Dog Training

[visualkei]

I've had my dog for a year, and I'm exhausted. :animesigh

The only person that's really interacted with it is my sister who's 12. I've been off in college since we took it in, and it's been a year. The only times I've really interacted with it was when I was home for winter break, and this summer.

She's a mut, I don't know what she is mixed with exactly, but she looks very similar to a German Shorthaired but smaller in stature. My dog goes wild when she sees people. Not killer wild, more like it's so excited, it'll jump all over the person. It's like she's still a playful puppy without realizing how big and strong she actually is. There's been some rare cases where we found small dead animals we suspect she's killed. It rips up things in the backyard-- particularly hard plastic/elastic things. She's somehow ripped up every collar and leash we've gotten her. And we've never had her neutered yet. That may be why. What she can do when she's not excited/distracted is sit and shake.

So is it too late to get her trained, do some kind of routine or something? I don't have money to spare, so I can't get it trained professionally. Any suggestions?

[Sunadokei-chan]

I actually have a dog of my own who used to be a real problem with chewing. She would just get so bored with things and eventually find something to attack. And personally, as a dog lover, I think it's never to late to train a dog to do something. My dog is seven, going on eight, and I just recently trained her to fetch, even though she's supposed to be a hound.

One trick for the ripping/chewing problem is to put hot sauce (or specialized crab-apple sauce that can be found in pet stores) on the things that she would normally chew on, but if she's stubborn, like my dog was, she would lick off the sauce, go get a drink of water, then go back to chewing it.

Is your dog male or female? You wrote that it's a "she", but then you mentioned that you haven't gotten her neutered. Do you mean spayed, or is your dog a male?

And while I'm on that topic, I'm not sure if the fact that you haven't spayed/neutered it has something to do with the problem. If your puppy is really young, then it might not have gone into heat yet. But if it is a female, and it is old enough, then it might have to do with it.

[visualkei]

Oops sorry, I meant to use the word "spayed." My dog is about 1 human year old. She can still be considered a puppy, I think. How old are dogs when they've entered adulthood, anywayz?

Thanks for the hot sauce trick, hehehe. :animesmil

[TheResplendent]

Actually, in terms of dog years when they reach their first year, somewhere between then and their second year is the equivalent to the age a human would enter sexual maturity. So it's safe to call the dog "adult" by his age of about 1 and a half or 2 years. Depending on the size/breed of the dog their lifespans vary but a good portion of breeds's full adult lifespan range between age 1 through somewhere between 9 and 11. In between 9 and 11 is probably when to consider your dog the equivalent to a senior citizen human. This of course isn't neccesarily the whole lifespan of the dog, i'm sure many of lived past the early teens.

I've had 2 dogs in the past, not very good experiences with either when it came to the end since one ran away and the other we gave away...i'm a dog lover though and hope to get one of my own (welsh corgie or golden retriver preferred) when i move into my own place.

I don't know much about training, but i do know people that have continually trained their dogs throughout several of their younger years. Obviously the younger the better though.

[nezzyjean]

i'm not too sure how to train dogs not to kill small animals...but i trained my dogs to heel when i walk them by saying heel, yanking them to my ankle, then twirling the leash in front of the both of you, then the dog usually has enough sense not to step too far forward..cuz it knows its gonna get hit in the snout. if you do this for a while, eventually the dog with know to heel on its own when you say heel, without the twirling end of the leash.