Hi there,

I have two dogs, a 2 or 3-year-old spayed female Catahoula Leopard Dog/Lab mix about 55 lbs and a 10 month old Catahoula purebred neutered male. I've had my female since Jan. and the male for about 4 weeks now.

I have a big backyard that is mostly fenced in. My dogs are not trained but they are generally well-behaved.

For the record my dogs are not allowed on furniture or in my room, and neither has ever growled at or challenged me. My male is crated when unsupervised and he is hand-fed to help prevent any food possessiveness issues.

My dogs are let into the yard to exercise and they are always supervised during this time. They have ropes about 15 feet long attached to their collars because the male will climb the fence and also because of the misbehaviour which I will describe.

My dogs have both exhibited fearful behaviour (both are rescues) and my female hackles a lot. I am not sure if it means fear or aggression. Anyway I am stating this because it might be important.

My property backs onto a public park. Whenever my dogs see someone walking close to my fence, or if the neighbors walk into their own yards, my dogs go berserk. My female usually starts it, but I can call her off easier and she is more responsive (probably because I owned her longer?) and my male will bark longer and (sounds) more aggressively. Also, the fence on my one neighbor's side is not finished, so when the neighbors come out, they go nuts; my female will stop at the property line but my male will actually run right up to them and bark in their faces. He is an intimidating dog and I really want to stop this behaviour. It has been going on for about 6-8 weeks and I'm at my wits end. Their behaviour is 3 times worse when there is another dog.

Yes I do try to get their ropes, but they usually see the person before I do and by the time I catch up to them they're usually already into it and the person on the other side of the fence is startled/upset. Incidentally, I have severe rope burn (duh!) that I got today from my male running over to the neighbor's teenage son in their own yard- he pulled away from me.

I have read the website carefully and I believe I need to use an Avoidance Correction. I do not have money for an electic collar but i have a prong collar. Will this be adequate, and how should I go about extinguishing the behaviour? Should I say "no" just before I give a correction? I have never needed to do this before. My goal is to get them to just play together and IGNORE anything outside the fence; will this be possible?

Also- My dogs are a high energy breed and they need hard exercise. How is it possible to give them lots of exercise while keeping them well-behaved?

Sorry it's so long and thanks for the help.

1) Get the neighbors to split the cost of fixing that fence on their side of the yard with you (see if they'll put up ALL the money if you do all the WORK)...

2) Get rid of those ROPES & use 30-foot longlines made of cotton webbing AND prong collars instead (they're much kinder to your SKIN)...

3) Train your dogs to obey some basic obedience commands such as No, Sit, Stay, Leave It & Come, so their misbehavior won't expose you to being sued (or your pets to being killed)...

4) Take your dogs out for 2-3 good brisk walks daily with them wearing K9 backpacks so they can carry some age-appropriate weight that will help burn off their excess energy <:-)

About the rope burn, I have found weight-lifting gloves
very effective with a long line. Also, watch the line around your legs especially in the Summer (wearing shorts and sandals). I've gotten rope burns on my legs too.

Hi all, thanks for the great replies!

Candi; some good points. I agree with training the dogs and I have the Basic OB DVD, but I guess my question was what to do UNTIL my dogs know some commands. Right now they both respond to their names; the female is learning her commands "sit" and "down" and with the pup, we worked on housetraining, jumping up, and "riding in the car is not a death sentence". He doesn't know any commands yet, and neither are at the correction stage; so I need to know how to handle them until then.


Mike: I agree with everything you said and as for sounding cold, I would rather have my dogs under control and I want to mean business with these two. I love the idea of tossing something over the property line and saying NO! (I think I will say STOP instead.)

I see some mistakes I've been making. 1. My dogs were dragging their ropes and I wasn't holding on to them, because I wanted them to run. The reason I was using ropes is that the nylon 16' leashes I had get stuck on EVERYTHING, which meant they were getting "corrected" all the time; and they chewed through the long leash if they were stuck and I didnt get there quick enough. The rope just slips around plants without getting stuck. 2. I should be taking them out separately. 3. More training for my male pup! (yeah, I knew that one already)

I do have a question though Mike. If you have used the prong with a long line, how did you prevent the dog (or human) from accidentally stepping on the line and administering an accidental correction? My greatest fear with using the prong collar is using it wrong and ruining the dog.

Thanks very much, I will go out and buy some more leashes (I get 16' ones at the dollar store; the dogs chew them so it's cheaper that way).

Please do not be shy about pointing out my handler errors! I want well behaved dogs and I'm willing to do what it takes to get there (as long as it isnt cruel, of course).

you have hounds. they need a LOT of exercise. the suggestion to take them on long hikes with full dog packs is, jmho, crucial. wear them out! give them something to do. just letting them loose in the yard is NOT exercise. it's not surprising they would go bonkers at any kind of stimulus.

if you don't have the ability to go on long hikes yourself, get a dogwalker. if you can't do either, you really should choose a less active breed. keep them leashed in public until they are trained. period. do not let them run, even with a long line on. hounds tend to pay more attention to their noses than to you, so off-leash, or even a dragging leash, is a bad idea.

it wouldn't hurt to spend a week with each dog where the only time they are out of their crate they are tethered to your waist, so that they cannot make any decisions for themselves. they cannot so much as leave the room unless you take them there. this forces the dog to let you make the decisions about what it is doing and where it is going.

they have to look to you for everything.

hounds, as a general rule, are not easy to train for obedience. again, speaking generally, they tend to not be people-focused dogs, as working breeds are.

here is a relatively painless way to get them steady with regular obedience commands: use their meal times as training time. they do not get their food until they have performed a command, or some series of commands. hold the bowl up in the air, and before you put it down, they have to sit, down, heel, stay, wait, etc. etc. i taught my dog the entire competitive obedience drill just using his food bowl. his down/stay is immovable! he'll stay there forever.

you have to train outside of mealtimes, too, of course. get started with ed's basic obedience dvd, give them lots of hard exercise under control, practice NILIF (they have to earn everything they want), and control their mobility at all times until they are reliable.

good luck with them.

Your advice is bang-on !!! I typed a very long reply saying similar things, but got "timed-out" so it wouldn't post <:-(

Mr. Arnold,

I was talking about using gloves on a short term basis
to avoid rope burns. Since the post indicated that was a
problem in this case.