My male gsd puppy 4 months old has started chasing his tail and barking at it. He gets plenty of exercise as well as some ob (food based) training. Recently he started chasing his tail and barking. I just figured it was unexpressed prey drive so I would just tell him no and play with him with the ball on the string.
Unfortunatly he seems to like his tail more than the ball on the string. I was not that worried about it until I searched some old post and saw that it was a sign your dog might be nuts with a possible ocd problem.
So my question is should I use the e-collar to dicourage this behavior or is that to much for the pup at this age. I want to nip this behavior in the bud but I do not want to make matters worse.
I don't know how to stop it, but I have heard that tail-chasing can be a compulsive disorder from boredom or anxiety. Seen a few dogs with some nasty spinning habits at the humane societies. A Mal in our sch.club used to spin in his crate so bad that he would wear his pads on his feet completely raw and bloody. They said he picked up the problem when he was a bomb dog in Iraq and never got out of his crate to work.
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I would be suprised if he is bored. We have two children who he plays with constantly when they are not in school. we also have a female bullmastiff 6 months old which we let him play with when we are there to supervise.
I walk him at least 30-45 minutes a night and he comes with me to the office at night (there he has a date with a couple of pigs ears). I have started focusing more on the ball work hoping that would express any pent up prey drive, but this is my first time to have a dog do this so I am flying blind.
My dog chases her tail ahem........I mean stub. She'll be 4 in August and the story I got from the breeder is that when she was around 8 months she injured it and it had to be bandaged, she would chew the bandages off and not let it heal so the only other option was to cut it off. She still chases it now but it doesn't pose a real problem to me. Occasionally it'll bleed but she she doesn't really chase it that often. The breeder told me that if I wanted her to stop put an e-collar on her on the highest level and everytime she starts spinning shock her. It may take a week or a couple of months but it'll work. Like I said it doesn't really pose a problem to me so I could care less.
I had a dog that was a spinner. It was anxiety/stress. I don't believe the ecollar would help, but rather add anxiety. I never tried it. He was pretty much ok when we brought him into the house to live. If he started spinning we tried to remove the trigger. He would typically do it when bored in the kennel, if other dogs were playing (not with him), while other dogs did protection, etc. Try to figure out what is triggering it, and I think trying to remove the anxiety causing situation is maybe a better option. This is a tough thing to try to resolve.
I have no clue what is setting him off. He is constantly wagging his tail and then he catches it out of the corner of his eye then it is circle time. Right now I guess I will just try to distract him with a ball or stuffed toy (which he seems to like best)when he starts the spin.
Frank Amato Webboard User Reg: 12-04-2001
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I tried to correct this behavior once with a female GSD that had the same problem. It actually got to a point where it started to effect my sanity. It didn't even come close to helping the problem. I even tried once to turn up the level to try to make her believe that she caused the pain when she bit down on her tail.
The problem was two fold. First you can't watch her 24-7 and if you miss one correction you have proved to him/her that sometimes it's OK to chase his tail. The second is, like my dog, she just didn't even care about the stimulation, she wanted her tail. I never did figure out a way to resolve the problem.
My Malinois did exactly what you are describing as a puppy. She would see her tail and start chasing it.
I gently stopped the behaviour with physical intervention (just used my hands to hold her), gave her a negative verbal (ah-ah), and redirected her behaviour to a toy. I didn't just give her a toy but rather got down on the floor and played with her.
At 2.5 years she will still sometimes catch sight of her tail and try to chase it but a simple "ah-ah, where's your toy?" from me stops the behaviour in it's tracks and she will go find a toy (usually her kong from her crate) and bring it to me to play with her.
Update:
The tail chasing is stoped for now (two days). I used the physical/verbal intervention mentioned in the above post when I was in close proximity. When he was outside I used the e-collar at its 2nd lowest setting--just enough to distract him (you have to watch him like a hawk). I also sprayed bitter apple on his tail. So far so good.
Thanks for everyones advice!
Anyway it is still very early in the game we will see if he reverts back to his tail chasing ways.
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