Most Popular Q&As

I have a 5 yr old Old English Sheepdog. We purchased this pup from a private breeder who I now feel, gave little regard to temperament. From the very beginning, he has been a "nervous" dog. When Barnaby was 6 months old I took him to a local basic obedience class. During a session of 'meet your neighbor,' where the dogs were allowed to sniff each other, he lunged and pinned the other dog to the floor. I soon realized that all dogs were considered the "enemy" to him and avoided cont...

Hi, My name is Lena. I have been reading your site about dog aggression. I have a 1 year old large munsterlander, who shows way too many signs of aggression. When he was six months, he nipped our friends young son. He was alright, but it greatly concerned us. Ever since then, we have been trying to destroy those signs of aggression, but it has been difficult. He is a baby to everyone in our family. He has never shown aggression to any of us. We can steal his food, mess around with ...

Dear Mr.Frawley, I'm very sorry to disturb you because I know you are a busy man. I have your basic obedience DVD but now I have other problems with my dog. First of all I would like to thank you for the great job you are doing helping us with our problem and also for your time in reading this. My dog doesn't like to be in his cage, we have to pull him in the cage but I don't like doing this because it looks like cruelty to animals. What can I do about this? We let the dog out at n...

I need help teaching my wirehair pointer not to eat "food" encountered on his runs. He runs free on the ocean beaches. He is a beautiful dog with excellent manners thanks to your help and suggestions. The beach abounds with crustaceans, dungeness crab parts, partially eaten razor clams. He slyly mouths something, I yell "no" and he walks up to me chewing on the item and I extract the remains from his mouth. His vet thinks a recent bout of diarrhea was due to his appetizer consump...

Hi Ed, My name is Brian, and I have a situation that I would like to have some feedback with a professional dog trainer. I will try to explain this the best I can, and keep it as short as possible. I have a 15 week old DDR GSD. He has many good qualities. calm, good nerve, not fearful of anything or anyone, but his prey drive seems to be lacking somewhat, for example, today I was working on bite training, he done good for a couple minutes...some nice bites...then lost his interest. He woul...

Hi Cindy, I have three dogs and my nine month old French Bulldog is marking on all the dog beds. She’s doing great with potty training and their beds is the only place she pees so I know she’s trying to be Alpha. She does other things to prove she’s Alpha like cutting the other dogs off at the water bowl and snapping at them when they walk by. She also doesn’t understand polite play, she ignores the other dogs cues when they don’t want to play anymore. I intervene when I see it hap...

I just watched the spay and neuter video with Karen Becker. It answers some questions and raises more. After losing my rescue GSD, adopted at 7 months, spayed, to severe knee problems at age three, my new companion Rott/Shep cross spayed (another rescue) female is on DES for incontinence at age 2. But my son's Yorkie/Bishon rescue male (neutered by 3 months) and my previous Border Collie female (spayed at 6 months by me) both suffer(ed) from serious allergies--complete with hair loss an...

I will keep this short and sweet as I am sure you are like me and do not have time for many words. I have a varied background in training from police K9 hanlder to sport to SAR, etc. I am however still learning a lot as a breeder. I am a past customer of yours several times and consider you a very experienced breeder. There are few in this nation with the GSD world that have bred as many litters as you have. So I am coming to you for some advice. Situation: I have an IPO1 and breed surveye...

Hi Cindy, I have a 14 month intact female Rottweiler. She was crate trained, and was relatively neutral in terms of her love of the crate. Suddenly in the last 2 weeks she is obsessed with the crate. There is no food or treat in the crate, and with the bedding removed her behavior is identical. She will spend more than half of the day inside the crate with the door open. She often runs back into it when she is out, with intensity. When she is taken outside her energy is great. Her appetit...

Hi Cindy, I watched the video with you and Rush and really liked the idea of exercising him with the bike. I have a GSD that weighs 98 pounds, is very fit and has high prey drive. In your experience, do you think this will be a major concern if I were to try this form of exercise? Have any of your dogs lunged and pulled the bike over when they saw a rabbit, fox, deer, etc.? My dog has done intermediate level obedience, knows "attention heeling" and is generally good on leash but the ani...

