Hi y'all.

Siris, my GSD, will be 4 mths old on Wednesday (the first). I started teaching him "sitz" when he came home at 7 wks (good grief, has it been that long?)--all motivationally of course. He's very good--does it around 85% of the time. I have a bunch of Ed's DVDs, inluding both puppy DVDs and the Basic Obediance one, but I'm still wondering if it would be a good idea to start introducing corrections--just for the sit--or if I should wait another couple months. He knows it well enough that if he was older, I wouldn't even ask, but since he's a puppy and I plan on doing Schutzhund with him...

Thanks.

Regarding obedience put CGC's on my 3 Mals before I even started any kind of bite work. I taught using all motivational stuff. They don't even know what a collar correction is. 2 of the 3 are progressing quite well with the bite work...the 3rd one's coming along slower.... her issues are due to her crappy upbringing ( I rescued her at about 1 year old ), not her ob work.

 Quote:

Regarding obedience put CGC's

I guess the edit function isn't working? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

It should read, '*I* put CGC's'.....

The Edit function works fine - for the Moderator's. It's not designed for a self-edit, sorry.

Will Rambeau
Moderator

Well, four months is still pretty young to do corrections for things like sit, down, etc. I'm pretty much in the same boat with a 4 1/2 month GSD and I try to avoid any physical correction unless he's really doing something horrible or dangerous. I pretty much work with my voice, that is, I have my mean voice and mean words. So far its worked pretty good, if he's barking at a family member for instance, I'll softly tap him on the shoulder to get his attention and say "Shhh" like my old 8th grade english teacher use to do to me. As for basic commands I just use alot of treats.

I have asked similiar questions to this thread elsewhere on this site and got no response, so I'll try here. At what age do you start with the corrections then?

We have a 12 week german shothair. I have read and re-read Ed's article on hard puppies and have tried not to label her as such since he feels too many people mistakenly do so. BUT. There's always a but. This dog is crazy. If you read the article "How to raise a hard puppy", this fully describes our pup. Every little detail. She has prey drive like nothing I've ever seen. I've compared her to several other puppies of friends and those dogs may chase a toy for a few minutes and it's over, but ours will do this for 2 hours at a time! This is awesome since she will obviously be my hunting partner. Anyway, the only thing we correct for is biting people, furniture, or house plants. The thing is the more she is corrected (neck shake) the more fun she seems to have. To put this in perspective, I am 6'2" and weigh 325 lbs, so I am very cautious when I handle her not to hurt her, but when she gets real "bad" and I giver her a level 8 or 9 (or what I think a level 8 or 9 is) she stops for 1 or 2 seconds and goes right back to whatever she did. Sometimes she actually seems to consider it part of play.

So again at what age do we start with "real" corrections or dare I ask a puppy prong collar?

I apologize for rambling but we are starting to get a little concerned and with all the professionals on this website, we hope to get some guidance.

Thanks in advance.

Tony

" she stops for 1 or 2 seconds and goes right back to whatever she did"
Give an example of what she is doing that you feel a correction is needed... then we can all elaborate - give several examples if you have some.

Because if it is strictly a "chewing on things" correction, you need to be patient, as she is teething until approx. 6 months, and you'll need to substitute whatever she is not supposed to be chewing on, with something she can chew on = they love frozen chicken broth cubes, frozen carrots, frozen green beans - feels good on their teeth/gums. Or if she likes raw knuckle bones... that will usually keep them preoccupied for awhile.