Most Popular Q&As

Hi Cindy, Thank you for all the great training advice you have given me in the past. I have another issue regarding my 2 year old female GSD. I raised her since she was 8 weeks old and followed Leerburg's protocol on making sure she is crated when not attended to. Thanks to this great and simple advice, she has never destroyed anything in the house. Now at 2 years old I would like to start leaving her out of the crate overnight and possibly while I am at work. What I have done up to thi...

Hello Cindy, I am getting ready to take possession of my new working female GSD (8 weeks old) today. I want to use this dog for serious personal protection work and was wondering what your opinion was on spaying her. I know with males it is said that it is better to wait if you are going to neuter them but what about females? I don't want to do anything that will hurt her drive. At what age, if at all, do you recommend getting a female spayed that will be doing personal protection wo...

I just want to say, like everyone else who logs in on your web site, how informative your site is. Just received your catalog the other day and I'm interested in purchasing a training video but don't exactly know which one I should order. I have a 14 month old male neutered boxer that has gone through basic obedience classes with a passing grade. He has no problem with the "sit," "down," "stay," "leave it" commands but needs a little work on his "come" command. A couple of b...

Hi, I have been reading your articles on training for about five months. I purchased a german shepherd puppy at the age of seven weeks old, he is now seven months old and just does not listen. He loves to be outside, but when he comes in the house he jumps on furniture, bites the kids, and basically just doesn't listen. I have taken him to puppy school and we are on level one obedience right now. I just don't know what to do with him. I don't want to leave him outside all the time I want ...

Dear Mr. Frawley, I have purchased and watched both of your tapes (Puppies and Obedience Training) several times. I am having great success with training our 6 mo. old Lab (Jake) all because of your help. I am a great fan of yours. I have one issue with which I really need help. Jake jumps up on the counter and looks for food. Though we are careful not to have anything within his reach, this is very annoying, especially since I am having so much success with training him in every other ...

I have an 8mo GSD - really a calm, well behaved dog, except for one bizarre problem. Every time I reach for the garage door opener in my home (or open the garage door otherwise) he runs as fast as he can to the door and attacks it. It is a detached garage. When this behavior first began, he would run to the door, and go into the garage without harming the door. And then he would attack the lawn mower - it is electric - and it had never run in his presence. I managed to demon...

I searched your site and couldn't find anything close to my situation. My 4 year old Irish Setter has automobile anxiety. She pants, whines, whimpers, drools and is generally anxious and overly excited in the car. She loves to go on car rides and gets very excited when she knows we are driving and even leaps in the car at the first chance. The problem is that she is nearly unmanageable when on board. I have tried letting her roam, as well as hooking her up on a short lead to the c...

Hello, I read some of the posts on your site about bloat and torsion. We had a black lab not a GS, however what I am reading sounds like our guy had torsion. What pains me is that we may have had some "signs" early on in his life that, had we known maybe he would still be here. He was a big lab, when healthy about 85 lbs, but always slender. You could always see at least one rib on Rouge, sometimes two but feed him like crazy. What seemed "fat" to us on Rouge was probably normal girth o...

I just picked up my GSD pup 8 days ago. He is a magnificent dog, very intelligent. After just two day he was asking for the door to relieve himself and was asking when he was hungry. A friend of ours let us use your video, 'Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months'. It is great. But none the less we have a big problem with the pup. He does not tolerate the crate. He keeps crying and barking all the time. I mean all the time; he does not get tired of it? We follow your training to the "T." It does n...

I have read many articles on how to crate train a puppy properly. However, one thing always escapes me. How do you know when it is time to stop? How do you know when to trust him? Should he be put in his crate for bed even when he is an adult? Thank you, Robert

Hi Ed, I purchased your video Training DRIVE, FOCUS, & GRIP with Bernard Flinks and my question is that my dog loves his ball on the string which I also use to play fetch with him. Normally he brings it back and drops the the ball. Should I be using this toy to do the training? Would I not be able to play with him with this toy not until the training is over? Thanks for your time.

I have a situation with a neighbor and a Rottweiler. They got the dog when it was about 8 weeks old, and from the very beginning, it has shown aggression towards first other dogs, and then people. At approximately 2 months old, this puppy would growl and show it's teeth and lunge at other dogs, even dogs that were quite large. This happened EVERY time the dog came in contact with another dog or person. The owner didn't seem to see a problem with this. Next, the puppy started...

I am in the beginning phases of using remote collar. I purchased your dvd months ago and have been studying it and I am in the conditional phase with my 3 year old bitch. I have an issue and I am not sure how to deal with it. I have gotten my GSD to accept our cats as part of her pack to the point where they coexist with no issues, other then my GSD's food bowl. So fine, not willing of taking the chance of one of the cats getting bit I feed her in her cage. The problem is wh...

I have a 2 year old Rottie. He is being trained to be my service dog for PTSD. He has been going with me to work and everywhere since he was 6 months. He has been in professional training since 3 months old, first in basic, then advance, has his CGC and is ready to start the disability training. I could take him anywhere. He would just lay down, and people didn't even know he was there. He has started to bark at people in my office, especially when they rise to leave. I used to take him to re...

Our high drive border collie is scared of noisy things that are new like trashcans, shopping carts, skateboards, etc. She has always been a little jumpy/noise sensitive and highly reactive even for the breed (we are experienced past border collie owners). I am able to get her comfortable with objects by playing frisbee around these objects working them into games (jump over the trashcan, get the frisbee from my hand while i am skateboarding), but then a new object later will trigger her ag...

I’m facing a problem with my male indoor dog. I also have two outdoor dogs—one male and one female. The outdoor male is actually his son, and there has been competition between them, which is why I separated them. Lately, my indoor dog has started marking inside the house, but only when I’m not home. When I return and try to correct him, he doesn’t seem to understand or respond to the correction. I suspect this might be related to the competition between him and his son, but I’m ...

When I walk my five and half month old female GSD along with my smaller dog, an eight year old Cavaton the GSD grabs his leash constantly. If two of us are walking and I walk her 10 yards away she pulls like crazy. Is this something that I can fix besides walking them separately? I have yet to give the GSD a leash correction and she has been doing well on solo walks even when passing other dogs. Thank you

Hi Cindy, Hope your well. I have a 5 year old intact male sporting dog (Pointer). We got him when he was around 12 weeks old. Since day one he light chased. The breeder use a laser light for the puppies to chase to tire them out. Anytime there is a light reflection he will sit and stare at it, wagging his tail and whining. If the light reflection moves, he chases it and repeats the behavior. We have tried increasing his mental and physical exercise, but this actually makes him really sna...

Hi Cindy, I have a 13 week old GSD and she’s been great, but the other day our neighbor’s dog started barking at her and she freaked out because she couldn’t see it (we were walking back into our garage). Then another day the dog came out of the garage and barked at her and my dog barked back (hair standing up, full on bark). Then she barked at another dog on our walk when they weren’t doing anything. I told her leave it and tried to re engage her, but it was hard to get her t...

Good evening We have a 10yr old Golden retriever that we've had since 3months old, and our problem is with resource guarding. We can feed her food by hand and she'll wait between portions. But if she finds food first–either in home or outside–she will lunge and bite at us if we attempt to remove it or her. She has bit multiple people over the years, and mostly associated with food. She's a Jekyll and Hyde character: Completely sweet Golden when food isn't present, and defiant and aggr...