I'm having with problems with basic commands still and issues such as jumping up and grabbing the leash. Any advice?

Dear Ed,

I have your puppy video and your Basic obedience training videos. They have been very helpful - since before these I was pretty clueless on how to train my dog on anything. Crate training was a breeze with your advice we only had one accident, which was my misreading his whining - he had diarrhea - which I didn't expect and I mistook it for wanting attention and he had an accident in his crate. But that is it. He goes into his crate on command and now the only time he ever makes a sound is when there is company over - but that is getting less each time. His crate is just too big to move around, so I have decided to put up with the noise during family gatherings until he gets over it - since the whole family has pets - it is no big deal, they understand he is in-training and I finally have all the family trained not to acknowledge him in anyway when he does bark or whine.

I am looking at buying a new prong collar for my dog (puppy) - he is only about 9 mos old, but he is large and strong - they believe he is part boxer and part mastiff. He seems to grow by the minute. I realize that it may be a young age to have him in a training collar, but correcting him with a regular collar did NOTHING and he is so strong that my daughter couldn't stop him and if he caught me by surprise he could pull me right off my feet and did pull me off the porch step once, when I forgot that our cock-a-poo was outside and he spotted her and took off to play. He is also a very HARD dog, I have never given a correction harsh enough to cow him. He also is extremely motivated - treats work fine with him, during training - but I am trying to also get him to mind when I don't have a treat on me - that is a bit slower in coming. I have been working hard to train him, but he really only fully minds me when the prong collar is on. Which wouldn't be a problem if it was easy to get on him, but it is a battle. I think the biggest problem is that I didn't have him trained enough on being handled in a sit stay before I had to resort to the prong due to his extreme pulling (to the point he was hard to stop). The prong solves the pulling problem, but it is WORK to get it on him and a couple of times my finger has came close to getting seriously injured, if he turns just right my finger gets torqued in the link while I am trying to get it fastened. The one I have is very hard to squeeze the prongs in order to get them in the other link. Once it is on, he is a different dog and I really don't have to issue much correction, if he pulls, he corrects himself and stops immediately - I link it to both rings as the first attempt with only the dead ring wasn't working with him. He is not aggressive, meaning he does not ever act like he is going to harm me, he is just really strong and willful. I also, know that he is learning, he managed to get away from me once and my daughter once and both times when I called him to come, he did. However, we live on a 55mph road - so I really worked hard on teaching this command from the beginning so that if he ever did get loose, he would be safe. We are moving in a month or so, then I will live on a gravel road on 26 acres so that I can actually feel safe working with him outside off-leash. I will not do that here as we live on 7 unfenced acres and the highway (cars, etc) are visible and can be heard from anywhere in the yard and it is too risky. So all potty trips, training, exercise, play etc is all done on leash for his safety and my piece of mind.

I looked at your quick release collar, but I don't think I get how it works, it looks like the clip would not open up the part that goes around his neck - so does it just make it larger so it can slip over his head or am I missing how it actually works. I haven't tried slipping anything over his head - so I am not sure how that would work out either. I also noticed your notes on the dominant dog collar - so I guess I should have one of those also, is this a collar that would be taken on and off also, each time he is on a leash or is a collar that can be on him in his crate too. I have to keep a collar on him at all times, so that when I take him out of his crate I have something to grab hold of, until I have him on a leash - as I have also not yet gotten him to listen to me 100% when other people are around. If it is just him and I home, I can let him out of the crate and he won't take off to the living room to see everyone else, because no one is there, so I don't have to worry about him knocking things over or running amuck - but my household (especially in the summer) is rarely just him and he definitely has a puppy mentality when it comes to other people - so I don't yet trust him off leash with anyone but myself and my daughter who took classes with me.

Also, I am two other problems which I haven't figured out how to correct.

1. Immediately when I put him on a leash - which I do every time he is out of his kennel - for bathroom, exercise or training - he grabs the leash and carries it in his mouth. The only way I can get him to stop is by distraction - getting him interested in something else, but that is only a temporary fix. The reason this is such a problem is because he will grab at it and if he scraps your leg or arm in the attempt - oh well. The bigger his mouth gets the more frequently I get caught (scratched) by his teeth. I know not to pull it from him, as this is just a tug of war game for him and does nothing to solve the problem, but I have not found an answer. When he was younger and I took my daughter to puppy classes with him, the trainer there thought he would grow out of it as he got use to being on a leash - I have had him since late March and he has not grown out of it and it is a problem now. I personally think it is a dominance issue - I think he does it to show me that HE is walking himself or at least that it is a 50/50 effort and I am not fully in charge. From time to time it does create a correction problem, but I have solved that by just grabbing the leash between his collar and where he is holding it so that I can issue a correction for not sitting etc. It is mainly a concern because he is pretty aggressive when he is trying to get hold of it and because I think it is a dominant trait that I have not trained out of him.

2. He gets in jumping up moods from time to time and I have tried pushing him back down and scolding him - to no avail, I have tried ignoring him until he stops, and I have tried giving him a correction (which is more difficult because the act of him jumping makes it hard to get all the slack out) but nothing has really stopped him from doing it, it just subsides it for that moment until the next time. Is this just something that takes time? I have even done the thing where I put him around the tree and stand at a perimeter - but again while it works at that moment - it doesn't the next time his is in the mood and does it on the leash. I don't really know what makes him do it - it is not something that happens every time we are out and it only started about 2-3 months ago - he didn't do it when he was smaller, which would have probably been easier to correct.

I haven't yet attempted to train him on everything in your videos yet - I am still working on the basics, until I can get him to sit, stay, down, walk with me without pulling or jumping, come, and wait (which is actually good about) 100% of the time, I have not tried to enter anything new, like place, heel, or being off-leash in the house. But if there are other videos you feel I need at this point to handle the above concerns, please let me know or at what point I should be looking at another video to continue his training. I just feel that I first have to get him to obey me on these simpler things fully and under any circumstance before we go much further - but if I am wrong on that please do advise. I am really in uncharted waters here - this is the first time I have attempted to fully train a dog like this - our cock-a-poo was trained over time on an as needed basis, because she was laid back and small and other than kennel training and come, not much else was a priority. Yogi is a different matter all together. I have to get him trained so that I feel comfortable with him off-leash and when my children are working with him. Plus the children wanted a dog that would make them feel safe - since we will be living in a more remote area. They want him to be able to go outside and just be out with them or free in the house so that he could protect them if needed. I really don't want him guard dog trained, just his normal protection of family instinct will be fine, once I can get him trained to be a behaved part of the family so he doesn't have to be in a crate or on a leash all the time.

Thanks for your time and assistance.

Bennette