Cutebutpsycho

So far, the time outs have been working. As soon as he starts, I just walk over and say kennel quietly. He hops in and I cover it and ignore him for a couple minutes. Then he comes back out and we resume what we were doing and act like nothing happened. We have had less incidents and I think he already knows that his bratty behavior has consequences now. It’s really nice to have a plan of action, instead of just trying to ignore him. I’ll give an update after a week or so to see how it’s been working. Here is one quick pic of Tripp helping with house renovations.

Thank you for all the thoughtful replies and encouragement! Urge to herd, we have been using all of those tricks to keep him busy. I just made him a snuffle mat too! I wish that we had known about those sort of things in the first couple of weeks. Several short training sessions have been helpful as well. Thank you for the advice about crating him when he is being a brat. We had discussed this but thought his crate was not supposed to be used as punishment? Of course we don’t know much and most of the things we thought we knew were wrong ! We will try this for a couple weeks and see how he does. He already got to test out timeout this afternoon, bless his demonic heart. If he does his barking/nipping outside, how should we handle it?

We had not planned to get a BC. We had been looking at laid-back large breed puppies or maybe a golden retriever. I had read John Katz’s A Good Dog a couple years ago and had been traumatized. But of course I completely forgot about that until the honeymoon period wore off with our furry little angel. He is a smart boy and loves to hike and run with me. He came to us overweight, debarked, and with a lot of pent up energy. He previous owners told me ( after I had brought him home of course) that they hadn’t been walking him or letting him in the house for a couple months because he was just too wild. We have been taking weekly obedience classes at Petsmart that have helped SO much! We also had a trainer come out to our house to work with us. His most annoying behavior is barking and nipping. I’m not sure what triggers it, but he sometimes just stares at us and barks and when we ignore him nips ankles and legs. We thought he had been improving but he has been back at it the last couple of days. Any tips on dealing with this? We usually redirect, but lately he won’t atop and I’ve started just leaving the room.

I would love to hear success stories about adopting adult BCs to give me hope! We spent a couple years looking for the perfect puppy for our lifestyle - contacting breeders, checking rescues and all that. Then, we ended up with a year old, adorable, monster, BC mix. In the past two months, we have made so much progress! But, we also have frustrating moments each day that make us question every choice we have ever made up to this point. Please tell me it gets easier!