Leash Naughtiness

[koalathebear]

Elbie's heelwork and loose leash work has been very good during obedience classes - looks deceptively obedient and docile. It's like he's putting an act on for the instructors.

At home it's VERY hit and miss. Sometimes he's good, other times he pulls like an absolute lunatic - EVERYTHING is interesting to him, cars, cats, people, birds, dirt We ordered an easy walk harness and it arrived yesterday. Our intention is to mix things up a bit and alternate between walking him on the harness and using his flat collar. It's great because it means that we can take him out for walks more regularly - till now, his pulling has made us not take him out (or take him out only for very short walks) because we don't want to reinforce his pulling behaviour.

So ... walking is going pretty well but he still has one weird behaviour - he stopped chewing/attacking his leash but for his last 3 or 4 walks, when we're heading home after his walk and he's about 2 houses away from home - he starts attacking and chewing on his leash like a maniac. ;) We have tried approaching the house from different directions, different side of the road etc but he still goes bonkers.

We don't want to put anything on his leash nor do we want to use the chain leash given that he's perfectly behaved for 30-45 minutes during the duration of the walk, it's just as we approach home that he's presumably chucking a tantrum because he wants to keep playing.

Any suggestions? We can't use food because we don't want to inadvertently reward him for his bad behaviour. If we're near a post, we would normally tie him up and give him a brief 'time-out' in which he can settle himself but we can't really tie him to the neighbours' letter box or anything.

Today, we brought one of his squeaky toys and squeaked it at him to distract him but didn't give it to him so that there was a diversion but no reward until he gets home without attacking the leash. It didn't work. In the end, my husband had to just stop, stand on Elbie's leash until he settled and then only after he was in a drop position did we keep going.

Edited August 14, 2010 by koalathebear

[aussielover]

Thats exactly how i feel!

Missy is all perfect and docile while at obedience and puppy school.

She walks like an angel on lead while there and all the instructors dote on her lol

At home it is different story! She is little miss stubborn.

Sorry I am of no use to you! But I share your pain

[VJB]

My dog does this all the time. It appears she gets a burst of excitement when we are only a few houses away from home. I stand still and be very non reactive, as I found if I reacted too much, it would excite her even more... therefore making the situation more unpleasant.

She still does it, and if I stand still, do nothing, she knows we won't be moving forward until she stops. It is only very brief now. She grabs lead, excited for approx 10 seconds, then lets go of the lead by herself.... and we continue to walk. Takes a bit of practice though.

[wuffles]

I can't help as Satch does the opposite... draaaaaaaggggssss really slowly when he knows we're on the way home

[koalathebear]

My dog does this all the time. It appears she gets a burst of excitement when we are only a few houses away from home. I stand still and be very non reactive, as I found if I reacted too much, it would excite her even more... therefore making the situation more unpleasant.

She still does it, and if I stand still, do nothing, she knows we won't be moving forward until she stops. It is only very brief now. She grabs lead, excited for approx 10 seconds, then lets go of the lead by herself.... and we continue to walk. Takes a bit of practice though.

Oh thank goodness we're not the only ones although 'excitement' is much better than what we get. Elbie basically goes into berserker mode. One moment he's a very placid, sweet-faced, cute dog and the next next moment he's growling and trying to chomp his way up the leash. As soon as he's tethered he goes calm again i.e. instantaneous so it's just so bizarre. We will follow your suggestion about going still and we'll tread on his leash again to keep him still and unable to bite the leash.

We are still trying to figure out the trigger:

1. is he tired and wants to stop?

2. is he being bratty because he doesn't want to go home yet?

We'll try doing a walk tomorrow that's just from the end of the street to see if he still goes bonkers when we are two houses away from our house ...

aussielover: Yup ... at class we get compliments about how smart and obedient and focussed he is. Ha. You should have seen how he was today when a car drove past that had a husky in it, head stuck out the window and barking like a maniac Elbie had zero interest for his kibble.

wuffles:

I can't help as Satch does the opposite... draaaaaaaggggssss really slowly when he knows we're on the way home

I am filled with envy ...

[persephone]

*hint*

use a leash which is a chain one .... stops leash chewers pretty smartly

[koalathebear]

*hint*

use a leash which is a chain one .... stops leash chewers pretty smartly

Haha, you are right. Elbie definitely does not chew on or attack his chain leash but the chain leash we currently have is kind of short and very uncomfortable on OUR hands so given that he walks well for 35minutes and no longer attacks the leash at the beginning and only misbehaves for the last minute we were hoping to get him used to the cloth leash ...

I wonder if we could perhaps switch to the chain leash just before we headed down our street ...

