Too much too soon????
Discussion
Our dog Ozzy is fantastic, he is a westie just over 10 months old, we have been crate training him from day 1 and has been great, but just lately we have noticed a few problems, not major, but want to correct them before they are.
First off is on walks when off lead. He is very playful, if he sees another dog that looks playful he starts to focus on it, usually we can keep his attention but just lately he has started to just go over at full speed and completely ignore all our commands and try to play with said dog. If we wait or if the other dog doesn't want to play, he will come back like all is fine, but in his own time. The advice our trainer gave us was if he doesn't come back after 5 seconds, he isn't coming, so go get him, which is what we are doing, but we want to stop the initial running too the dog.
Next is the sniffing and marking, when on lead we have worked really hard on this and had great success, he will walk to heel and focus on us with a loose lead. But when we let him off his nose goes down and his leg up! only stopping if there are other dogs around.
Finally he has become more vocal at home. He didn't bark once for the first few months but he has slowly found his voice, and again these last few weeks he appears to be more protective and bark at anything or anyone near our property.
Now like I said we have crate trained him and he would always sleep in the crate with the door locked, but we have started to leave the door open at night and allow him the freedom of the kitchen/back sitting room at night, more because I feel it is better for him should anything happen in the night.
Could this new freedom be part of what is causing these changes? Are we giving him too much too soon or at all? or are these just normal behaviour in a young dog growing up? like I said these are not major problems, but we want to keep him on the right trak
Thanks in advance
(Also he has not been neutered, this is something we are planning to have done at approx 1 yr old)
First off is on walks when off lead. He is very playful, if he sees another dog that looks playful he starts to focus on it, usually we can keep his attention but just lately he has started to just go over at full speed and completely ignore all our commands and try to play with said dog. If we wait or if the other dog doesn't want to play, he will come back like all is fine, but in his own time. The advice our trainer gave us was if he doesn't come back after 5 seconds, he isn't coming, so go get him, which is what we are doing, but we want to stop the initial running too the dog.
Next is the sniffing and marking, when on lead we have worked really hard on this and had great success, he will walk to heel and focus on us with a loose lead. But when we let him off his nose goes down and his leg up! only stopping if there are other dogs around.
Finally he has become more vocal at home. He didn't bark once for the first few months but he has slowly found his voice, and again these last few weeks he appears to be more protective and bark at anything or anyone near our property.
Now like I said we have crate trained him and he would always sleep in the crate with the door locked, but we have started to leave the door open at night and allow him the freedom of the kitchen/back sitting room at night, more because I feel it is better for him should anything happen in the night.
Could this new freedom be part of what is causing these changes? Are we giving him too much too soon or at all? or are these just normal behaviour in a young dog growing up? like I said these are not major problems, but we want to keep him on the right trak
Thanks in advance
(Also he has not been neutered, this is something we are planning to have done at approx 1 yr old)
Sniffing and leg cocking are because he has reached sexual maturity. Assuming he is a confident pup and not fearful or nervous then neutering now rather than waiting another couple months may reduce this behaviour (Depends how long he's been doing it already though)
The running off is partly because you're not interesting enough when another dog comes along, again neutering may reduce this but not necessarily, it may be worth trying distraction methods when out with him, teach new commands, play with him, teach tricks and positive reward, try and make you centre of attention rather than other dogs all the time. As he gets older he may run to a dog but after a few sniffs come back because they're not that interesting after that (unless they want to play together in which case let them)
My dog was a bit of a rogue for wanting to play with every dog as a youngster and not come back, over time he learned that not all dogs play and would lose interest very quickly and come back, if they played he'd be harder to distract but not impossible but my feeling was if they were happy to play together let them.
The barking is harder, he's a terrier reaching maturity they are prone to this behaviour, it may have been inadvertently encouraged by you initially but lots of possibles for this which can be difficult to solve. Any particular triggers?
The running off is partly because you're not interesting enough when another dog comes along, again neutering may reduce this but not necessarily, it may be worth trying distraction methods when out with him, teach new commands, play with him, teach tricks and positive reward, try and make you centre of attention rather than other dogs all the time. As he gets older he may run to a dog but after a few sniffs come back because they're not that interesting after that (unless they want to play together in which case let them)
My dog was a bit of a rogue for wanting to play with every dog as a youngster and not come back, over time he learned that not all dogs play and would lose interest very quickly and come back, if they played he'd be harder to distract but not impossible but my feeling was if they were happy to play together let them.
The barking is harder, he's a terrier reaching maturity they are prone to this behaviour, it may have been inadvertently encouraged by you initially but lots of possibles for this which can be difficult to solve. Any particular triggers?
Is it barking as such, or what I call voicing - as if he's trying to communicate . I meet a lot of other Cairn owners and occasionally go on a Cairn site ,and it's one thing commented on . I've seen research that proves that WHT are the result of selective breeding from lighter Cairns. ( Need for a light coated dog in hunting etc) .They will bark ,too - a problem we've got as next door neighbours are door slammers .But also handy , both to let you know someone is near the door and as a deterrent to cold callers .
bexVN said:
Sniffing and leg cocking are because he has reached sexual maturity. Assuming he is a confident pup and not fearful or nervous then neutering now rather than waiting another couple months may reduce this behaviour (Depends how long he's been doing it already though)
Started about 1 or 2 months ago, he is fairly confident/playful, if that makes sense? There is one dog we meet occasionally on one of our walk routes who had a go at him when he was younger and he will always come to me when he is around.bexVN said:
The running off is partly because you're not interesting enough when another dog comes along, again neutering may reduce this but not necessarily, it may be worth trying distraction methods when out with him, teach new commands, play with him, teach tricks and positive reward, try and make you centre of attention rather than other dogs all the time. As he gets older he may run to a dog but after a few sniffs come back because they're not that interesting after that (unless they want to play together in which case let them)
We like to encourage play with other dogs, if possible, as we think its good for him. We do try to be exciting and positive with him, perhaps we need to work more on this.bexVN said:
The barking is harder, he's a terrier reaching maturity they are prone to this behaviour, it may have been inadvertently encouraged by you initially but lots of possibles for this which can be difficult to solve. Any particular triggers?
He is quite independent at home, in-that he isn't a lap dog and sometimes will sleep in a different room to us. Triggers tend to be cats, we have a few local cats sometimes enter our gardens. Next door have an adult springer dog and a pug/chuwahwah (?) puppy they will sometimes bark at each other in the garden (we are working on this habit) and finally people at the door.[quote=Who me ?]Is it barking as such, or what I call voicing - as if he's trying to communicate . I meet a lot of other Cairn owners and occasionally go on a Cairn site ,and it's one thing commented on . I've seen research that proves that WHT are the result of selective breeding from lighter Cairns. ( Need for a light coated dog in hunting etc) .They will bark ,too - a problem we've got as next door neighbours are door slammers .But also handy , both to let you know someone is near the door and as a deterrent to cold callers .
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He does the voicing also, mainly to let us know there is a C-A-T about LOL, but we have no problem with that as its quite quiet, and also an endearing trait
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He does the voicing also, mainly to let us know there is a C-A-T about LOL, but we have no problem with that as its quite quiet, and also an endearing trait
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