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Pupforum presents your training questions answered by professional dog trainers.
Ev lives the Lower Mainland of Beautiful British Columbia, Canada where she has been training dogs since 1969. She is experienced in many methods including clicker and motivational training. Ev is an original Superdog Performance Team member and her own dogs have travelled and performed with the Canadian SuperDogs since 1984. She has also served as an A.A.C. judge ans is an original Member/Trainer with the Dogwood Pacesetters Agility Club.
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[Edit]
9/13/2005
I have a tiny toy poodle 7 months old. He seems to be training well in most areas. I am having one major problem - he keeps digging at the carpet until he has the nap gone. It is getting so bad; I am ready to have him declawed. Any advice? (caretta, Texas)
Most often dogs and especially puppies have destructive behaviour patterns when they are bored. A simple walk down the street twice a day is NOT enough. Perhaps if you try to involve your pup in some other type of dog activities, this behaviour may go away. Even teaching some 'tricks every evening may take that puppy edge from him getting into trouble without your permission. My site has a list of things you can teach your dog at home.
There's also the chance that this behaviour 'started' as an intent on getting something (a bug, or something caught under the rug) and has 'now' turned to being a bad habit. For habits, I use the Squirt Bottle to teach them wrong from right. When the behaviour starts, I command once; "Leave It!" and then praise the instant it stops (even if he only stops for a second) - if the behaviour continues then he would get one blast from the bottle with
a second command followed by immediate praise and perhaps the offering of a toy or something else to attract his attention away from what he was doing wrong.
With persistence and proper use of the squirt bottle, I usually find that most dogs respond to the "Leave It!" alone, within days and if a reminder is needed after a few days then I stomp in with bottle-in-hand and give another command with another blast.
He needs to know that there is NO rest when he's getting into trouble... so if you're on the phone or in another room, that you still have ears and eyes to know what he's up to.
If you need to be unavailable for any length of time, do not leave him unsupervised. Either take him with you or place him in a crate where the behaviour cannot happen unless you know about it.
The link below takes you to my article on the squirt bottle. Read it to learn the proper usage of the Squirt Bottle.
http://www.itsmysite.com/cgi-bin/itsmy/go.exe?page=34&domain=1&webdir=K9Care
Good Luck.
Canine Caretaker Training/Consulting
http://www.k9care.ca
"United We Stand."
http://www.standunited.ca
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