Maybe this a “dog” question or maybe it’s peculiar to pit bulls, hence the thread title.
Our two pit bull pup mixes have stopped in their tracks while we had them on leashes out for walks and refuse to budge. Blue will just sit down if he wants to smell something, but then he finishes and we resume the walk. But when Mrs. L picks him up at day care, sometimes he doesn’t want to get in the car and refuses to move.
Last night during a walk (which they enjoy) Jax stopped a couple times and I finally picked him up to carry him home. They’d slept plenty so they should have been rested, we didn’t walk too far, and they know supper follows the walk…but he just stopped. When we got back Jax seemed to cower in fear in the hall way—we hadn’t yelled at them or anything, so I thought maybe he had a thorn in his paw or something, making him stand in a weird position. We couldn’t find anything, though and there were no signs of blood.
About fifteen minutes later he was his old self again, chasing Blue around the back yard.
Has anybody encountered this behavior with dogs in general or pit bulls specifically? They’re only 4.5 months old so maybe quirks are just to be expected?
Just so you know, this is actually pretty common. But your fur-babies may be putting the brakes on for reasons different from my dog’s (generally flawed) thinking:
In my/our case, I turn him around once or twice (changing directions via the leash) and it invariably gets him started again. YMMV.
Thanks for the responses! We’re extra weirded about it because that was where our chocolate lab decided to stop walking, which never ever happened, and two days later she died. At their age, the boys are in growth spurt mode, which probably covers it. Nice article—we’ll consider some of the tips.
Still can’t figure out why Jax was cowering, like he expected to be punished. File it under “Inscrutable pup behavior” I guess. Blue, for instance, likes to jump, pounce, and attack inanimate toys and treats. Hunting instinct?
Any kind of brief unexplainable behavior is perfectly normal for dogs. You have to watch out for long term unexplainable patterns of behavior that can be very difficult to change. But when they are pups you can expect anything. Also, pit bulls and plenty of other breeds have excellent not budging from a spot skills. You know it’s serious if they won’t move to get a piece of bacon.
My dog is also a pain when we we pick him up at day care. He loved it there and either doesn’t want to leave or is just tired, not sure. He’s about 13 months old, lab mix. He sometimes stops on walks as well – one time, it was because there was a stone dog a few houses over that freaked him out, but mostly I can’t figure out why.
I’m most experienced with greyhounds but my approach might also work with other breeds. All of this is IMO.
When a dog stops, it typically means he wants to do something other than what you’re asking him to do. If you’re walking down the street, it could mean he wants to go down a different street. Mine often try to ask for a different route than what I choose - sometimes I agree to do it their way, sometimes I don’t.
When you can’t let them have their way, the wrong approach is to pull them away. It works better to let them start in their preferred direction and then angle, angle, angle so that you’re turned around in the direction you want to go. That sounds like a chore, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be as simple as walking in a small circle.
Also, I think that my tendency to let them have their way sometimes makes them more agreeable to “letting me have MY way” sometimes. After all, it is a relationship we’re talking about here, between two intelligent creatures (you and the dog).
I do this also when they stop to smell things. Let them smell. Sometimes it’s a quick sniff, other times they have to thoroughly analyze what they’ve found. Hauling them away is rather rude. If you don’t have all day (we’re all busy people, so it’s understandable), just put a little tension on the leash in the direction you want to go and ask the dog to come along in a sweet voice. If he starts to come but is again distracted by the smell, add the leash tension and call him again. When he finally comes along with you, praise him because he’s an awesome Good Boy.
BTW, I use this technique as the beginning of preventing leash aggression and anxiety about other dogs, but that’s another lesson. The leash is more than just a rope tying the dog to you. It’s a method of communication.
Same here. I have a pit bull (9 1/2 – got him when he was 10 months) and he pulls this stuff all the time. I’ve always just read it as him saying “I don’t want to go this way”, so I turn around and he gets his lazy butt up and starts walking. There’s just certain areas he’s for whatever reason decided to stop walking. Like if I want to cross a certain street – for years he would cross that street in his walks. One day, he decides “no.” And now, 85% of the time, he just plunks down like a brick and refuses to go that way. So I go another way and he’s back up as if nothing happened. I tried to associate his behavior with some sort of trauma like a bee sting or anything else that would have some sort of lizard brain conditioning that would cause him to all of a sudden not want to cross that street (or other streets), but I never could make any sort of logical connection for a conditioned response.
Dogs are weird.
