Behavior Problems Q&As

We have a 110lb. Doberman. He is a 2 y.o. At night after everyone goes to sleep he goes through the house and tears up everything. We put out dozens of toys and rawhide chews to keep him busy but to no avail. During the day he has a half acre fenced yard to run in and when I am out working on the farm he has run of all of our acres. We tried the nylon fabric collars that Petco and all of the stores sell but he pulls them off within minutes and destroys them. This time I hooked the clasp aroun...

Hello and thank you! I have a little 7 year old Bichonfrise and 4.5 months ago I brought home a Bull Terrior pup. The Bichon is very reserved and does not like to play with other dogs rather be left alone. The Terrior is a happy energetic pup but has come into the home and dominated the Bichon male. The Terrior intimidates the Bichon with food by trying to eat both their food, cuts in front of human attention and generally annoys the Bichon, sometimes playfully biting him. Maybe it is caus...

Hello, I have a five month old GSD that I got at eight weeks. On walks, if she is not pulling, is allowing her to walk in front going to be a problem in establishing pack structure? I find that once our walk gets headed back she likes to be in front and can be quite polite about it. The walk stops if she pulls. Thank you.

Hi Cindy, I recently boarded my dog at a kennel, and when I picked him up three weeks later, his voice had changed. He would normally greet me with happy, excited barks and roo roo roos. But instead, he greeted me with happy, excited squeaks. The kennel owner told me that he had squeaked that way for her and her husband since the first day. He continues to have a deep bark for strangers, but his happy bark is now a squeak. He also used to be very chatty, especially when he wanted attention...

I have a 13 year old lab called Flossy who is deaf and suffers from separation anxiety at night. She paces the floor and scratches at my bedroom door until I can't stand it any longer and I let her in. I have adopted a 2 year old lab/cockerspanial as companion to Flossy hopeing that this would fix the problem, but unfortunately it hasn't. Please can you help as I am getting very little sleep and it is effecting my health.

I am sending you this email from outside of my house. I'm so upset I can't go in right now. I have a 1 year old dog that is house trained and a week ago a friend moved in my brand new home with her dog. Her dog is not house trained and it seems the owner has no desire to train her dog. I am trying the crate training now but her dog and my dog cry all day and night wanting to get to each other. I am afraid my dog is going to start "marking" his territory again before I get her's house trained....

Hello, long time no hear (which is good but things have changed so I am back). 6 year old dog aggressive and separation/claustrophobic rescued Akita. Charm to humans. We purchased the aluminium crate about 5 years ago for when we boarded her she would bust of of their crates. It works great as you know. We have an indoor/outdoor kennel at home which until recently she respected. Bad lighting storm surged our house blew out electronics. She has not been happy in her kennel ever since but i...

We have been using the Tri-Tronics G3 Bark Limiter on our 1 year old female German Shepherd with great success. Last night, the collar appears to have malfunctioned, zapping her repeatedly at a 4 setting until we could get the collar off. It has been set at 1, and she was sitting calmly and quietly when it started. She is now extremely skittish and requires constant reassurance from us. Where do we go from here? I have contacted Tritronics about the issue, but I don't think I will be comforta...

I have a cocker poo that we love dearly (weights 28 lbs) that eats paper and clothes. We have tried everything-behavior training, lemon juice, etc. If you leave something down for a second he is off and running. I use a walker so it is difficult to get to him. He is also bad when he goes with his dog walker trying to grab paper in the street etc. I even had a nutritional study done but he was fine. I am terrified that he will get ill. Recently a friend left her denim jacket on the couch for a...

Hello, 6 year old dog aggressive and separation/claustrophobic rescued Akita. Charm to humans. We purchased the aluminium crate about 5 years ago for when we boarded her she would bust out of their crates. It works great as you know. We have an indoor/outdoor kennel at home which until recently she respected. Bad lighting storm surged our house, blew out electronics. She has not been happy in her kennel ever since, but it was well constructed. 2 weeks after the storm, we moved to a new st...

