i have brought our 4 month old pup everywhere i could think to socialize him. he could care less about other people. i will bring him to the park and play fetch with him and he wont even look at the person walking their dog ten feet away from him. his only focus is me and the toy...
I have had family and friends visit our house many times and always have our pup in his play pen to watch what is going on and he has never once barked at anyone...untill last week. but with people that visit frequently i let ace out and just advise them not to look, touch, or talk to ace. the only people he will naturally show submission too (ears back low tail wag followed by kisses) are the little children that come over and play with our daughter. He is VERY gentle with any one under 4ft but could care less and totally ignors everyone else after he sniffs them.

we had a problem with our cable so when the cable guy showed up and walked into the houes Ace went nuts and started barking at him and tried to get out of his pen. when the guy looked at ace my pup went crazy again trying to get out of the pen. the guy was supprized and quickly walked out the front door.
the whole eppisode only lasted for about 30secs..and from now on i'll have ace in my room when strangers come over. but i am wondering if this is normal. I will admit the guy who showed up at the house intimidated the crap out of me (6'2 200+lb guy) but i didn't show any emotion. have i created a monster by not allowing other people to touch my puppy while socializing? i say monster in the most loving way...he's my cookie monster and i love him to pieces. was he acting out of fear is my biggest concern.
he started to bark the instant the guy walked in the house, did his normal high pitch whine, barked more, a little growl thrown in for good measure, and desperatly tried to open the pen's door. i did look at him and tell him to hush and he did..but never took his eyes off the man the entire time he was there. and after he left ace kept an eye on the door for a few second till i let him out. in your all's oppinion was it excitment or fear or nervs or maybe telling the guy to get the heck out?

" he has never once barked at anyone...untill last week. "

" I will admit the guy who showed up at the house intimidated the crap out of me (6'2 200+lb guy) but i didn't show any emotion. "



I have one of these. He came to me extremely reactive and we worked through it; within a couple of years he was completely confident, curious, tolerant of other dogs (a big one), and ready to look to me for the appropriate reaction to a new event.

But he's afraid of big men in the house. I have two (separate) friends who are well over 6' and both are probably 250 pounds or more.

So .... we are working on that. He's well over 50% of the way to where I want him to be.

In this case where it's just one type (and otherwise the dog is fine), there's more than one way to "fix" it, depending on how much willing access you have to members of the type.

I have none except the two, so what I chose was to greet the one who stays longest (one is a client who just drops off papers and leaves) with much pleasure (calm pleasure), including pointing out to the dogs how great it was that Al was here and let's have some upbeat Ob with fabulous rewards while Al sits on the couch, not too close.

Now "Al is coming" makes the dogs drool, and when he arrives, Al gets one warning bark from the previous Mr. Reactive, which I suspect is mostly old habit dying slow. (Used to be bark-nonstop-so-hard-feet-leave-floor.)

I can think of several ways to work with this, but all in all, it's a very small part of things that bother me. It actually doesn't make the short list.

IMO, you did the right thing by being matter-of-fact and calm.

ty for the feed back..i'll work on it as much as i can with as many BIG guys i can find