Puppy Woes: Need Advice About Training

It’s me again, needing some more help with little Polaris.

  1. How does one train a puppy to go down the stairs? After much coaxing with treats, I got her to climb up, but no inducement would cause her to go back down. I’m sure that it’s the angle which frightens her, but she wouldn’t even step down a couple of inches onto my lap when I sat on the stairs. I tried gently pulling her front legs down to demonstrate that it wasn’t as perilous as it looked, but she wasn’t buying it.

  2. Aggression: Today, she picked up a dead bug off of the porch. When I tried to take it from her mouth, she growled and bit me. I immediately pushed her over onto her back (as I’ve read you should do in this circumstance) but I don’t think it made the proper impression.

She growls when playing with her toys. One of my dog books suggests that allowing this encourages agression, while another says that it helps the puppy to relieve some of it in a positive way.

  1. Biting: She still gnaws on me and my clothes. I know that she understands “no!” because she stops other behaviors when I say it. She’s also pretty smart: she already knows “sit”, “down” and “fetch”, so I don’t think this is a training issue, per se-- more of a behavioral problem. One of my dog books says that pups taken from their mothers as young as she was have a tendancy to chew on their owners, but doesn’t say how to fix this problem.

  2. Bathing: She screams like I’ve set her on fire when I bathe her, and trembles for a half an hour afterwards, no matter how much I try to make it a pleasant experience (treats, praise, etc.)

  3. My older dog’s intense jealousy: Training Polaris has been arduous, not because she’s hard to train-- quite the contrary-- but because my older dog disrupts the proceedings as much as possible. Polaris is afraid of her, so if the older dog is in the room, she won’t pay attention. When I go into the kitchen with her and shut the door, the older dog starts barking, and Polaris focuses on that rather than what I’m trying to teach her.

I’ve waited for the older dog to go upstairs for her nap, but I swear, the dog who can’t hear me when I yell for her to stop barking at the neighbor’s cat can hear me if I whisper “good puppy!” She runs back down the stairs and barks at the closed door, or otherwise makes a pest of herself. It’s too cold to train outside, and none of the puppy day care centers or trainers will let me bring her to their facilities until she’s had her third round of shots.

Any advice would be most welcome. Thanks in advance.

How old is the pup? From the “third round of shots” comment, I’m guessing about 3-4 months?

Okay, I don’t know what to tell you for all of it, but I can help with the mouthiness.

Binaca. My mother recently got the mouthiest puppy any of us had ever met. Her trainer recommended this stuff, and it was grand. A single shot of this stuff in her mouth and she backed off. BE CAREFUL when you aim. It’s not good for puppy eyes, so hit the mouth. It’s not hard, but do be careful.

I say she backed off, but I mean right then. She did need several shots in the mouth from all members of the family for the message to sink in.

I’m really not sure about the alpha rollover. I’ve seen situations where it seems needed, but that’s not how a dog would correct a puppy in a totally canine situation. The dog would just bite back, harder. Since that’s not really an option for us (though I know people who do it), we find other techniques. Making it unpleasant is basically the answer.

[aside] I’m less and less interested in the rollovers as I get older, and learn more about animal behaviour. I know there are people out there who never use them, and they may be on to something. [/aside]

Elenfair seems to be the resident training expert, so she will likely have some other advice. The key, with both of your dogs, is consistency. If you say it, mean it. Don’t repeat yourself. And make sure that everyone in the family follows and enforces the same rules.

First, welcome to the Wonderful World of Raising a Puppy! (And that, in many ways, is the answer to several of your questions).

  1. Patience; it’ll happen. Remember, she’s tiny, and those stairs are steep! You’re doing the right thing; coaxing gently, trying to make it an adventure. If she doesn’t respond to you pulling her legs a little, she’s not ready. One day soon, she’ll just figure it out.

  2. It’s about tone and demeanor more than anything. She can tell when you’re really mad and when you’re just scolding her. In fact, she’ll get really good at telling the difference. :slight_smile: Your approach sounds fine to me; I’d say worry about being consistent with her more than how you’re being received. You don’t necessarily have to be stricter, but you always have to be more persistent.

