hkwm

Great ideas, thanks everyone! I cooked up some beef liver seasoned with garlic salt (HUGE hit) and I got some cheap tuna to whip up when the liver runs out. Unfortunately, I found 4 kidneys for about a dollar at my supermarket so I baked them with the liver and now our whole house smells like piss haha. She seems to like them though.

Lucky! I live in the city with a hard-to-focus pup, so I'm looking for the nastiest, stankiest, fish-smellingest treat recipe to compete with the thousand distractions going on when we walk out the door. Right now I'm doing what waffles is doing, and cubing up a lot of chicken and turkey, but treats that Laika will go nuts over inside hardly merit a sniff when we're outside. Thanks everyone so far for the suggestions!

I need to up my treat game! What is it that your dogs just can't resist? There are some great ideas in previous threads, but I'd love to hear some more!

So sweet! It looks like she has a little heart on her head

My pup is pretty scared of the bath as well, and while this is probably not the most graceful strategy what I do is prep everything first (like you), smear some peanut butter on the sides of the tub, lure in Laika, and work FAST while she licks her way crazily around the tub. It does make a huge mess of everything but the dog, and the bathroom smells like PB for a while, but it keeps both my hands free to wash, Laika is pretty oblivious to everything that isn't the peanut butter, and (bonus!) it forces me to clean my shower every 6 weeks or so. It's a silly scene, but it's worked rather well. I think she's even starting to like her little peanut butter fests.

Too, too cute! Those freckles...

He is SO CUTE! Can't get over it. I love his little white chin wisps - it looks like he's been drinking milk

Sounds like Laika. I would say "good luck", but I think I need it more than you :-p

Ha ha no need! I appreciate all the help I can get! I like positive reinforcement for most aspects of training, but Laika obviously doesn't respond to gentle admonitions so I'm fine scruffing if that gets the point across. I'm stern with her when she's bad, but I haven't had a puppy before (and no kids), so like you said she might be picking up on a vibe that I don't know 100% what I'm doing and taking advantage of it. Thanks everyone so far for the input. I'll keep trying with her

Awesome, thanks Sue R, that's very helpful advice. I feel for your friend with the shredded fingers, although I'm not sure I quite have her tolerance :-p I'll try scruffing tonight if she's nippy. Also, I know this probably sounds archaic, but what about spray bottles? Humane/not humane? Effective/not effective?

Thanks for the responses! Donald McCaig - Any elaboration on HOW to mean what I say (without switching dog trainers?) I've been doing mostly positive reinforcement based training, but I'm not against (humane) corrections, so if you have any suggestions or resources I would be grateful! Gideon's girl - Whew, that's a relief! The few things I could find said that 5-6 months would be the start of teething. If I should avoid treating her for barking, should I ignore it? When I do this, it seems like she will just go on for-e-v-e-r, so I'm at a bit of a loss for how to proceed. I do treat her when she's calm and quiet, but I don't know how to react when she does bark since she doesn't seem to care if I say "no". Falon's mom - Thank you, that is just the kind of advice I was looking for!

