deghj

howdy. I agree with the training part. But it will go away to some degree after time. It's important to understand this with staffies, not in the hope that it will go away on its own, but rather to give you patience when it persists for another year or so despite training. Training will help, but until she's about 2 to some degree it will persist.

Oh, what a sweetheart! Yep, it's a matter of waiting. You can also train her to ignore when walking. It's a bit difficult to explain without a demo but when you see a person or dog coming you can stop, get her to sit and wait, reward her when she sits and then again when the person/dog has passed. Practice at home going past a family member. This should teach her to pay attention to you above others. Alternatively, yep, it's a matter of time and conditioning her to appropriate greetings for people (eg not jumping on them) I found crossed hands with your arms pointing towards her works well if you can picture that. otherwise you'll be waiting for a number of months

Howdy I know exactly what you mean. Staffies are highly pack orientated and prefer to sleep inside, preferably in your room. By keeping her in your room you've said to her that that is where she is supposed to guard your pack (family) from. When you shut her out she starts trying to get to you to protect you and be part of the family I didn't mind that. As a pretty competent guard dog I wanted my staffy to sleep in my room and he has a trampoline bed there for that purpose. However, when you let her on the bed at any time you're saying that she is equal in status to you within your family and can sleep there. It's the same as letting her on the couch. I suggest you persist with removing her at all times with a firm 'no'. It will take a while to get it through to her. Also try a warm dog jacket on her. She might be getting up because she's cold. Staffies have very thin fur and feel the cold almost as much as you do. You might be warm in your quilt but she could be feeling the temperature. Don't let her on the bed or couch at any time. Also make sure you and your family eat first and then feed her. This will also indicate her place in the family. If you keep letting her on the bed she'll do it forever. If you mind having her in your room it will probably be a matter of training her not to get in the bed and when that's down slowly moving her bed every few days 30cm or so closer to the door until her bed is just outside the room. Hope this helps

No problems for me. moved from another area. used to help out with information and suggestions on my local forum but am nolonger there. Just offering a helping hand if anyone needs one :) love my staffy too

love my dogs, but can't let all the years of working out how to outsmart them to go to waste! wow i needed help on the first puppy

Ok I've read through that advice and I'd be seriously confused at the end of that. I have a three year old 35kg American Staffy who's natural play is jumping on other dogs and cats. He is highly dominant and only introduce dogs to him in our property that I know I can handle the dog. So saying in his three years I have also raised three kittens from eight to twelve weeks of age, and taught him not to play too rough with my families dog who is very much in pain with arthritis. I would try a number of things. 1) Remember that although big he's still just an enthusiastic kid. 2) Make sure he recognises you as the member of your pack that's in charge. We did 5 or 10 minutes of training before play periods to reinforce this (sit/stay/etc) 3) Before letting them play put them on the opposite sides of a fence of screen doors. Dogs are always going to get massively excited and letting them sniffi or see each other before is a great help. Depending on how fast your dogs settle down you could do it even for an hour or so. 4) Try putting your big dog/s collar/harness and lead on and tying him up (I use my dining table leg) to achieve the same thing if you can't seperate the dogs by a fence or door. Make sure you supervise them so he doesn't get himself tangled and I limit this to 15 minutes 5) Try using the word "gentle" in a deep authoritative voice every time you need to check play. Then reward him with a treat and a solid 'good boy' when he does it. He'll soon learn that 'gentle'means stop for a moment and this will let your other dog up and should limit play without you having to be physically present. (I use it from the couch when mine starts to get too excited with the kitten for example' 6) Teach him 'leave it'. This is done by holding treats in both hands in front of your dog. Open one hand with a treat and when your dog goes to sniff it close your hand and say 'leave it'. The second the dog does not sniff your hand open the opposite and and reward the dog 'yes'. Be patient, this might take 20 or so repetitions until they get it the first time. Keep repeating this and increasing the time until reward that the dog has to leave it. Eventually he will hold indefinately. You can then extend this to anything, shoes, dogs, etc. Leave it means back off and wait for a treat You can also stop 'wrestling' type play every 5 minutes or so and distract them by throwing balls etc. The more they play together the better it will get. Also, whilst you don't want to hurt the younger dog, recognise when they're just making normal noise so you can distinguish when your smaller dog is just normally vocalising in play and when he seriously has had enough To give you hope through this long process my dog sleeps and plays quite nicely with my current kitten how is 13 weeks