  3. Puppies chew. It’s what they do. IANAV, but I feel confident telling you that it’s not a behavioral problem in a young puppy. I’ve never met a puppy that doesn’t put everything in its mouth. Gradually, she’ll grow out of it, and you can correct her when she bites you as you’re doing now, except after correcting her, put a bone or toy in her mouth and let her chew that, telling her she’s a good girl if she takes it and starts to go to work on it.

A good rule for when she’s a puppy is to always have a bone or toy laying around. Everywhere. Remember, your flat/house is a big wonderland for her. Everything is something to sniff, chew, destroy, swallow, and throw up later. Everything. The more toys you have laying around, the higher the odds are that she’ll just go for the familiar, snout-sized item (instead of, say, the rug).

  1. Most dogs I’ve known are like this. They just don’t like it. You’re doing everything you can; the only suggestion I have is this: when she’s done bathing, get really, really excited when you get out the towel and start to dry her. Make a big game of it. My dogs love the towel so much, they seem to forget about the bath completely.

  2. This is difficult, particularly depending on how much the older dog has been trained. But despite the old adage, you can train older dogs. This takes a lot of patience, much more so than training either dog separately. The only advice I can give you is to include the older dog in the younger one’s training. Make the older one sit, lie down, etc, and of course give the older dog treats for being good. It takes a lot of time, but eventually you can get the two in competition with eachother to see who can get the treat for a command first (that jealousy can work in your favor).

Persistent barking is something that’s hard to get rid of once it’s set in. You have to make certain that you don’t come running every time the puppy lets out a series of those heartbreaking little yelps when you put her up or put her to bed. The puppy will quickly learn that’s how she can get your attention (which is exactly what the older dog is doing). Try to wait until after she quiets down before walking into the room where she is.

You might consider crate-training her, if you haven’t already. Of course keep the common sense stuff in mind: regular vet visits, nutritious food, etc. And if things get bad, try finding a good trainer to work with. Good luck…she’s adorable!!

To answer the questions posed to me thus far:

She’s between ten and eleven weeks old. We got her on January 13, and the vet said she was about five weeks old then. She’s supposed to get her third round of shots on the 28th of this month, after which I intend to put her in puppy day care so she can see that not all dogs are grumpy and rough.

My older dog scared the hell out of her early on. She bit the puppy once for approaching her when the older dog was eating a treat. (It wasn’t a really hard bite. The puppy was smaller than my older dog’s head, and if she’d wanted to, she could have killed the pup with one bite.) The second traumatic incident happened when the older dog indicated she wanted to play with the puppy by doing one of those play bows. I was excited, thinking there’d been a breakthrough. When I put the puppy on the floor, my older dog playfully whacked her with a massive paw. The puppy screamed in pain and fear, and took off running. Thinking this was a great game, the older dog chased her, barking. The puppy crammed herself under a table and wouldn’t come out again. I felt awful.

I am crate training her. She has a small crate for sleeping, and a playpen for daytime when I can’t supervise her. (An actual baby playpen which I bought used.) It gives her plenty of space to romp because she’s so small.

Thus far, we haven’t had any major housetraining problems. There’s been two squats on the rug, but the second one was my fault, because when she went to the door, I just thought she was exploring. She whines when she wants to go out while in her playpen, and when she’s out on the floor, I just watch for sniffing and circling. I figure it’s best not to have to correct her for a problem that I can avoid by being dilligent.

I’m trying to be patient, but it’s difficult sometimes. When it comes to chewing on my clothes, I tell myself that she probably can’t distingush between what cloth she can chew on (i.e her plush toys) and what cloth is forbidden (the sleeve of my robe and my blankets.) To her, it’s probably all the same.

The problem with letting them compete in training is that Polaris is very skittish when the older dog is around, and it makes training almost impossible. The older dog growls when she has a treat and the puppy is nearby, and she doesn’t like it when the puppy makes quick movements-- so “fetch” is out of the question when she’s around.

This is often true. I don’t give dogs plush toys for just that reason. (And that they often have squeakers that my dogs then go after. An eviserated plush toy is just sad.) However, my mother doesn’t have a problem with it.

Stairs: You may just have to wait. My dog had lots of issues until she was big enough. One thing you can try: treat it like a ski slope, and guide her back and forth across the stairs, so she’s slaloming down instead of plunging straight down. That’s how my dog started. And stay close to her (only a step or two below), so she doesn’t feel the need to race down after you.

