I need some suggestions for adolescent (18 month old) GSD. Recently my dog acts as if she has forgotten that she must do what I say when I say it. It seems like I’m starting to repeat myself with her which I know is not good. I constantly have to tell her a command a second time while often physically putting her in place as a reaffirmation of what the command is. Should I make the pronged leash pops harsher and make sure I do it every single time she doesn’t listen? Would it be a bad thing if I kept her prong and leash on her all day (not nite time) for a couple days so I could ensure a correction when it was needed? Is this a common pain while having a teenage dog or is this all my fault? Comments? Suggestions?
On an ultimately more serious note, as she is becoming more unruly, she also seems to becoming aggressive towards strangers people, dogs, and children alike. Since the unruliness and aggression outbreak a couple months ago I’ve recommitted myself to being a training machine (in it’s moderation of course). I do a 10-20 minute session in the morning of commands she already knows. I do another in the afternoon and in the evening I train her with some new commands. All are short sessions ending on productive notes. I walk her during the day and take her for a quick sprint around the sub on my bike after dinner. I take her to the dog park every few days and I take her to a busy mall-type area on the opposite days for socialization. In the dog park she doesn’t pay to much attention to other dogs as her drive is so high all she wants to do is play fetch. If another dog tried to taker her ball she demonstrates aggression towards them. Also in the dog park she will let strangers, adults and children, play fetch and soccer ball with her. At the mall she will let strangers approach her up to about 10 feet then she lunges and barks (she does not snap). Twice she has let a stranger approach so she could sniff them. Once they tried to pet her, albeit inappropriately (on head and ears) she lunges and barks again. I know it was my fault for not catching them before the inappropriate touching, however this evening my neighbor came over and I let the dog smell her and told her not to pet. My dog sniffed and seemed okay and then just started lunging and barking without being touched or even seeing a motion that she thought would be a touch.
My biggest problem is on the leash during walks. My dog wants to lunge and bark at children and other dogs. Sometimes this aggression includes shaking her head from side to side. I’ve tried redirecting her on several occasions with good success. However I find it hard not to correct her when she lunges at a little kid just admiring the police doggie from a far. When I give her a hard correction she will yelp, jump and look at me as if to say, “what in the hell are you doing that to me for!!!” However it does not usually cause her to desist like passing does.
When my neighbor first walked across the street with her toddler today my dog wouldn’t stop barking aggressively. I gave her a harsh correction and she kept barking. I increased the harshness three times until she yelped, turned around, and started barking in a whiny way at me. Is that abuse at that point and should I fear her turning on me if she thinks my level of correction was too harsh? What is too harsh?
After this episode and the episode with sniffing my neighbor above she held her stay on line about 10 feet away and was relatively unbothered and behaved for the duration of my conversation with my neighbors. Not sure if that is progress.
I need some advice. With the aggression and unruliness I feel overwhelmed. I’m hoping this is a adolescent phase and if I stay consistent it will pass as she passes into adulthood. Because I am having these problems I’m not sure if I’m doing anything right at this point. Is this what is called a hard dog? Do you think she is fear or protective aggressive? Is it too late to re-socialize her with children without fearing a bite (on muzzle of course)? I want to get her in some titles or shutzhund but if she can’t act right around other dogs on leash what can I do? It seems as if it is getting better inch by inch but then she’ll do something like charge the back fence when the neighbor’s kid is playing to close. Is it too late to have a reliable dog? Other than these problems she is an excellent dog, although these are BIG problems.
Thank you for reading!

It seems that you missed your chance to socailizer her when she was a puppy?

Now you seem to be doing the right thing but she not getting it, which leads me to think that your timing in the correction is off.

Some kind of way you may have relayed to her that this is a proper reaction, and like you said now she confused by the correction, like you mentioned.

Or in a worse case scenario she could have bad nerves, I hate it when other people/trainers just come to that conclusion blindly without seeing the dog. I'd get her looked at by a Pro trainer, if he is able to get her to walk by kids and other dogs, with limited use of the leash. Then with the process of elimination, its about your timing and you. He can also tell you if she has good or bad nerves.

