I am a police officer. My 1-1/2 year old GSD, Niko, is sired from my agency's K9. He doesn't have the hardcore prey drive and seems to have more play drive. He loves to jump towards my hands. He also jumps on people, except me, because I have cured him of that. Everytime I reach for his collar he tries to lick (and rarely nip) at my hand. He will not go for any treat or toy in my hand unless I give him the command.

Basically, I am trying to train Niko to stop doing these things along with other things, ie. walk beside me on leashed walk instead in front, not to fetch until command given, ect. When I have the prong collar on he does great. When I take the collar off, he seems to know it and acts like he didn't learn a thing. Any ideas on how to correct this? FYI, Niko is not a working dog.

What about an electric collar? Could that help?

I have considered the elec collar, however, if he knows when his prong collar is off I don't think it will be too difficult for him to realize when the electric collar is off after training. Unless, you are suppose to leave them on all the time.

 Quote: tory adams

I have considered the elec collar, however, if he knows when his prong collar is off I don't think it will be too difficult for him to realize when the electric collar is off after training. Unless, you are suppose to leave them on all the time.

I started to type about collar conditioning, but then I realized that it had been covered so well here in the past that my contribution would be superfluous.

So number one, if you are thinking of an e-collar, is to get this video:
http://www.leerburg.com/318.htm
Partial quote: This DVD explains in detail how to condition your dog to a collar so that the act of putting it on does not become a trigger for the dog to think "OK the collar is on so NOW I MUST MIND" - we want our dogs to follow our voice command all the time and not just when it has a collar on. Proper conditioning goes a long way towards accomplishing this. END QUOTE

And meanwhile, to read some excellent threads here about collar-wise, collar-shy, and collar-conditioning, you could start with "search." Use "all forums," type in "collar-wise" for the keyword search term, and expand the date range to two years (or whatever; two years gave me quite a bit). (Expand the date range, or you are limiting the returns to one week's worth.)

After you see those returns, you could branch out with different search terms.

Just some ideas.