My girlfriend’s 4 month old dog digs in plants and jumps on people. She is getting ready to get rid of the dog, what can she do?

Question

Hello, I have been looking at your site and have a question. My girlfriend bought a German Shepherd Puppy and it is now around four months old. We are having a problem with him destroying potted plants. We try and discipline him but he does it again. We think it is out of spite, and we would like to know a way to correct this. I read one of your articles and you said that if a puppy tries to stand over a child when he is lying down that we should be very careful with the puppy. There is one other problem, the puppy jumps up on everyone, I do what I've been told to do you push him off and correct him.

But it does not seem to work. One day her seven-year-old boy was playing outside and kneeled down on the ground well the puppy jumped on him and in the process of her boy getting up the puppy's teeth cut the boy's ear. Sad to say this has happened twice the same way and ear in the same spot does this mean anything. I need to know because the whole family is very upset with the puppy and are ready to call it quits. Should they or should they not give the puppy more time. I would really appreciate your advice. Thank you.

Accepted Answer

These people need to learn how to train a dog:

Get a dog crate and put it in the house - use it. The dog cannot dig in plants if it is in the crate. It will not dig in plants if you are watching it.
I explain in my video Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months how to condition a dog to bitter apple. Do that and spray it on the plants. It will solve the problem.
It takes me about 10 minutes to stop a puppy from jumping. Pinch his toes when it jumps. Pinch until it screams and use the command OFF, not DOWN (if you use DOWN you will have problems training the down later). You can also use a squirt bottle or squirt gun (have a bunch of them laying around the house within easy reaching distance). If the kids play with them, they get told one time that these are not toys. When the dog jumps, squirt it right in their face. After the dog has been squirted a few times, it will not jump when it sees the bottle in your hand so you will have to hide it behind you and try and entice it to jump up. When it does, squirt it again. Explain this to friends and have them do it when they come too. My personal feeling is that pinching the toes is far more effective and quicker.

It sounds like this is a nice puppy with handler problems - handlers that do not know how to train a dog. Get a couple of DVDs, a prong collar, a dog crate, and learn what you have to do to make this animal a part of the family. Here are the DVDs: I would recommend the video I have produced titled Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months. I give this video to all of my puppy customers and never get questions on how to raise a pup. If you would like to learn something about the principles of obedience training a dog, read the description for Basic Dog Obedience. You will probably find that you have not had the full picture on the steps of training a dog must go through before it can be considered fully trained. You can also read why I am not a fan of taking an untrained dog to obedience classes.