If she has bad nerves you can toss a title or schulzhund training out the window, and just settle for a erractic pet.

No it does not sound like she is a hard dog, there is a difference in a dedicated hard dog and a dog that has a problem with fear/socailizatin.

The dedicated dog will have good Ob, but you may have to pull him off the bite, or he will just show intensity in his work. But he will be able to stand at your side and greet anybody that you accept and they don't act strange. A hard dog will not react unless it preceives a threat, most don't see kids or approacbing neighbors as a threat. :rolleyes:

The most important thing is to muzzle the dog around people for their safety. I would say this includes at the dog park. If your dog reacts to other people at 10 feet away back away to 15 feet. When your dog is far enough away and tolerating the sight of strangers I would praise her. Begin slowly moving closer. Some people may disagree but I think if she's fearful and you correct the hell out of her, she will associate the correction with the people and think strange people cause pain. Either that or she will learn she's not supposed to bark and lunge. That sounds good until she bites somebody with no warning at all. My personal feeling is that there is no point in punishing fear. I disregarded that instinct and did correct my puppy for fear aggresson towards other dogs because a trainer told me to. I ended up with dog that was all but uncontrollable for awhile. Just my 2 cents worth.

just a thought ... but have you taken the dog for a complete physical at the vet? Sometimes spontaneous dog aggression and unrulyness can be caused by pain from an existing disease. My german shepherd went from sweet natured and loving to shying away from family, getting snappy at strangers and just being a completely different dog virtually over night. Turns out she had a uterine infection that not even vets picked up until it filled enough to start dribbling pus from her vulva (btw she's 13 now and healthy as a horse)
Not to scare you by the story but i'd get this dogs head read <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> check especially the ears, eyes and sinus cavities, and check if there has been any occurances of brain tumors in the family. Some bloodwork esp. on hormones may help too <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Apart from that maybe you just need to rethink your training methods. The dog could be at the stage where its reached a "mature" level and an overly aggressive training method and structured training is making it get its hackles up a bit too much. But I agree with the muzzle comment, at least till you can trust your dog to some degree

Ya’ll are awesome for responding with such great and timely comments. I did call and made a vet appointment today to discuss these behavior problems. Here check-up appointment was coming anyway. I also called the human society to make an appointment so I can get a behaviorist to take a look inside our problem.
I do have a muzzle and have been using it. It’s just that I read so much contradicting advice from many dog forums and articles including the use of muzzles on aggressive dogs. Some say it makes them more aggressive or fearful because they know they can’t defend themselves as adequately. However, I do use it because I don’t know how I would live with myself if a child (or person) was bitten and scarred for life.
I often get the same contradictory information from research that says while walking an aggressive dog you must not correct, tighten up on leash, or baby such behavior towards strange people and dogs so the dog will learn that the okay to walk by strangers and they are not out to do them harm. This is how I handled these situations until recently when I can’t let her learn that it’s right to lunge and bark especially at innocent children. This is when the hard corrections started coming in to play.
As far as physical ailments I’m going to tell my vet that she’s always trying to chew on her tail and she licks and chews her right front hock, if that’s what it’s called there. Maybe there’s something going on there. Also, I talked to a GSD person I know and who knows more of my personal info who said she maybe acting like she needs to make more of her own decisions since there’s a weird vibe going on in the house due to substantial physical problems I am having.
I also talked to her breeder who said that if she sees children playing in the street or the yard behind me from our backyard, she can become aggravated if she is not allowed to play with them.
Who knows? I’m just really frustrated. I’m doing everything and calling everyone I can think of. She was socialized early an often. We had a couple obedience classes and I have worked with her continually since I’ve had her. I didn’t have these problems 6 months ago. I was hoping it was just a teenage phase thing. I took her to the pet store and on a long walk this evening. She did well. Not perfect, but very good except for the store employee who caught her off guard walking up behind her. No lunging just barks. And we walked a different route today. I don’t want to get caught up with what appeared to be progress as you said and I had read that she might just be learning to quell her warning signs.
Is 17-18 months considered mature status for a GSD to the point where I did miss my window of opportunity to work out any socialization problems? And maybe I didn’t fully understand but should I keep correcting her for lunging and barking or should I stop until I get a behaviorist to check her out?
Thanks again all of you for the great advice. I don't want to believe she has bad nerves but if that's what I am told by the behaviorist once she is tested and she has no physical ailments I will have to recognize and deal with that.