Hi Cindy, I want to thank you, Ed and Michael for all the valuable services you provide to dog owners everywhere. I used the information and advice you have on your website plus the discussion boards to obedience train my dog. Nothing special, just a well behaved dog at home and in the park. Today something very sad and terrible happened. I did something very stupid that both me and my dog will regret for the rest of our days together. I want to share it with you and ask a question. I am h...

I need help. I recently lost my German Shepherd to cancer, she was only 5 years old. We also have a 3 year old Malamute that is very depressed because of it. Everyone we know told us to get another dog for our Malamute so we did, but she has become very aggressive towards the puppy and I am afraid she is going to hurt her. How can I help my older dog get over the loss of her best friend and accept the new puppy.

I just read your piece on the Internet about showing the dog lovers out there all the various methods of training their dogs to refuse food. I am a person who lives next door to a couple of first class ass-holes who have a large dog that barks and barks and barks and barks. It barks at everything and it barks at nothing. It barks all day long and all night long, and these two idiots tell me that there is nothing they can do about it. I can't afford hiring lawyers and suing p...

I am writing from the north woods of Minnesota where there are less than 5000 residents in a county that is more than 90% public lands. There is not a lot of activity here for Search & Rescue, but when there is, it is naturally traumatic. We have found that when dogs could be of use that it is many hours before a trained and certified professional can arrive. The closest certified unit is 5 hours away. So for over a year now I have been training my Chesapeake for SAR work. We started with air...

I got Patton from a breeder when she was 11 weeks old and she was delightful - friendly to all. She went to stores with me and played at the dog park. She would go to manhattan and stay with my daughter and son in law and I would visit and she was the same - went into restaurants, stores, etc. When she turned 8 months old and was spayed, the world changed. She became very aggressive to all strangers - and she despises children. (She is fine with dogs off the leash still.) We have a very g...

Our male 10 months old GSD was standing up on our couch barking loud and hard out the window at a white plastic bag which was floating around in the wind. I tried to stop him and pull him down from the couch put he turned on me as if fighting with another dog and just touched me a few times with his teeth but did not bite hard but it was a bit of frenzied attack, he would not come down on command. So I tried to pull him down, and this was a bit of a shock to me because, I thought I had establ...

I have a German Shepherd (not from you), he is 14 weeks old. After 9 weeks both of his ears stood up, not straight up, they actually leaned towards the middle quite a bit. However, a few days ago his left ear just went down and has not gone back up. Does this mean that he has a broke or lame ear now? This has me really worried since both ears were up, but now one won't stand. Is this normal, or did he hurt it some way? Will it ever go back up or not? Thanks for your help, and answers. ...

Thank you Ed and Cindy for all the information on the Leerburg website. I just purchased 3 DVDs - puppy, basic obedience, and pack structure and am anxiously awaiting their arrival. I have a 4 month GSD hard puppy. He has strong prey drive and is learning quickly with markers and food (at home, no to low distractions). At weekly obedience school (outdoor, at least 50 other dogs around, super high distraction), he is very unruly. I've used a standard choke chain, a snug prong...

Hi Ed, I have purchased your dominant dog collar, e-collar, and dominant dog videos and was wanting to know what would be the best e-collar for my great dane of one year. He has a bad habit of lunging at other dogs on our walk. I have fixed the problem mostly by spraying him with compressed air if he doesn't obey the 'leave it' command', but I think an e-collar might be a better solution with other uses also. I have attached some pictures of him and my other dog over ...

Cindy, We have a 4 month old German Shepherd puppy. Over the last 3-4 weeks she has been chasing her tail and barking. We purchased her at 10 weeks old and for the first couple of weeks she didn't demonstrate this behavior. We crate her when we leave the house and during the night, but she is out of the crate and on leash when we are home. We try to exercise her by walking her 2-3 miles per day, but that doesn't always happen. We have been correcting her by voice commands "NO" and ...