If I really need him to continue, I’ll just pull on his leash and call his name with a stern tone (a nice tone doesn’t seem to attract his attention – I’ve tried – my tone is more like a flat going into a rising ond – kind of question-like. Not mean, but more of a “come on” tone. My adopting a tone of "hey buddy, let’s play! There’s fun ahead! is 0 for seventy million) and he relents after about 5-10 seconds, all the while looking up at me with this plaintive look of “dad, are you sure you want to go this way? There’s monsters this way” and eventually he goes back to just sniffing the grass until we hit the next intersection and he repeats. (I’ve tried the “circle around” approach, but it just ends with him plopping down where he did to begin with.) I have notices that if I walk with a brisk and determined pace, he is much less likely to stop at those points than if I’m letting him have an exploratory walk.
The times this wasn’t true – the first few weeks we had him – it was because it was much hotter for him than he was used to and he simply needed time in the shade to cool off. The first time I did have to literally lift him and carry him to shade and give him some water and a ten minute rest for him to cool down. The second time it was much nearer to home and I learned to quickly read him and figure out when he was tiring or overheated so as not to have it happen again.
Thanks again for the responses! We’re glad to know it isn’t that unusual.
The day care thing is a bit weird. We wanted them to be used to other dogs, not to sit around the house bored all day, and since they’re puppies we knew accidents were likely. We overcompensated; the better model to envision would have been putting them in kindergarten. Little guys can’t go go go all day and we actually saw them on the webcam, sleeping while other dogs ran around. We then arranged for them to sleep more there and got them caught up at home, they were their old high energy selves again.
So one might think Blue would be all too happy to leave day care…but maybe we lost some credibility and he isn’t sure what lamebrained idea we’re pushing next. When the car is in the garage, he isn’t sure he wants to get out. Then we get him in the house…O frabjous day, Calloo, Callay!
I don’t think they are. I think it’s just that they can’t tell us what the issue is. As you mentioned, maybe he got a bee sting over there, and he remembers that so now doesn’t want to go there again. Or maybe there are different parked cars there than there usually is and he thinks that’s suspicious. Or something similar with a smell wafting in the breeze from that direction.
My second greyhound, Ajax, I thought was a total spazz when we first got him because he wouldn’t walk straight. He would always zigzag around in front of me somewhat frantically, or turn around and then turn around again. I tried pulling him gently forward, and gently kneeing him when he was about to cross my path and nothing worked. Then one day we got halfway around our “long walk” and there was a white tree trimming service truck up ahead noisily trimming someone’s trees. He started going in circles and refused to move closer to where all that noise was. That’s when my mental lightbulb popped on and I realized he wasn’t a spazz - he was anxious and fearful. Too much “new” for him to deal with. So we dropped back to very short walks, and gradually lengthened them to let him learn the neighborhood at his own speed. No problems after that.
One time that I did think was odd was when my two dogs had a disagreement in the yard and he lashed out at her. Instead of being afraid of him, she became afraid of the back door. What I saw was that she would go out just fine, but would only come near the door and no further. I had to do a little work with her to teach her that it was safe to come back through the door. As best I could figure, instead of associating the pain with the dude who attacked her, she associated it with the door, or coming through the door (in only the one direction). Dog’s are by nature VERY specific thinkers. One of the parts of training is to teach them to generalize.
There probably is some sort of doggie logic he can’t communicate, but, yeah, I can’t figure it out. One day he’ll decide he doesn’t like this street. One day another street. Some streets have become almost always off-limits. Some only sometimes. It’s a puzzle. If I walk a certain way (like I said, with determination and sense of purpose), he generally won’t stop. If it’s an exploratory walk, he will. Some days he just likes going up and down the block. Other days, just two or three houses up the block, then two or three houses back up the other way from the starting point, and back again several times. And yet another day, he’ll walk a hundred feet and want to return home. From my perspective, it’s weird, but from my dog’s perspective, I’m sure it makes sense.
Fear/stress can certainly be a reason a dog may stop walking. Sometimes it is hard to tell what they might me stressed about though. My dog hated trucks (big trucks). No idea why. With her better hearing she could hear one around a corner and might shy away from continuing. Never did figure that one out. Other cars and traffic no problems at all.
Being tired or overheated can cause it but that does not seem the case here.
Sometimes they will stop if they think the walk is going to end and they don’t want the walk to end.
And, sometimes, they just don’t feel like walking anymore.
Give the dog’s fear once at home maybe he got spooked by something.