Complete maturity for GSD should be hitting around now (usually considered fully sexually mature at 2 years old) If the dog is for a pet I'd definately correct her for lunging and barking at strangers, especially if they have not made any threatening gestures. I let my baby Mal have a little bark at strangers but she can only approach not threatening people at a walking pace/
Is she sensing something is wrong with you health wise (you mentioned "substantial physical problems I am having") and she could be protecting you from what she perceives as aggrevators to your condition. You mentioned she went off when the neighbour moved, she could have seen it as a threat towards you? She could be on "protect daddy mode", but at this stage does not have the complete mental maturity to deal with it and has completely frazzled herself ... just a theory ... I could be way off the mark but brains in overdrive today <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
good luck!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Drew all thats well and good, your physical and home problems but if you want to control of your dog you need to be able to tell the dog, when it can act aggressive. Unless, you don't see it coming and she does.

Some people said she might be going into a protective stage because she is getting older, but people and kids walking by should not be seen as a threat to her.

One solution IMO is - You might need to bring out the weiners and have a planned session were different adults/people treat her as they walk by. You can use kibbles/weiner/ or chicken strips the idea is to get her to think that people walking by is a good thing. This is done slowly and maybe from a distance with you on leash with her in a sit. As she stays calm the distance can be decrease to a treat and a pet.

Then build this up to kids walking by and standing behind a chain link fence. You are facing them and they are 5-7 yrds away behind the link fence.

You praise and treat her when she stays in the sit or down, with no reaction. If she breaks this just re-sit her, no drama/leash until she understands what you want out of her. If she growls tell her "No" and priase when she gets quite. Timing is less important because she has to break the sit/down to lunge. You want to do this before she gets up, don't treat while she is lunging, barking or starting to bark. I know that sounds like a given, but I had to throw that in as an extrem example of bad timing. Good luck. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I am treading light here so bare with me. I am no expert but I can offer what works for me. If your dog is lunging at people but especially children then no I do not think hard corrections are bad. When I correct for inapropriate behavior involving kids, I say nothing, because I do not want the dog to associate corrections with children I want it to understand the action is what caused the correction. I also work from the beggining on the LEAVE IT command. In essence I teach the dog to ignore everyone, and everything except me. I do that when people, dogs etc... are approaching, by getting the dogs attention giving the command leave it and then giving the dog a treat if it responds keeping it foucused on me and not the passers by. If I do not get a good response I correct and continue. The muzzle is a good idea and hopefully you are using a wire basket type. Are you tensing up when these things are starting to happen? Sometimes that can encourage this type of behavior. If you stay relaxed with a matter of fact attitude you will get a much better result. The dog can sense if you are tense and that could trigger these types of responses. I also teach the dog to go behind me and allow me to handle approaching people and or dogs. It must learn that you will controll the situation. I guess what I am saying is when out on your walks or when people could interact with your dog, before it even gets the chance to lunge or bark put it in sit tell the dog leave it and keep it there untill the distraction has passed, as was said already keep the muzzle on. If this is a fear response once the dog knows that you are controlling the situation and there is nothing to be fearful of it will relax. Anticipate the behavior before it happens and controll it accordingly. I would still take your dog in for a vet check it wouldnt hurt.

I totally agree with everything Ann said. Something I've done as far as long range training is to really work on a solid down stay. This takes time and patience with an aggressive dog in heavy distraction. But the end result is that eventually I can drop my dog on a down stay and go to meet the children, people, other dogs first as pack alpha. This takes time and you have to be really sure of the dog, but if you can get there it goes along way toward reinforcing the idea that you are alpha and you make the decisions about pack aggression. With my last Chow it was long struggle to even get him to down in the presence of other dogs/intruders and several years before I'd trust it without a muzzle but it made life much more possible in the long run.

Good Luck