My 13 week old German Shepherd has started barking at other dogs when we're outside. Should I use a prong collar?

Question

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 to engage with me and not focus on the dog. My neighbor has the attitude that their dog is just aggressive and won’t tell their dog no even though it barks at everyone. I don’t want this to make my dog become aggressive or reactive. Any advice? I get managing and walking away if I see the dog but what do I do when we end up randomly seeing the dog or they happen to start a walk when we are finishing ours and must pass them?

Should I use a prong or e collar not sure if my dog is too young for correction?

Accepted Answer

This is a very normal GSD behavior that we often see happening around 3-6 months old. The key right now is to avoid putting her in this situation,  you don't want her to continue rehearsing this. Puppies bark out of uncertainty and if you continue putting her in the position to be worried and then she barks and the problem goes "away" she's going to do this more and more. It's much harder to fix if she's had a lot of practice.

Do NOT give corrections for this, it will only make her more worried and anxious. She's a baby. Correcting puppies or even adult dogs for being scared only makes them worse. You want to build a relationship with her based on trust and predictable guidance, correcting a 13 week old puppy for normal developmental behavior will only create more worry. 

You can't really expect a young puppy to engage with you or follow a verbal cue once they are worried, they don't have enough training history at this age. 

It's not a popular bit of advice, but I recommend you stop taking her into environments you can't control. Walking around neighborhoods is fun for us but I don't walk my puppies and young dogs in this environment, too many things could happen to set my pup's confidence back. 

I take my puppies to walk in places that have no or easily avoided triggers, the technology park where we have our Leerburg warehouse is my favorite place to walk young or nervous dogs. It's not residential so we almost never see people walking dogs, there may be a random jogger or bike but I can see them a long way off and keep a lot of distance. That's very difficult to do in a neighborhood setting. 

Go to the section on redirection in your Raising your Puppy course, and work on this over and over until it becomes a reflex for your puppy. I realize this is also a neighbor problem and that's much harder to remedy than a dog training issue. 

We also have a course specifically on this issue, it's called Leash Reactivity and I've added a link below.