My 1 1/2 year old GSD refuses to listen...WHAT DO I DO???

led08zeppelin · #1 15-04-2008, 11:32 PM

Hello i am the proud owner of a 1 1/2 year old (well he will be 2 in july) GSD and i am at my wits end with him. I am so frustrated. Let me name off the things he does bad. Im sorry if this is a little long. He is a very good dog (most of the time) but the excessive barking is very nerve racking! He barks at the mailman viciously every day without fail, and whoever else walks down our driveway. I take him over to my boyfriends house and everytime he hears somebody coming in the door he barks VICIOUSLY. Then once he smells them he calms down. I understand he is protecting the house but i tell him to stop barking and he WONT! My boyfriends house is connected to someone and they say that when he barks it goes throught the whole house! I'm tierd of people calling him visious because he isnt. He just barks very loud and scary when he sees someone. I feel like a bad parent becuae he doesnt stop when i tell him. When i take him for walks he is soooooo bad i want to scream! He drags me all the way and doesnt listen when i tell him to stop. Im a 21 year old girl and he almost weighs what i do. (hes about 110lbs.) I purchased a choke chain to try and control him but i dont see it helping. He completly controls me, and i dont know how to reverse this. He was my first dog that me and my ex bought. We obviously went wrong training him. He knows how to give his paw, sit, lay down, and stay but they are the basics.
I know that german shepherds are hearding dogs but the excessive squirrel chasing when he comes out of my house is getting out of hand. He runs out of the house and chases them and doesnt even bother to look back when i am screaming for him to come back!!! The same goes with rabbits, groundhogs, whatever. He does it when i take him for walks also and it drives me nuts!!! He is sapposed to walk at my side and he totally doesnt!! He comes when i call him "sometimes" He doesnt really like treats so i dont really know how to go about fixing this major problem. ALSO...he has developed a peeing problem when i am trying to put on his leash or take it off....he pees all over my boyfriends floor and it is sooooo embarrasing!! I tell him its ok and not to be scared but it doesnt matter....he does it every day. When i ask him if he wants to go for a ride/walk he flips his lid and runs around the house and jumps on me and doesnt let me put on the leash so we can go. I've tried the stern voice and the smack to his butt but he just keeps up doing these bad things and i am so frustrated i dont know what to do. Any advice would be greatly greatly appreciated!!
Thanks for reading.

tazman · #2 15-04-2008, 11:41 PM

Oh dear it sounds as if you have a real problem on your hands, but dont worry I am sure some one here will help you very soon,
Kathxx

LOVEGSD · #3 16-04-2008, 11:28 AM

Hello

You'll have to post some pics of your lovely furbaby

In my opinion it sounds to me that your dog doesn't view you as pack leader and you need to get this with him which means going back to basics....I would walk him on a halti/gentle leader/head collar, this would give you complete control over him, it would reduce pulling etc then you need to master the walk itself. When we got Diesel we took him to see a trainer who helped show us how to walk with control, if you read "Pulling when walking" thread this will help you.

Secondly have you thought about getting a long lead or tracking lead? this will help you to reinforce the "come" command....ie, let him move away from you (not too far at first) say come and pull the lead to bring him to you & when he reaches you use his favorite toy (if treats don't work) to play with him for doing as you ask. I was told too by Wildmoor not to use the same toy he has in the house it's got to be a toy he only gets outside for play like this, I wouldn't give him free run off lead if he won't come back. You also need to teach and reinforce the "leave" command for the squirrel issue, start by doing this with his fav toy, leave it in front of him and tell him to leave every time he leaves by looking away from it he gets it and you play with him, this will then make him realise what leave means. You can then take this outside say the word and when he looks away he gets to play with his toy - it's all about having fun!!

Also I would stop making a big thing about putting his lead on him to go out, this only excites them and then they can pee...you need to control even this part of the walk. I would get him to sit calmly before even getting the lead out, you need to keep calm and don't talk to him as this will excite him. Then once the leads on walk him calmly to the door, every time he pulls or gets excited get him to sit and be calm, only move forward when he's calm....this may take a while to get out of the door but if you persist he will soon realise that he gets nowhere if he's excited. This should also help with the pulling too and the squirrel chasing.

As for the barking we taught Diesel the "quiet" command, but this was taught to us by a professional, using water in his face (he's not scared of water at all now because of this and in fact loves it so it didn't harm him)....we only did this twice before he realised quiet meant quiet so I would recommend maybe seeking help before going ahead with this...some may think a noise distraction would be a good idea but again I would seek help before doing this unless someone on here can advise the best way.

I hope some of these things will help and I'm sure there'll be others on here with their views on how to deal with these issues.....good luck and keep me posted with your progress

Lynn
x

Ailsa · #4 16-04-2008, 12:29 PM

I was wondering do you take him training at all? I personally think this is the very best thing you could do for him. There are people there who can physically show you and help you. He does sound like a handful and I agree with the others that he doesn't seem to see you as the person in charge! he is doing just what he thinks he will do. He is ruling the roost and calling the shots. It's a funny age too for dogs when they are flexing their muscles and pushing you to the limit. If you let him get away with bad behaviour now it will be even more difficult to get him out of it later on. This will no doubt have a bad effect on your relationship with him which would be v. sad just for lack of a bit of training. Good luck with him.

