My puppy is almost 11 months old. At night (anytime after 10:00pm) he turns into a grumpy old man and growls at us. How do I correct this problem????

Ed,

Let me start off by saying that I have purchased a large number of your videos (11 total) and products- and I think they are all great. We have tried to train our puppy following the training steps you teach in your videos.

Frankly, we have a problem that may even blow YOUR mind- and I know that with your extensive experience in the dog training field you have likely heard of every type of dog behavior problem by now.

My puppy is almost 11 months old. He is a neutered Presa Canario and currently weighs 128 pounds.

During the daytime he listens to commands from both my wife and I. He listens to everything I say and promptly abides the commands I give him. And during the daytime he listens to my wife, but he is slower to react when she gives him a command.

Our problem may seem strange to you. Our dog is a "different" dog at night. What I mean by that is during the day he is a happy/great dog. He loves to play and interact with the family. And he is friendly with people we introduce to him inside our home.

However, at night (anytime after 10:00pm) he turns into a grumpy old man.

This is not a new problem, even when he was 4 months old if he was lying on the floor at night and I told him to go into his crate he would get up slowly and go into his crate. At times after getting up he would give a little growl as he walked into his crate. If I addressed him with a "correction" the situation would only get worse- he would growl even more.

So a few times after he growled I pinned him to the floor on his back in the hope of forcing him to submit, but he would STILL continue to growl. One time I held him down for 42 minutes, and he still would not give up and submit. I didn't hit him, I just held him down. As I held him down he would continue to growl.

The problem wasn't that he disliked going into his crate, because he actually likes his crate, instead he just did not want us bothering him at all anytime after 10:00pm. The "growling" problem isn't isolated to him going into his crate at night. Instead he would growl whenever we bothered him for ANY reason after 10:00pm. Strange.

However, if I told him to go into his crate (or do anything else) during the daytime he would immediately do so without growling. Strange how he would react differently between night and day.

Most nights he generally sleeps at the foot of our bed on his Leerburg rug.

Last night I went to pet him on his Leerburg rug around 11:00pm. As I went to pet him on the top of his head he gave out a low growl. I told him NO and he continued to growl. This went on for a few minutes, as I continued to tell him NO he continued to growl.

At that point I then decided I would try to pin him down, as he didn't have a leash or electric collar on him- we also use the electric collar for training. When I went to grab him he went to bite me. He snapped at my hand. He didn't get to bite me as I pulled back my hand. When I pulled back he continued to growl. However, one minute later he came over to me and "submitted" and lied at my feet.

I don't know what to make of this situation, and I don't know what to do. I don't want to have to lock him in his crate every night, as we bought him to be a guard dog, so we would like him to be out of his crate at night.

We have a newborn baby, our son was born 2 weeks ago, so obviously we want to correct this problem immediately. We have read your articles on babies and dogs, so we don't let him anywhere near the baby.

I would hate to have to get rid of the dog- we love him.

How do I correct this problem????

Thank you for your assistance!<

-Brian