Hi all, I've been searching through old topics and couldn't find anything that specifically addresses our current problems, but my apologies in advance if this post is redundant. Laika is 4 months old now, and while she's made huge strides and we love her to death, this has been a pretty very frustrating week. Since I don't have any prior dog-training experience I keep making mistakes, and it has been two steps forward one step back the whole time we've had her (my fault, not hers). I'm pretty down, and any advice on the following issues would be really appreciated. 1) Laika does not seem to care about our approval. I've tried to be consistent in treating good behavior (even when she thinks we're not watching), and distracting bad behavior with things we do want her to do, but she will usually go back to the bad behavior once she's bored with the good one and ignore any rebukes, firm or gentle. How do we teach her that no means no? 2) This week she's started sporadically growling and lunging at our ankles when we're out on walks. I've tried determining what the trigger is and I honestly can't find one, but once she starts it's almost impossible to get her to stop. I've tried standing on her leash, saying "time out", and ignoring her until she calms down but she'll usually just gnaw on my foot or her harness and I can't get her to stop. Once she's settled down for a while, I'll reward and calmly say "okay" (our release word) and keep walking, but she'll be right back lunging and snapping. I've repeated this over and over but it doesn't seem to be working, so better ideas would be welcome. I've also tried to get her "back in her brain" by running through some commands, and she will usually obey the commands but then keep snapping. I've also tried tying her leash to a fence and physically removing myself if she started to growl or snap, but that didn't work either. It took us nearly 30 minutes to walk to a nearby field yesterday and by the time we got there I was so frustrated that I just plopped down in the grass and cried... and she immediately started biting me. 3) I thought that 4 months was too early to be teething, but she's definitely lost a couple teeth recently - is this abnormal?? I'm really worried that they've broken off from chewing the metal piece on her harness but I don't know for sure. 4) In addition to her walks (a short one in the morning and a longer adventure in the afternoon), I've been doing 5-minute clicker training sessions with her a few times a day. The problem is that she usually gets rowdy and frustrated because she doesn't know what I want, but if I try to lure her with a treat she'll snap or lunge for it, even though I stop and walk away every time she does so. She seems to be trying really hard to understand what I want her to do, but I'm not sure how to show her without luring. If she gets overly rowdy I will say "too bad" and crate her for a minute or two until she calms down before trying again, but she'll usually get would up again really quickly. How do you keep your puppies calm during clicker training? I've made sure to only treat her when she's being calm, and to crate her when she's too wound up, but it just doesn't seem to be sinking in. Am I not giving her enough activity? I want her to learn to entertain herself for most of the day, but I'm worried that I'm creating a neurotic dog. 5) Barking. She recently started barking whenever she hears people outside our home. Since this is "guard barking" I've been gently saying "enough" after the first bark and giving her a thank-you treat, or checking it out and assuring her everything's fine, but is there a way to get her to not do this at all? Also, when she barks for attention (or in her crate when we're trying to get her to calm down) I'm not sure what to do. Ignoring it seems like it will only allow her to self-reward and keep barking, so I've been saying "quiet" and then clicking for longer and longer periods of silence, but I'm concerned that this just teaches her to bark and then be quiet, instead of not barking at all. Sorry for the long post. Most of the time she's really good and we get along famously, but for some reason this week has just been rough.

This is helpful, thank you! I'm sorry to say that the parents in my neighborhood are like yours. We live in a busy area and NO ONE asks before petting Laika; it drives me completely nuts and it's teaching her to beg for attention from everyone we walk by. Most of the time when I politely tell people to stop, or that she's nervous around kids, they either ignore me or act as if I'm the one being rude (a grown man even called me a "bitch" a few weeks ago). Sadly, it's the same entitled people that see a puppy and immediately grab for it that necessitate less polite methods of getting them to stop in the first place.

Update: our first class went GREAT! Loved Ahimsa, our trainer/instructor is Wynona and she seems really helpful, really good. The curriculum was engaging, fun, and (has to be said!) not at all religious. Laika loved playing with the other puppies and learned so much that she was totally sacked out for the rest of the day! We can't wait for our next class! Laika trying out the socialization theme of the week: dog clothes

I apologize if I acted domineering - that was not at all my intention and I am truly sorry for any offense. Upon rereading my posts they seem a little aggressive, which was not how I intended them. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I will grant that the name "Ahimsa" could imply a Buddhist/Hindu connection, but upon reading further into the site it seemed clear to me that there was no real religious founding to their curriculum, but that these religions and Ahimsa's training philosophy are both based on nonviolence and compassion which, I think, could be said for all positive reinforcement training. That's the reason I was confused by your statement: ...which makes it sound like Ahimsa's curriculum is religious (which it doesn't sound like it is at all, but I guess I'll find out at our first class) and doesn't work (which seems dismissive, particularly given the esteem most others on this thread seem to hold for Ms. Stewart and her abilities). Anyway, I've registered with Ahimsa and don't have any qualms about their philosophy. If you don't agree that's alright, far be it from me to say what works and what doesn't. Dog owners of good conscience can disagree on their training methods.