Radar is 12 weeks Wednesday and is a wonderful little house dog. However, when he goes outside to potty he's looking for something to growl/bark/charge at. Walks are the same with pedestrians, bike riders, and moms with baby buggies. Children or adults, black or white, old or young, it doesn't matter. He's ready to go as soon as they show signs of coming near him/us. He's also attempted to give chase to a man on a bike, all while growling and barking. He's like this with other dogs, but toned down a bit. Larger dogs still freak him out (smart puppy), but dogs closer to his size tend to get him going.

The good thing is is that there are a lot of opportunities to nip this in the bud. I can park a lawn chair anywhere downtown or near the park and train for hours and not have a decrease in pedestrian traffic.

My training method is to use a clicker and mark behaviors I want and ignore behaviors I don't want/distract him from those 'aggressive' outbursts and encourage him to do something appropriate and reward him for that choice. He's also highly food motivated, will crawl out of his own skin for a treat, so it's really easy to distract him and get him to do the right thing. So far we're working on sit/stay/focus and ignoring the stimulus in favor of moving forward and getting a treat for heeling correctly.

The problem I'm running against is that he does great about 5 minutes into the walk/training session and it exhausts him for the rest of the day, but the next time it's right back to the outbursts and growling. Am I just getting it wrong? Is it something that's going to take time because he's not connecting the dots? Is this a sign of him turning into a 'sharp' dog?

Another problem is allowing strangers to approach him without the outbursts. If we go to into a store he doesn't act like I talked about above, but he's cautious of people cooing over him and trying to pet him. They always ask, and I always say 'Sure, try to scratch him under the chin, but he's shy so don't force it. It's okay if he sniffs you and that's it.' He'll also 'sneak' up to them to sniff at their feet and legs, and then casually walk away. He's not like this with people he knows (ie employees that are there every time we go).
I don't really care if he 'likes' people, but I want him to tolerate strangers handling him, and I want him to know what's appropriate behavior and what's not. I want to be there to teach him that it's not okay to mouth/bite a stranger, instead of putting him in a boarding or vet situation and him not knowing how to react to all these weird people touching him.
What should I be doing in this instance? I am giving them treats to kinda bribe him close so that he can at least smell them while eating. When he's done with the treat, he'll nose at their hands looking for more, but any movement toward him has him backing off again.

At any rate, he's super affectionate with people he knows well and trusts. He's constantly my little shadow, and despite his obnoxious behavior 70% of the time, I kinda like him.

12 weeks? He's about 3 in human years. Think of what a 3-year-old is like. Short attention span, short long-term memory. Repetition is the key!!

Yea, I just said about those same words this morning while he was whining in his crate, trying to make me feed him faster. It's not that I want to force him to accept and remember everything right now, I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. I also want to post my issues with him so that more experienced people can possibly tell me if it's a potential issue that may need to be seen by a behaviorist.

I haven't had a puppy in over 4 years. The last time I did, it was a litter and they were all adopted within a week of turning 8 weeks old. This is exactly the reason why I've always gone for adult dogs! I can understand them better!

 Quote: samanthatopper

Radar is 12 weeks Wednesday and is a wonderful little house dog. However, when he goes outside to potty he's looking for something to growl/bark/charge at.

My training method is to use a clicker and mark behaviors I want and ignore behaviors I don't want/distract him from those 'aggressive' outbursts and encourage him to do something appropriate and reward him for that choice.

I asked a very similar question when my pup was the same age. I would say keep at it with the marker training, it does take some time. My pup used to be the same way, constantly on alert for people to bark at. I started reinforcing heavily for walking nicely at my side. I trained inside with no distractions first, then I started asking for the behaviour outside.

I also received advice to make things very black and white for the dog. So, either give a command to walk nicely with you, or give a command for the dog to go sniff on her own.

My pup is 5 months old now, and is much much better. She will actually choose to look at me now when she sees a person, in anticipation of her incoming treats, lol. She does still get frazzled if there's too much going on in the environment, but she's definitely making progress.

 Quote: samanthatopper

Another problem is allowing strangers to approach him without the outbursts. If we go to into a store he doesn't act like I talked about above, but he's cautious of people cooing over him and trying to pet him.

I was doing this as well, but I found that you cannot trust people to listen to direction. Some people are good with letting the pup approach on their own, but too many will all of a sudden loom over the pup and reach over their heads, freaking them out.

I have started taking Ed's advice not to let strangers touch my pup, and I think it's helped her attitude toward people. Now we see people and she doesn't have to worry about interacting with them, we just have the attitude of, "Oh hey there's a person, whatever, we'll just stroll on by, no big deal."

It's funny because even with her leeriness toward strangers, she loves the staff at the vet's. She had to get stitches in her leg at around 12 weeks, but still gives everyone kisses when we go there, lol.

i too have a sharp puppy..he's around 5 months..and i have made a few BIG mistakes..but one thing i did was take my pup every week to home depot or lowes (they allow dogs there). Tell you what it is the HARdEST thing in the world to take an adorable puppy around a bunch of people and say "don't touch please". I have heard nasty replys like "then don't take him in public!" and "what's so special about your dog"...but i know the ends justifies the means. some people will totally respect your wishes and just comment how cute he/she is..and a lot of the employees will actually just stand there and allow your pup to sniff and focus on you vs the dog. I have to agree with Ed too.. when you stand inbetween of the strange person and the pup it will increase your pups respect of you as their leader. Because all good leaders protect their pack members at all cost. that coupled with yummy high value treats will make your pup willing and able to be in areas with lots of people in no time! keep up the great work!