[persephone]

Using a chain leash ( you can buy them with nice padded handles ) does NOT stop his excitement or displaced aggression or whatever .. but it will discourage him from taking it out on the leash!

What happens when you get him home, usually? Is it exciting- to take his leash of- get a treat, race around and inside .....? perhaps change things if this is the case!

go home- keep him on leash.. do some obedience with him.. not much talking or playing , but nice quiet praise when he does good work ... then just matter- of -factly unclip him and without giving him a second glance- go about your business. No treats or anything...just ignore.

This way, maybe racing to get home will lose some of its appeal?

[koalathebear]

Using a chain leash ( you can buy them with nice padded handles :D ) does NOT stop his excitement or displaced aggression or whatever .. but it will discourage him from taking it out on the leash!

What happens when you get him home, usually? Is it exciting- to take his leash of- get a treat, race around and inside .....? perhaps change things if this is the case!

go home- keep him on leash.. do some obedience with him.. not much talking or playing , but nice quiet praise when he does good work ... then just matter- of -factly unclip him and without giving him a second glance- go about your business. No treats or anything...just ignore.

This way, maybe racing to get home will lose some of its appeal?

The lack of chain is more for my convenience, I fear. The carpal tunnel surgery on my hand means that my right hand is still in a bit of pain so I can't grip the leash as well as I'd like - so I wrap the leash around my left arm and hold it very lightly in my right hand. Our walks have recently gone treat-free and Elbie seems fine with that - we bring treats along to try to use them as a distraction if necessary but generally he's not getting treats on his walks anymore. When we get home, we do nothing with him - just take off our shoes, wash our hands and go about our business. Maybe that's why he attacks his leash before he gets home i.e. he knows when we get home he'll probably be ignored for a bit

A lot of people have said that the attacking the leash is Elbie wanting to play tug and that they let their dogs do it, but our behaviourist was quite emphatic that we shouldn't be letting Elbie play tug so that's why we were so happy when he stopped his leash attacks ... We just have to work on eliminating the behaviour from the home-stretch

Will try what you suggest about doing some obedience with him when we get home to try to get him into the 'quiet' zone.

[corvus]

Ah, the dreaded puppy crazies. I remember this with both my current boys. Happened around the same time every walk. For Kivi we solved it by carrying a tug toy. When he got the puppy crazies we'd get him to chew on the toy. He grew out of it in time. Erik is a bit trickier because he likes tug a lot more. Didn't want to teach him that as soon as we got around the corner we would play tug. So some days we played tug and some days we did some obedience. He would always try to attack Kivi, so we'd take him away from Kivi and reward him for responding to his name. Then worked up to rewarding him for heeling. Worked in tug games, trick practise, and heeling at a run. He grew out of it as well.

[koalathebear]

Ah, the dreaded puppy crazies. I remember this with both my current boys. Happened around the same time every walk. For Kivi we solved it by carrying a tug toy. When he got the puppy crazies we'd get him to chew on the toy. He grew out of it in time. Erik is a bit trickier because he likes tug a lot more. Didn't want to teach him that as soon as we got around the corner we would play tug. So some days we played tug and some days we did some obedience. He would always try to attack Kivi, so we'd take him away from Kivi and reward him for responding to his name. Then worked up to rewarding him for heeling. Worked in tug games, trick practise, and heeling at a run. He grew out of it as well.

Again I am so relieved someone else has this issue because it sounds like such bizarre behaviour to me. Out of curiosity - did your boys do it on the home stretch, too or was there a particular area of the walk that triggered them. The problem for us is that we can't vary our walk pattern because Elbie does it as we approach home so there aren't a lot of options left to us We're not using treats on walks anymore but I've been toying with the idea of bringing some devon for distraction purposes for the final stretch.

Edited August 15, 2010 by koalathebear

[corvus]

It would usually happen as we turned the corner into our street, but still a good 200m from home, but Erik would start up again about 20m from home. Having treats really helped with Erik, as we could give him some focus for all that sudden energy. Kivi just liked to chew on a toy.

Honestly, they both grew out of it. We could have done nothing but just put up with it and they would have grown out of it on their own. We just gave them something to do with the energy because I think it's a good idea to be proactive and get them into the habit of paying attention to you eve when they are excited.

[koalathebear]

It would usually happen as we turned the corner into our street, but still a good 200m from home, but Erik would start up again about 20m from home. Having treats really helped with Erik, as we could give him some focus for all that sudden energy. Kivi just liked to chew on a toy.

