I rescued a dog last year. He has lots of issues with not listening and also being alone in the crate. He was abused in his last home. How can I get this to work out?

Question

Hi Ed;

I am from southern Alberta Canada. Weather is a major factor in winter for walking and training dogs here...And I am an outdoor person! I wanted your opinion on this particular dog I rescued last year.

    Zing, is shep/dobi and very intelligent. He learns fast,and hopefully this year he will be trained for tracking, as he seems to have the qualifications for it. I am a firm believer in Ceaser's (Dog Whisperer) and your type of training, and have been for many years. My issue with this dog is, his high energy level, and his lack of respect for me. I have worked closely with this dog for almost one year now. To explain a little, he was left by the neighbors on a long leash all day and began to howl. I always went over to him, made sure he had water, and food, and attention. He went with the previous owner running after the quad, only once. The 13 year old boy would abuse him somewhat, and he was allowed in the house to sleep by the previous owners bed. He also has the run of our house, only certain rooms.

    Now, since I rescued him, he has had a separation problem, we leave him indoors in his crate, and he will howl and cry, when we leave. He is never left for long. I have tried every trick in the books, literally, and advice from your web, to get this dog trained.... He scratches, constantly, this has been going on since we got him. We thought at the time, he had sarcoptic mange and maybe allergies. A lot of money and time was spent relieving the scratching problem, from changing food to almost everything the vet and ourselves could think of. He is better now, no patches of hair missing, but STILL scratching. Maybe now it could be somewhat of a habit?

    The real question here is, why he is so intelligent and yet doesn't listen for a long period of time.

    For example, he is outside, comes inside, and is told numerous times, (sometimes up to 23 times) to stay at the door. He sneaks in anyhow. He is corrected time and time again, and still gets corrected.

    This is just a sample of his listening. He respects my husband, and listens better to him, but again the door and staying there is an issue. Could this be a test or a fear of not seeing one of us, and scared we will leave? Or a game for him?

    I was thinking he would be a candidate for the invisible fence (he also leaves the premises a lot, and goes snooping) and a prong collar for better control.

    We also have 5 grandchildren, and he has a bad habit of jumping. This is also a pain, and we have corrected him, and eventually put him in the crate. The kids range from baby to toddler, to 6 years old. I have walked him, played him out running, and he still is difficult to work with.

    Last year in October, he was out running in our yard (acreage) playing with our older shep, and he wasn't looking, hit me and I flew up in the air, I crashed on the gravel on my left side, damaged my shoulder. Now I may need surgery.

    I have never in 25 years had a dog like this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I am determined I took him on ,and he is a challenge, to work this out!

    Thanks so much,
Linda

Accepted Answer

You make a common mistake by talking about the past of this dog. If you are indeed a fan of Cesar's then you know he always says, "Dogs live in the moment."

The time you spend feeling sorry for your dog because of his past only keeps you from being an authority figure to him.

Please read this article about becoming an effective pack leader.

The first sentence in this article says it all: "You can feed water and love your dog and he will like you, but he very well may not respect you." 99% of all behavioral problems are a result of dogs not respecting their owners.

This happens as a result of poor handling and/or poor training.

This article was written for people like yourself, people who have great intentions but not enough knowledge of pack structure. There are links within the article that will take you to other articles on my web site.

At the end of the article I tell people that I wish I had time to train them through emails but I don't.

I would recommend the 4 hour DVD on Basic Dog Obedience.

You will probably find that you have not had the full picture on the training steps for training your dog. A dog must go through training steps before it can be considered fully trained.

When you read the description of the DVD on the web site you will find out why we are not fans of taking an untrained dog to obedience classes. No professional dog trainer would ever take his dog to an obedience class with 15 or 20 untrained dogs and try and train it there. Dogs cannot learn when faced with this kind of distraction.

If you read the testimonials on the DVD you will see that our customers feel the same way.

I also recommend that you read the recently written article titled THE THEORY OF CORRECTIONS IN DOG TRAINING.

While obedience training is not the solution to all behavioral issue it most definitely is part of the solution for every single behavioral problem.

Go to the web site and read articles I have written, buy some of the training videos. We have been doing them since 1980. Go to the web discussion board and read the archives of the board. There is a great deal of information here and I make sure it is valid information. This board has almost 6,000 registered dog members like yourself. Use the search engine on the web site (it's on the tool bar on the left side).

I hope this helps.