Frodo is almost 14 weeks old, and we’ve had some of the same issues with him.

  1. stairs: he’s just now starting to go up single steps (not flights). But Frodo is teeny compared to Polaris. I’m not too worried about it, primarily because at the moment it’s handy that he can’t go up and down the steps. We had to teach Edith how to go up and down steps, and I’m pretty sure she was quite a bit older before she really got it.

If you really want to teach him, I’d just keep going with the treats thing. Do you have a short flight of stairs you can teach him on? Edith mastered the 4 steps to our backyard long before she tackled the long steep flight going from our first to our second floor. I just put treats on each step and encouraged her to go up and down.

  1. Agression: sounds like you’re doing the right thing. Just keep on it. Polaris will learn.

  2. We’re having the same problem with Frodo. Those little puppy teeth are SHARP! What seems to help the most is imitating the high pitched squeal that dogs do when they’re hurt. It doesn’t always work, but I’m pretty sure he’ll outgrow the biting thing. Edith did.

  3. Bathing: No advice. Haven’t had the need to do more than wipe him down with babywipes yet.

  4. Edith and Frodo are best buddies, and I have the same problems you do when trying to train him. If Edith is in the room, she won’t leave us alone and distracts Frodo. If I try to put her in another room, she knows something’s going on and whines and barks, once again distracting Frodo. I haven’t found a solution to this yet, other than “training” them both at the same time - which worked for teaching Frodo how to sit. Edith just got a gazillion treats for sitting, which she already knew how to do, but I figure the reinforcement can’t hurt.

Good luck! And Polaris sure is a cute lil’ fuzzball!

I’m starting to worry she won’t get much bigger, honestly. :smiley: Her paws “fit” her size-- not like my adult dog, who, as a pup, tripped constantly over her giant feet. Polaris is about six pounds now. She was 1.6 when we got her. My husband has jokingly asked me if my mother sells bovine growth hormone in the animal store in which she works.

BlueKangaroo, plush toys are just about the only toys my adult dog will play with, and, yes, she eventually “kills” them. Luckily I have a grandmother handy with a needle who can do complex repairs when my stitch-up jobs will no longer do. We repair them until they disintigrate under determined attack.

She gets such incredible joy from destroying the toys that I cannot forbid her. My mother gets a 50% discount on dog toys, so they’re cheap and they make her so happy, I figure it’s worth the money.

Polaris found the older dog’s toybox and took some of the older toys she no longer plays with as her own. Add to this that seeing her curled up around a plush steak-shaped toy, using it as a pillow, is so incredibly cute that I cannot stop it, and you can see why plush toys will be a part of my pets’ lives.

**Athena, ** perhaps I bathe her too much. Since she’s been with us, she’s had four baths. One was a puppy-rolled-in-something-yucky bath, but the other three were hygiene baths. I only bathe my older dog when she starts to smell, and with Polaris, stinkiness seems to be much more frequent. Older dog gets about one bath every two months.

Other than screaming in apparent agony, it doesn’t seem to bother her. Her skin is in excellent condition, and she doesn’t seem to itch.

Oooh, I just thought of another question:

  1. Watery eyes: It’s not as bad as when I first got her, but she often has wet patches under her eyes. The vet vaguely said that she was too yong to need medication for it-- which indicates to me it’s a potential problem, or did I misunderstand his intention?

Do NOT use some sort of harmful spray. If it’s harmful for the eyes, you should NOT be using it at ALL.

There is a serious problem with puppies nowadays and that is trying to eliminate NORMAL BEHAVIORS. It may tick you off, but using chemicals is NOT the way to go. If we did that to every baby who ever chewed on something he/she shouldn’t have, we’d get arrested.

