What happened to our angel
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We have had our 1 year old Champ for 4 months now. We adopted him from a rescue shelter and don't have any info on his background. We absolutly love him although he's becoming unmanagable. At first he was just an angel and now well….he nipps all the time, jumps all over us and must be the center of attention at all time. He is completley out of control. This is our first experience with a B and our first experience adopting a lil adolescent so any suggestions is welcomed. Oh yeah a ? for my fellow B owners...does your angel burp too?
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Welcome Luzmery!!
Sounds like your B needs some rules around you. Just be firm & reward good behavior. My girl likes to jump on us when she's excited & she knows that's not allowed. SO everytime she's about to do it I take a step back so she misses cruel I know :) but..you gotta do it. I turn my back to her & walk away. When she settles down & sits…then I give her what she wants.
Keep doing it until he get's the point that you don't want to be jumped on. When he's sitting calmly THEN you can play & pet & give nice belly rubs...the WORKS :D
The nipping...same idea. You may want to use the command like No Bite and move away quickly...completely ingore him. When he stops nipping & sits calmly THEN you play but the play allowed is with no teeth. My little boy loved using his mouth but eventually he got the picture that I don't like teeth :)
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Welcome to the forum…I'm sure you'll get the information you need to help you out. There are so many experienced B owners. JYS is right on the money. I'd suggest reading through the past threads about puppy training and some of the rescue stories...lots and lots of tips that work! Keep us posted on your "angel in disguise"!
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Thanks for your advise. I actually started doing the "no bite" last night (I had read some of your advise from other forums) and he was like, yeah right. I did the ignore thing also and that actually worked. The only probelm with that is that it kind of hurts so it's hard to just stand there and take it. But I must admit I'm gonna keep trying that but my husband and daughter aren't as tough and can't deal with letting him mouth off. The only thing I wonder is if at this point we need some extra help as in a trainer or is this just a passing phase?
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This sounds wierd but I heard this (maybe on this forum?) that along with the ignoring method, when he bites make a high pitched yelp and then ignore.
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You have a normal B. I know the one I recently rescued, Miles, has a completely "crazy" personality… but I think it's no different from when my good girl, Lexi was younger. It's like I'm having flashbacks... and somehow I must have forgotten how tazmanian she used to be. My dogs LOVE and DEMAND to be the center of attention. Most of the time that is an option. But they are SO much like little children, it's funny. Often you can use the same discipline on them. Ignoring is a good technique, but not always an option. Miles likes to mouth when he's playing. In fact, he gets quite rough. We can't tolerate it, so when he does it, we hold his mouth over his teeth and apply a bit of pressure to make it uncomfortable--NOT to hurt him-- and to show him that it's a negative response when he bites. He has gotten MUCH better about it. We also give him verbal commands "No Biting", etc. Another member also suggested to us carrying around a squirt bottle and shooting the dog with it when it does something undesirable. But you have to literally have it right there to catch them in the act- and that's not always an option either.
Good luck. Remember, dogs are so often a product of their owners. Change your behaviors- change your dog. :0)
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Thank you all for these great suggestions…Honestly I have been trying a little bit of this since I became a member and read some past forums. They all seem to work for a little bit and then he comes right back although the frequency of the nipping is becoming less. I hope that once the warm weather comes in (NY) we will be able to take him out on more runs and hopefully burn some of that energy off. But once again thanks for your replies since we were feeling like our little champ had some type of behavior issues. Nice to know we are not alone and our B is normal.
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Signing up for a basic obedience class is also a great place to start. Training will give you a method for communicating with him. Make sure where ever you take him, they use positive reinforcement training. One place to start looking for a trainer is http://www.apdt.com
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I;m hoping to schedule the trainer to come to our home at least for an initial evaluation but I must be honest. We really do get carried away and at times we treat Champ like a real baby so I hope we can handle the training. I wanted to ask any of the B owner's out there….Is there anything I should look for in a trainer to make sure he is using the right methods and won't make matter's worse?