Honestly, they both grew out of it. We could have done nothing but just put up with it and they would have grown out of it on their own. We just gave them something to do with the energy because I think it's a good idea to be proactive and get them into the habit of paying attention to you eve when they are excited.

Well it's reassuring to know. We'll keep working at it and finding ways to divert Elbie. Sometimes having a puppy feels like playing whackamole. As soon as we whack one problem on the head, another one rears up At present, we've managed to address all of Elbie's problems that have arisen but these ones remain for us to resolve:

- sometimes attacks leash

- sometimes will pull (working on this with obedience training and occasionally using the easy walk harness)

- barks in car (working on this - he is having longer and longer bark-free periods, but is still highly stimulated by passing traffic and the sound of the indicators ) If we could drive in a straight line forever we would be largely fine.

- sometimes naughty about having his collar/harness put on. We don't want to bribe him anymore so the collar is a: "too bad, it's going on" and he doesn't get his dinner until the harness is on

- VERY hyperactive when meeting new people and going to new places. If people ignore him when they come here, he will usually calm down within 5 minutes. Going out though, there is constant new stimulation so at obedience class it sometimes takes him a good 10-15 minutes to calm down because all the movement, dogs and people make him all lungey and barkey. To our humiliation, this morning we were asked if he was in beginner puppy class and we were: "No - he's in bronze." The person said: "Oh, I thought he was a beginner because of all that excitement." Once he calms down, he is beautifully focussed and the other owners often say they envy how Elbie's attention is fixed on us during class ... no one would envy us before class though

- still shy around other dogs and prefers to play with the humans (and their food) than other dogs. I don't mind if he doesn't want to play, I just want him to learn how to not be scared if a big boofer chases him

Edited August 15, 2010 by koalathebear

[wuffles]

To our humiliation, this morning we were asked if he was in beginner puppy class and we were: "No - he's in bronze." The person said: "Oh, I thought he was a beginner because of all that excitement." Once he calms down, he is beautifully focussed and the other owners often say they envy how Elbie's attention is fixed on us during class ... no one would envy us before class though

Um... I got asked if I was a beginner today too remember :laugh: In all honesty, I think excitement at the start of an obedience class isn't something to be too worried about, especially at Elbie's age. Sure, it's annoying, but they are still young and it's a highly stimulating environment.

[corvus]

I'm very interested in Elbie. He sounds a lot like Erik. Erik was one to throw out half a dozen obnoxious behaviours in the space it took me to say "Erik, down." He's got a lot of "juice". :D He does everything at maximum effort. Great when he's doing what you want him to do, but terrible when he's not! I really urge you to stick with treats and tug games as rewards and redirecting. Erik is quite malleable when you ask him with chicken in your hands. :p The beauty of him is he learns so fast you can take the chicken away after a few reps and he will often continue to get better without it. Some things he hates, though, and if he hates it I spend lots of time feeding him while he does it and eventually he starts to come around. He hates being restrained and hates getting his harness put on as well, so he gets lots of treats every single time, and he will until he stops considering running away when he sees the harness. It is how we taught him to allow people to look at his teeth, and he will do that now without food. It took a while, but it was worth it.

My advice is don't be shy or stingy about rewards. If he doesn't like something, associate it with more rewards. I don't know where we'd be if we hadn't done plenty of that with Erik. That and massage. He still needs help calming down sometimes.

[koalathebear]

corvus: I think you are right that Erik and Elbie have a lot in common. They both sound like very strong-minded dogs. I like that you seem to be intrigued and 'challenged' rather than frustrated by your dog's wilfulness

It's interesting that I've read some other posts about people with dogs that have some of the same traits as Elbie - they seem quite frustrated and mention that none of their other dogs were like this and that sort of thing. It was only after I read DOL that I realised that so many people seem to have such perfectly dogs with such even temperaments and that our dog is a bit of a weirdo. :D The behaviourist that came to look at Elbie told us that Elbie was very high energy, very intelligent and not for all people. She said that she'd had one dog like Elbie before and only one of her dogs had ever been like that. She also told us to enjoy Elbie because we would probably never have another dog like him again and that while he was going to be a lot of hard work, he was also going to be a lot of fun. So far that has proved to be very true.

After the session with the behaviourist, we worked on respect behaviours around meal times, food, doorways and that sort of thing. Elbie learned fast and it had an almost immediate effect on his behaviour - his conduct really did improve a lot.

Sometimes we're very disconcerted by how smart he is - he was extremely easy to crate train, his toilet-training was also remarkably easy. He taught himself to open doors and he has learned many of his tricks in minutes. There are other tricks that take longer (eg "are you shy" took several days but in total probably no more than half an hour), but this mostly because we haven't found the appropriate teaching mechanism rather than his inability to learn. Once he figures out what he wants, he delivers it up very well. Most of the tricks you see on this page, he learned very quickly. He's also very motivated - works for food, works for toys, even works for his hot water bottle.