Dear Mr. Frawley, I am a newer, but loyal customer. I just got the new Ellis DVD on working without a decoy and I thinks it's the best one you guys have put out yet. I have a 10 1/2 month old Dutch Shepherd and I have done a poor job socializing him. I have focused too much on protection training. He has tons of drive to work, but I need to really improve his socialization... can you please give me some guidance on how to, and what not to do. I greatly appreciate your time and advice.

I just purchased Establishing Pack Structure with the Family Pet DVD and I don't understand what 'full crate submission' means. My dogs are going in & coming out submissively, however they still have moments when they cry/bark, especially at night. Jane

Hi Cindy, I have a 4 1/2 year old GSD that I got as a 2 1/2 year old. She absolutely goes nuts over the vacuum cleaner. thought she was afraid of it until I read on the site that her behavior is likely due to prey drive. That makes sense because she has a very strong prey drive as evidenced in play and her interest in chasing squirrels (which she doesn't get to do because she isn't off leash anyplace we might encounter them). Do you have any suggestions on how to train her to know the vacu...

I purchased our dog from Lynx you in 2005 and I'm wondering if you can help me solve a problem I started to have with him. My girlfriend adopted a lab from the animal shelter and they get along great, but when the lab urinates Lynx has to run over smell and eventually lick the lab's urine until Lynx begins to slobber and salivate severely. How do I correct this behavior, and what is the cause of the behavior? Thanks.

Hi Mr. Frawley, I checked the training articles and discussion boards. Forgive me if the answer is there somewhere. My dog seems to care less where or what he steps on. He carelessly steps on my feet when walking near, running by, or even coming up to and sitting in front of me. It is not all the time but frequent enough that I want to stop this because I just do not like it. I have trouble thinking of a way to accurately correct this when the incident occurs- he steps on and off of my foo...

We have a part german shepred part wolf dog. She has started chasing cars or runs right toward them like she is going to hit them and then stops inches from them. She acts like she enjoys doing this. We have tried getting after her, that does not work. Any ideas how to handle this? We have had dogs all our life and never had this happen. Thank You for your time and help. Janell

Ed and Cindy, Having just read your Dumb & Dumber Q&As I can see that you are not particularly tolerant of stupid questions, but I hope you will treat this seriously since it was a very upsetting event. I have a 5 year old Amer. Staffordshire Terrier (almost 80 pounds) that is very loving and gentle and we were spending a weekend at my daughter's in-laws cabin where several families and their dogs were present. In addition to my dog there were two Maltese and a Black Lab. All of them ge...

Cindy, My GSD is now 1 year old and we had a very serious incident occur last week. She developed a severe case of bloody diarrhea and vomiting which resulted in a day long clinic visit and subsequent hospital treatment for two days. During this ordeal, she lost 10 lbs (from 68 to 58) and the Vet claims she came very close to death. Had we not sent her to the clinic and received treatment immediately to address the problems, she may not have survived. Our GSD has started eating again ...

Good afternoon Cindy, Will you tell me if I can use the Bark Limiter while my dog has a prong collar on? My dog barks and pulls in reaction to dogs on the opposite sides of the fence, as well as dogs/critters that he sees in the distance. The prong collar and dominant dog collar are good together when he is in regular walking mode, but seem to have no affect when he goes into high drive. I was thinking that if we can have the immediate correction when he barks of the Bark Limiter, then ...

Hi, I have bought a number of products from you recently and was very happy with my e collar, etc. Now I need an advice on another issue- whining. My 8 months Doberman female has long whining sessions, that sometimes are difficult to ignore. We try to ignore her everytime when she is whining, but sometimes it is really hard especially when you are trying to work or talk on the phone, etc. She finds it hard to be left alone behind closed doors, I heard it is one of Dobermans' features, but ...