Oh, she’s a “perfect sweet-heart”, and that’s either a 3 or a 7; most of the time it’s a 7. (I do know dogs; she’s a good dog.)
We are working on ‘Stay’ & ‘Release’ in the presence of food; she gets ‘Down’; I’ve started rough-housing with her to teach her to jump up, not on me, and to settle down, and to not chew on my hands; we are working on advance leash-training in the evenings when she’s a bit relaxed.
And she’s got ‘HEY!’ down cold; that’s the command that means ‘Freeze and look cute’.
She completely ignores her Kong; there is no substitute for shredding a tennis ball.
For the hand-chewing see this article: The Bite Stops Here. The “ouch!” and turn away method works wonders when used consistently.
For the Kong – smear some peanut butter on it. Our doggies adore that, although we use a Kong toy with “dental ridges” that you can stick peanut butter down into, which probably works better.
Update on training a dog I did not know to be stupid, totally unaware of the concept of command, or just willful:
Well, she is not stupid; tonight she responded to a new command without a food prompt and reward.
She was unable to distinguish be ‘command’ and ‘threat’ when I got her; I don’t think she will every be secure about an emergency command (loud, higher pitched), so I will have to train myself on that.
She is definitely willful. Damn, she is willful. I have actually resorted to growling at her on occasion when staring her down wasn’t working. She doesn’t seem to want to challenge an alpha so much as be just unaware of the concept of an alpha.
But I accidentally hit on a very effective technique. Every night I am home I run her through up to five successful commands. I am not home every night and the second time she fails to obey immediately I stop - no more treats or snuggles or praise.
Since I started just stopping the sessions on her refusal she has been much more responsive.
I’ve never tried to socialize a dog this old (~ a year) before; ‘unreliable’ rewards is very effective.