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Pupforum presents your training questions answered by professional dog trainers.
Elaine has been training dogs professionally for 14 years. She is a CPDT as well as an endorsed member of NADOI. She is also certified in narcotics detection and is one half of a (twice) certified explosives detection team - the other half being her Dutch Shepherd Spawn, who is also titled in several protection sports. Elaine is the owner of Canine's Best Behavior, a Los Angeles based training company, offering Basic Manners, CGC, K9 Games (soon!) as well as behavior modification for aggression fears phobias etc.
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[Edit]
5/9/2006
I believe the problem I am having between my two dogs is Redirected Aggression. Teah is 14 months, Diesel is 3 years both Dobermans. When someone walks by the house Teah will start nipping Diesel. He will get very loud because he knows that she will start her stuff and she will not back down. It’s very frustrating because it ends up very loud and she should not nip Diesel like this. Any advise on how to stop her nipping him and going after him when someone walks by?
I agree Diesel should not get nipped and yes getting it under control before Diesel does will be in the best interest of all. In a nutshell, it sounds like she gets aroused by either Diesel's reaction at the door or the people walking by and in frustration, takes it out on Diesel. Frustration is the by-product of not knowing what else to do.
One thing that might work is teaching them both to do something incompatible with nipping. I taught my Dutch Shepherd to go get a ball when people come over. The nice thing about this is that even when there is no ball he is looking for one instead of barking at the door.
If you can think of a few sentences that flood your dogs wit
h joy you may be able to channel that nipping into another behavior. The trick is to find the right sentence and pair it with people walking by before she starts nipping. In order for it to be effective once you find that "magic sentence" it has to become pretty exclusive to the door.
Here are a few examples:
- Who wants to go for a ride in the car?
- Cookies!
- Where's the ball?
I'm sure you can come up with quite a few that are Diesel and Teah exclusive.
Another option would be to desensitize them both to the stimuli of people walking by.
Or teach them to go to stations well away from each other, time intensive, but extremely impressive with Doberman. Once, I taught two Doberman to go to stations next to big pillars and to follow everyone in as the walked in with their owner, it took awhile but boy was it cool looking to see the gate open and those two "assume their posts"!
As I am sure you know, this is a highly intelligent, sensitive breed of dog, giving them a different job will go a lot way in reducing Teah's frustration because she will have something else to think about.
Hope that helps.
Elaine Allison CPDT NADOI
Canine Behavior Consultant
Canine's Best Behavior
1.866.K9s.Best
www.caninesbestbehavior.com
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