Puppies are troublemakers. It’s normal. Very few puppies don’t cause trouble. But please DON’T turn to punishments like that. If you admonish him that severely for chewing on bad things, he won’t want to chew on ANYTHING anymore because he’ll be afraid. My advice is to try to keep him away from things you don’t want him to chew on (ie if you have clothes in your closet, keep it closed), and to admonish him VERBALLY. Don’t hit him, don’t spray him with a chemical. Tell him NO, firmly. He should eventually get the idea and it won’t discourage chewing on toys. If that doesn’t work, and I really do suggest you keep at it, a bottle full of WATER is okay. I do not do this with my dog, but the only harm in using a spray bottle full of water is that it irritates the animal. Use something with a mist, not one powerful squirt, and make sure you do it right after the unwanted behavior. Do try “NO” first, though. Dogs hate rejection/disapproval.

As for the rest… I don’t know what kind of dog you have, but I recommend you look up forums for that specific breed. The people there will have experience with the same kind of dog you do and will likely have similar problems (my dog’s breed, for example, has a tendency to nip at the heels).

But before you try to ‘correct’ any behavior, DO SOME RESEARCH! A lot of NORMAL puppy behaviors are being very harshly “corrected” because people see them as being rebellious or defiant. They are young, they are a different species, and much of it is normal. Please, please identify what IS or ISN’T a common behavior before you resort to anything else. Never, EVER use something that if applied to ANY part of the dog would hurt it. If it could harm its eyes, it’s not something good to have in its system. I have known many many dog owners over the years and I’ve never know a single dog who the only way to train was to do something like that. Dogs have a remarkable ability to learn and all you need is patience and experimentation, never chemicals.

I don’t know what type of dog she is, either. Neither does the vet. It’s anyone’s guess. We don’t even know yet how big she’ll get.

Tonight she was almost manic in her behavior. I played fetch with her for a while, and then sat with her on the couch, dangling her rope toy. She growled constantly and fought with it for at least twenty minutes. She bit me at one point and growled when I pulled her away with a little shake. I put her in her playpen, and she bashed up against the sides, at times making high-pitched distress calls, almost like she was in pain. I ignored her until she fell asleep.

It’s been nine years since I raised a puppy, and I wonder if this is normal behavior. As I recall, my older dog was a very mild-mannered puppy with little to no agressive tendancies. I don’t remember her ever growling at me.

About the stairs…Don’t start him at the top. Pick him up and carry him to the middle of the flight, then continue downstairs. Use cheese as bait, but since he’s so little you might want to use cheeze inna kan.

This trick worked wonders when I relocated my Florida dog to Minnesota - she had never seen stairs before.

fluffyemu, you are correct that a lot of behaviours are overcorrected. You are also correct that a great deal of this is normal puppy behaviour.

The chemical I recommended is breath spray. It makes nasty breath “minty fresh”. As far as I can tell, that’s what makes the dog back off. “Minty fresh” is not a smell that a dog normally associates with itself.

I said be careful because I don’t know what it would do if it got into the eyes of the puppy. I assume it can’t be helpful for the eyes, but I don’t think it is going to harm the puppy either. That’s why it was recommended to us. It was recommended to us by our trainers as another tool in our toolbox. I wasn’t kidding when I said this was the mouthiest puppy we’ve had in the 15 years we’ve had dogs.

I understand and respect that this is something you or Lissa may not want to do. The truth is that the best thing would be to get this puppy into puppy kindergarten with a knowledgeble trainer. One who sees the pup weekly (at least) and can work with Lissa and family. Until then, she’s looking for methods. Maybe she’s a woman who is willing to bite back when her puppy bites her. I think that method is odd, and I don’t know how well it works.

If the puppy was 5 weeks when they got him, then he missed out on some of the doggie socalization she needed. One of those things is bite inhibition. He may not have been bitten back by his littermates enough to know that it hurts. This can be dealt with, but it will require effort on Lissa’s part. What she seems to be looking for here is help. She’ll reject or accept what is offered, and I suspect she can call the trainers she plans to use and ask what sounds appropriate. Since she can’t bring the puppy in yet, I imagine they’ll be willing to give some advice on the phone.

Lissa, 50% off on dog toys? And someone who can repair them? Okay, in that case, I’d probably give plush toys too. A Kong filled with peanut butter is one of my favorites.

As for stairs, we haven’t had them for about 12 years, so the puppies have only had to deal with three or four in a place. chique’s advice sounds great, but this may also be a place to call your trainers and ask.

