The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How do I get these dogs to get along?
I have two dogs, a GSD and a lab, and my girlfriend has a glorified rodent of a Spitz. All of them are males, albeit with the literal OOM size difference, it's hard to believe they're the same species.
My GSD is reactive to other dogs, both as a consequence of his breed, and because he's used to seeing hostile strays who have no compunctions about barking or ganging up on him.
My lab is, well, a lab, so he would hurt flies and mice, but that's about it. He'll bark at street dogs, but he won't pick a fight.
Her dog is about as harmless as one can get, though you wouldn't know it from how he mouths off to others. He gets along fine in his dog creche.
She can't afford a creche every single time she comes over to my place, so she usually brings her dog along, to be kept on top of a wide cupboard where he can stay safe from the gnashing teeth of mine.
We've tried our best to socialize him with my dogs, but to little avail. The moment he comes down to ground level, they do their best to get him, or at least my GSD does. The lab is content to bark or growl, if her dog gets close.
I'm sure my GSD would absolutely masticate him, and even a nip would be dangerous given his tiny size.
We've been trying for months, offering treats to my dogs while we bring hers down, and rewarding them when they don't bark. It just doesn't work, or hasn't after a lot of trying. The moment her dog gets a bit of misplaced confidence, he starts barking back, which resets all the progress.
I've tried scolding and yelling, feeding all the dogs at the same time, some weird ultrasonic training tool, and yet I'm at an impasse. I just want them to get along, or at the very least not go for each other's throat. Any advice would be appreciated.
Does the shepherd like, sit/stay?
If not, you should probably train him to anyways -- once this is done (or if he already does) then making him do that (and rewarding him) while the small dog does stuff in the general area should get him bored of the thing fairly fast.
He does so, but only inconsistently if food isn't involved. Given that he's always on a leash outdoors, I've never had a strict need for that, but I'm sure it would be useful.
I've tried having him sit with the bribe of treats while the little dog runs around, but the moment they're gone and he notices it, the cycle resets.
Oh yeah, don't be afraid to sock it to him with the treats -- this can be a significant proportion of his daily calories and it's fine!
If he's used to chasing, it will probably take a while to get him into the habit of not doing it -- so the time commitment is significant, but I don't think there's a shortcut. (other than turning them all loose and letting the chips fall where they may; higher risk there though!)
Clicker training seems gimmicky if you haven't tried it, but I've found it pretty helpful at building this kind of response faster. Low barrier to entry, the clickers are like 2 bucks and you are giving him treats anyways.
Thanks for the advice! I'll try and see if I can make some more headway.
If you try the clicker thing, Karen Pryor is kind of the mother of it -- I don't love her specific dog-training books so much, but there's one about general use of the clicker for behaviour modification in animals that's a good read; I think it's this one: https://www.amazon.com/Karen-Pryor-Behavior/dp/0962401714/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link