6.  The dog “bite” is more like a bite-grab. He’ll release, or I can pull away.  He just bites enough to let you know that he’s a jerk, not insane.

In any case, he’s more a baby than an animal, so “getting rid” of him wouldn’t have been an option.

He’s 3+ years old.

One thing I should also make clearer is that it is important for all family members to treat the dog the same.  You will only be as strong as the weakest link.

A nylon muzzle may be sufficient punishment / timeout for biting behavior.

Tom:  Lots of good advice.  Mine would be to watch a few episodes of “The Dog Whisperer” (Just Google Dog Whisperer).  It won’t take you long to see how to train your dog to do (almost) whatever you want him to, including teaching him not to run away.

Lots of good stuff here. For instance, reading mcbrown’s comments is like a refresher course of the dog training classes I took when we bought our first dog. Like mcbrown, I strongly recommend clicker training. You don’t have to get hung up on the clicker itself, though - just have a consistent method of giving approval. For me, that’s just making a distinctive clicking sound with my tongue.

I don’t really know what to say about the running away problem, as my dog is a herding breed and doesn’t like to get too far from the family.

As for the jumping on counters to get stuff you don’t want him to touch, buy some bitter apple spray from Amazon or your local pet shop and spray some decoys for him. After a few times of getting that nasty stuff in his mouth, he’ll decide it’s really not worth the risk. Bitter apple also works great as a chewing deterrent, if that’s a problem. Just be aware that occasionally a dog actually LIKES the taste, and may require something stronger like Bitter Yuck.

We have had resource guarding issues, especially with the kids. Several trainers have told me to NEVER punish a dog for growling, explaining that growling is the dog’s way of warning. If you take away his warning system, you may wind up with a bite that had no warning. We handled the resource guarding by initially just walking by and tossing a treat into the bowl while she ate. Gradually, we worked up to being able to put our hands into the bowl, then to picking it up. Now I can pick up her bowl while she’s eating and she just trots after me, hoping I’m going to put something special in it.

I could not agree more with what Steve says about consistency. My wife isn’t as consistent about not letting the dog do certain things like jumping in greeting, etc. Naturally, the dog is much better behaved for me than for her.

I’d really recommend asking your friends and neighbors with dogs for a recommendation to a good training class. A good trainer is training you, the pet owner, to properly motivate and handle your pet. A decent class will cost you $75-100 and usually is an hour or so a week for 6-8 weeks. It’s well worth it, imo.

Finally, I strongly recommend Colleen Pelar’s Living with Kids and Dogs…Without Losing Your Mind. You can get the kindle version for ten bucks. It really helps with how to teach your kid to relate to the dog.

Good luck!

Lots of great stuff in mcsnide’s post.

Expanding on his food bowl training example, it’s a good model for how to address negative behaviors: frame the problem in terms of what you want rather than what you don’t, then encourage the dog to do the thing you want. For some things it may be helpful to redirect into a completely different (positive) behavior; for example to get my dog to stop going into a frenzy when he saw a squirrel we turned it into a game (“see the squirrel, get a treat”; then we raised the bar to “see the squirrel, respond to a verbal command like sit or come, get a treat”, etc.).

By the way, mcsnide is absolutely spot on about the growling. I speak from experience. Whoever had my dog first clearly punished him for growling. The only warnings he gives are very subtle and easy to miss if you’re not attuned to them. Sadly, it makes him extremely untrustworthy around strangers. Let your dog growl and address the underlying anxiety rather than the visible symptom.

Another great bit of advice I got from a trainer is “Nothing In Life For Free” (NILFF). Anything positive (food, treats, affection, play) should requires that the dog do something to earn it. It doesn’t have to be a big thing (recall my currency advice above - $1 reward requires only $1 effort, $100 reward requires something much bigger) but it should be something. It can even be as simple as laying down nicely as a requirement for affection, or having to go retrieve a specific toy if he wants to play.

NILFF helps enforce consistency among your family members. You’ll never get everyone in your family to do every single thing the same way with the dog, but at least if you ingrain this principle the spoilage will be minimized. For example my wife is a softy with food, and I’m a softy with play, but we both know the other will make him work for the extra food/play so we don’t stress about it.

As for the suggestion to watch “The Dog Whisperer”, it’s not a bad idea, just bear in mind what I said above about the handler affecting the results. To draw a baseball analogy, getting training advice from Caesar Milan is probably like getting batting advice from Vlad Guerrero. He is clearly great at what he does, and he can teach you certain basic principles as well as anyone, but trying to do exactly what he does in the exact same way he does it is probably not the best approach for most mere mortals.

I’d suggest watching Victoria Stilwell in conjunction with Caesar. Their approaches are very different, but there’s an obvious common ground (exercise is key, don’t reward bad behavior, encourage good behavior) and that common ground is what (IMHO) every dog owner can apply to their individual situation.

Apologies for the verbosity… you happen to have hit on probably my number one passion in life! I could drone on about dogs forever.

(Btw, I’m still curious about the breed/mix if you don’t mind sharing.)

Re the ‘Dog Whisperer’ references, remember that it’s C-A-L-M assertive behavior. Don’t exhibit dominance over your dog by screaming at it, gets them hyper.

Keep your dog well fed (and fed before you eat), walk him 3 times a day, and get him a companion dog. Problems solved.

Hungry, under-exercised and lonely dogs are a bitch.

#17 is correct to an extent.  Some dogs are just always hungry so feeding them the amount they want is not a reality.  I did know a family that started giving their dog canned green beans as additional food throughout the day to keep him satiated and not fat.

Stimulation for a dog is just as important as it is for a child.  If it is in the budget I would recommend finding a play group for the dog to attend.  It also has the added benefit of socializing your dog with others. 

A tired dog is a well behaved dog.