The agression and biting are both pretty much related dominance issues. Your dog should never think that biting you is an option. Even when you’re prying a dead bug out of her mouth. (Growling at the toys is OK though. Even “growling” at you during a game of tug or something. As long as she knows to knock it off when you say.) And the gnawing on the clothes is pretty normal for a pup, but again she needs to know when to knock it off. Mommy dogs let the pups chew all over them. But when she says “enough” she means “enough”.

The first step is to correct her in terms she understands. The dominance roll is pretty unmistakable. But there’s a few other things you can do. One is simply to grab her muzzle. Not a big squeeze at all (you really don’t want any pressure), just to restrain her face. Mommy Dog does this to her puppies when they bug her, so it’s hardwired into their little brains.

The next step up is grabbing her face again, only this time, give it a little shake. Not like you’re trying to get the last ketchup out of the bottle, but just to wiggle her head. If her shoulders move, it’s too hard. Just a quick little shake of her face when you get right in there and growl at her “No bite!” (Or “No teeth!” Just not simply “No!” She’s learning a lot of stuff and gets “no” a lot. Specifying the “no” helps the learning curve.)

Stage III is Super Secret. I don’t like to just post Stage III corrections because it upsets some people. I learned it from my vet and it works like crazy. If you want to know, e-mail me and I’ll tell you.

The next step is the dominace roll. The H Bomb of dogdom.

Also, ignoring the pup if she’s being troublesome helps. Even negative attention is attention, so the pup thinks she’s coming out ahead. No attention is sucky for the pup, so usually they shape up so you’ll play again.

The bath thing- she could just not want a bath. Make sure the water isn’t too hot or too cold, but some dogs just don’t want one, so they don’t co-operate. Screaming and carrying on like you’re killing them will sometimes get them out of the torture. Don’t ever give in. And don’t tell a puppy having a hissy fit “Oh, you’re OK” because they’ll think you’re saying throwing a hissy fit is OK, and it’ll just get worse.

You’re in charge. You’re the dominant pack member. What you say goes. (But you should also stack the deck in your favor and only say what you know you can pull off.)
And the good news? You get your pup all trained up and then they hit about nine months and think they’re ready to be a grown-up dog and take over the pack and they “forget” everything they know and you get to start over. Yay!

I tried this last night, and it seemed to work-- well, until the next time, that is. :smiley: I applied gentle pressure, and she gave a little whine. I released her immediately, and she licked my hands as if to say, “Sorry.” I put a toy in her mouth and told her what a good puppy she was for chewing on it. About ten minutes later, we had to repeat the procedure, but that was the last time that night.

This morning and afternoon, she was a little angel. Sweet, well behaved and calm. I was amazed. I cuddled and cooed at her, constantly petting her to let her know what a good baby she was. Then, about ten o’clock tonight, she started getting naughty-- rough and aggressive. I corrected her a few times for it, and then finally just put her to bed. (She’s yowling in her bed crate as I type.)

BlueKangaroo, my grandma used to use a spray-bottle filled with plain water on her dog when he misbehaved. He hated it so much that after a while, all she had to do was show him the bottle, and he instantly stopped whatever he was doing.

I might try this with Polaris and see what happens. The problem is that unless I hit her IMMEDIATELY with the spray, she won’t associate the unpleasantness with her behavior, since dogs have such a poor grasp of cause-and-effect. I’d have to carry the bottle in my hand constantly, and I’m a bit too scatterbrained for that.

That’s exactly true. When I use water bottles, they’re on just about every horizontal surface in the house. And I try to hook one into my pocket.

That’s what’s nice about the binaca spray. It fits in the pocket. Again, if you’re not comfortable with this method, then please don’t use it. It was an effort we hadn’t made before. It’s possible that your pup only needs a water spray. I like the binaca because it fits in the pocket. It won’t work if you’re across the room from the pup, but that’s what substitution is for.

If she’s chewing a plant or a couch or something, the solution we always use is to make baby talk like “Oh, you don’t want thaaaat. You want thiiiiss.” We quickly remove the offending object while putting the bone/kong/other toy in the puppy’s mouth. It means you’re constantly near the dog, but let’s face it, when it’s a puppy you should be with it any time it’s not crated.

Oh, and don’t forget that puppies need naps, much like babies. They don’t want them anymore than a five year old child does, but they need them.