Quote: brett burton

What I noticed is that if I pat my dog on the side while tugging he growls and doubles his efforts to win the toy.

This sounds to me like a handler trust issue. My pup did this until he became conditioned to me touching him like that and until he figured out that I wasn't going to take the toy away from him. When he figured out that I was the best part of playing tug with the prey item, he stopped growling when I petted him while tugging. Keep petting him and bringing him into your arms. Rather than outing him, just continue to play tug. He'll soon realize that you will let him keep the toy and he'll trust you more when you touch him.

 Quote: brett burton

Has anyone else experienced this situation? Will he become handler aggressive?!?

You provoked your puppy into biting you by pushing him. Of course he's going to react to that. It is not aggression, it's reaction. I'll paste in a section from Sheila Booth's book that I think applies here:

 Quote: sheila booth, schutzhund obedience: training in drive, p.48-49

Some dogs show aggression toward the handler after a correction. Such dogs are usually dominant, with high fight drive. Channel that drive back into the desired behavior through the motivation used in foundation training.
When an initial correction incites aggression (growling or snapping), this behavior can be merely a reaction to the situation and not an intentional challenge to the handler. Correcting the aggressive reaction here is unnecessary.

To the dog, he may be reacting to the surprise, not necessarily challenging you. Avoid letting him push YOUR buttons.

Avoid going to war over behavior YOU caused. You only create another problem instead of solving this one.

Simply ignore any such unwanted behavior caused by a correction. Stay calm and show no emotion.

Even though you did not intend to correct your dog by pushing him away, a better way to handle it would be to tell him "OFF", and sort out how you're going to handle it if he doesn't comply. But physically pushing a puppy that is fighting to get a tug is just provoking the puppy to bite you. After all, that's exactly how he did it when he fought for prey items with his litter mates. Unless you teach him different, he has no reason to think anything has changed in his new pack.

Carlene, if you start a new topic you will get a response to your question...
Go to the forum list, click on the category you want, and then in click on 'new topic', in the upper left corner...

 Quote: robin hornstra

i am not an experienced handler

Robin, welcome to the board!


Just wanted to point out that it's best if we are not experienced handlers not to give advice as broad as this:

 Quote: robin hornstra

as a reward, just praise.
dogs dont need toys.
food is not reward.

Always better to preface inexperienced advice with a disclaimer, I think, and not to make it sound factual and sweeping. (I've done it, too, in areas where I should've kept my mouth shut. I think most of us have. Reading here can open a whole new world.)

You might like to read some of the Leerburg web site. This is a good intro to marker training: http://leerburg.com/markers.htm

 Quote: kurt smith

You provoked your puppy into biting you by pushing him. Of course he's going to react to that. It is not aggression, it's reaction. I'll paste in a section from Sheila Booth's book that I think applies here:

...

Even though you did not intend to correct your dog by pushing him away, a better way to handle it would be to tell him "OFF", and sort out how you're going to handle it if he doesn't comply. But physically pushing a puppy that is fighting to get a tug is just provoking the puppy to bite you. After all, that's exactly how he did it when he fought for prey items with his litter mates. Unless you teach him different, he has no reason to think anything has changed in his new pack.

Thank you for this advice! Thank you all for the replies! This has really helped me. I think I can say that this was due to a handler mistake on my part. I'm in the process of taking a few steps back, re-evaluating the type of dog I have, and adjusting my handling to more effectively reach the desired result while maintaining a good relationship with my pup.

o.k. still learning (and hopefully the rest of my life LOL)
I believe that the obedience video will help me and if my friend doesn't have it,
I'll order it. This pup is very smart or I'm just doing it right. He is to be my
house dog FIRST and then MAYBE a schutzhund dog. I have heard some wonderful trainers say that is not so easy. What do you think? I decided to take him for a walk last night when he got wound up (thanks Ed for the tips on the puppy video) and that did not seem to help much but I discovered he went directly to sleep when we came in and went in the crate. So for now, I am trying not to go there with him (:
carlene

I've had many dogs that frankly, were a pain in the butt in the home. That weren't trained beyond basic obedience.


My current little girl, who is training in Schutzhund, is by far the BEST housedog I've ever owned.