LOVEGSD · #5 16-04-2008, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ailsa

I was wondering do you take him training at all? I personally think this is the very best thing you could do for him. There are people there who can physically show you and help you. He does sound like a handful and I agree with the others that he doesn't seem to see you as the person in charge! he is doing just what he thinks he will do. He is ruling the roost and calling the shots. It's a funny age too for dogs when they are flexing their muscles and pushing you to the limit. If you let him get away with bad behaviour now it will be even more difficult to get him out of it later on. This will no doubt have a bad effect on your relationship with him which would be v. sad just for lack of a bit of training. Good luck with him.

I think you're right Ailsa, taking him to a class would help to learn the techniques and give you the confidence.....sometimes with even the best explanation it helps to actually see it in practice.

led08zeppelin · #6 16-04-2008, 10:40 PM

Well he is a BIG handful no doubt about it. I cry every day because i just cant get him to listent o me and he is scared all the time. If i tried the spraying him with water he will run from me and pee all over the house when he sees me coming with the bottle. Sometimes when he is being bad we say "im gonna get out the sweeper" and he takes off. We had a big problem getting his ears to stand up and we did alot of work on them gluing etc. and he HATED it!! Now every time we come at him he gets down to the ground and starts peeing....i think that is why he pees because he always thinks were gonna do something to him. We have left his ears alone now for about 2 weeks because we realized they just arent gonna stand up and he still wont get over the fact that were not gonna touch his ears. I get very upset and frustrated when he starts peeing...i dont want him to be scared of me. Idk how to help him get over this. He has an appointment May 19th to get neutered...so im hoping to start him on the Halti right after that. Last night i was trying to teach him to "Crawl" I think he was getting the hand of it...he did it a couple times but it might just be because i was pulling the treat away from his face. I doubt he knows the word crawl. It is pretty hard to teach a dog new things at his age isnt it?

led08zeppelin · #7 17-04-2008, 05:53 AM

I have another problem with him and i would say it is a major one. Ever since we started gluing his ears up he HATED IT, he always peed everywhere when we tried to do it to him. Now the last time we glued them was probably about two weeks ago and he just will not stop peeing everytime i come at him, like give him a backscrath, or rub his tummy, or brush him, or put a bandana on. I dont know what to do to comfort him and tell him its ok im not gonna do anything to him. I know he loves me he gets so excited when i come home and he whines and misses me when i leave. He just acts scared and pees when i try to scratch him or something. The same goes for my mom. She went over to him the other day to try and cut some strings off of his bandana and he peed on the floor. When i let him out to go pee i say "do you gotta go pee?" Do you think it would be possible that when i go over to him i can say "no pee" and then give him a treat when he doesnt? About 10 min ago he was sleeping on my bedroom floor and i simply got down on my knees and wanted to pet him and scratch his back but when i tried he peed all over my rug, then got up and ran to the other side of the room when i tried to slide him over away from the dresser so i could scratch him better...he peed again after i grabbed his collar to try and bring him over to show him what he did was bad. I am completely disgusted as we are tired of shampooing pee spots daily, and are just wondreing why he keeps doing this when we are never going to glue his ears up again?? Can someone please help if you do god bless you! we have a major and embarrasing problem that he also does at my boyfriends house and i am so upset with it

Ailsa · #8 17-04-2008, 11:52 AM

No offence intended here at all and respect to you for coming onto the forum and asking for help with your problems but I think you probably need as much training as your poor pup. Can you not go and find a trainer who will be able to help and advise you? Eighteen months is no age, I am still training my older girl and she is 2 years old so it's never too late to get involved in training especially a GSD, they are so intelligent but can be sensitive too. Poor pup he doesn't know whether he is coming or going. For everyone's sake think about finding a training class otherwise you will ruin your relationship with him forever and in the event of your deciding you can't cope with him no one else will be able to cope with his problems and he'll be tossed from pillar to post - bless him. It's no good crying he is picking up on all of this negativity and it's not helping him. I hope you don't take offence at this posting but I feel so sorry for this poor pup.

LOVEGSD · #9 17-04-2008, 12:00 PM

Ailsa I was just typing a similar reply.

To be honest I too am deeply distrurbed by your handling of him and the peeing is quite clearly out of total fear of you....I am not at all sure this is the right dog for you. You need to seek professional help NOW or allow him to be re-homed.

You need to stop crying about what he's doing wrong and start to take control in a calm manner. I am very worried that his fear could escalate to aggression and he would ultimately pay for that.

GSD's are very easy to train and they don't need to be shouted at constantly to get results. You should try praising him for the good things he does, you have clearly lost his respect and confidence and you need to try to get this back. I too admire you for asking for help and I hope you will take these comments on board as constructive criticism not an all out attack on you.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but I am genuinely very worried about your dog.

zaclucy · #10 17-04-2008, 01:06 PM

Ailsa and lovegsd, i totally agree with everything you say.

I believe you are out of your depth, and need professional help. You need to take control of this situation before it gets any worse. The dog clearly doesn't understand what you require of him, and he is getting mixed messages from you all the time. You need to be consistant with his training, so that he can understand what you want of him. You need someone to teach you how to do this. A GSD is a loving and loyal companion, but he needs to know how to behave, and he looks to you for this.

Please take all we say as being constructive, and please seek help from someone professional.

Janet x