Even before we started clicker training him, you could always see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out what we wanted - delivering up a bunch of different tricks in case they were what we wanted. He'll stare at us in very profound concentration. He's also very stubborn. Now and then, he doesn't want to sit - for instance, we have a toy and he knows we're going to throw it so he doesn't want to sit for it because he wants to be standing so that he can chase it more easily. We'll say 'sit' and then just wait him out. Sometimes several minutes can pass as he stares us down before he slowly and reluctantly sits for the toy. He doesn't forget the original command, it's almost like he's trying to see if he can outlast us.

The other interesting thing is that people always mentioned how it was important to get the timing of treat rewards right for tricks but with Elbie, he seems to know when he gets it right simply from the 'good boy' praise and it's not uncommon with a new trick for us to work through it with him, praise him and then walk into another room to get the treat to reward him. I know that dogs are supposed to have a short 'memory' as such so you have to be very immediate with corrections and praise, but it really isn't unusual with Elbie's new tricks for him to get it right and then have to wait for 5 minutes while I rummage around in a drawer for a treat :p

He's very people-oriented, doesn't seem to want to jump fences even though he's entirely capable of jumping very high already, he has almost no destructive behaviours and still has all of his original baby toys (albeit in a battered state) - he also confines his digging to the "permitted dig zone" in the yard.

On the down side, he is extremely over-stimulated by movement ... shake out a towel/pillow/blanket/plastic bag and he can easily go into a berserker trance and start attacking that item the way he attacks his leash. We spend a lot of time trying to desensitise him to things like that - shaking and waving them around his head and treating him when he sits quietly and ignores. He now ignores the door bell (doesn't bark) and mostly ignores the towel as long as we don't shake it in an abrupt motion but we are very conscious that it does trigger him and make him snarley. I was watching this counter-conditioning video last night and it occurred to me that with time and effort we should be able to overcome some of Elbie's triggers. Also, as mentioned above - the hyperactivity is quite a big challenge for us as he gets very excited in new situations and it's difficult to gain and retain his focus and attention.

Nonetheless, my husband and I find Elbie extremely interesting and rewarding ... he is so quirky and filled with personality. From reading other posts, I can see that others would probably find Elbie quite frustrating and time-consuming and wish that they had another dog. I guess it was a matter of luck that he ended up with us - imperfect dog with imperfect but amused owners

Edited August 15, 2010 by koalathebear

[corvus]

He really does sound a lot like Erik. Erik is also very quick, very people focused, very motivated and I've had the same stubborness from time to time as well. And making connections he shouldn't be able to make... When he was about 6 months old he apparently figured out that when OH called at around 7pm it was time for Erik to get excited. His excitement would steadily rise until it peaked when OH got home 40 minutes later, then he'd spend the next two hours totally wired and unable to settle. I swear he was using that phone call as a cue for OH coming home, even though it was 40 minutes away. I ended up shaking up the routine so when OH called I'd take Erik outside, play with him for a bit, then bring him in and put him on his mat with a pig's ear and massage him so when OH arrived he was in a much calmer state. We learnt to trace his behaviour back to cues he was using to tell him something good was going to happen and then mess it all up so those cues no longer predicted what he thought they would predict. Even now we are so careful about rewarding him in the same circumstances a few times in a row. It only takes a few times and he makes a rule that in this scenario he gets this reward and he starts getting excited as soon as he recognises the scenario. I have to say he has taught me to be very aware of our surroundings and habits and what he might be taking in. It amazes me how much passive handling we had got away with with our older dog (who is an absolute angel, btw). Some dogs are just a step ahead, and it's a bit of a rude shock when you have to lift your game to keep up with them.

There aren't many things that Erik gets for free, mostly because we had to give him lots of structure or he'd just barge right over the top of us. He was so quick and proactive we had to keep asking for sits and downs just to stop him from leaping all over everything and everyone. But the nice thing about having a dog that needs lots of structure so he doesn't turn into a monster is that he's quite well trained and reliable. He can plonk into a down on cue when he's so aroused he can't do much else. It's quite useful.

He's taught me heaps and I love working with him. He's crazy smart and I love the energy he puts into everything he does. I call him my point and shoot dog. I point him in the right direction and just let him do his thing. His breeder says he is a bright star, but sometimes he burns a little too bright. I think it's very apt. We love him dearly, but sometimes we just want him to lie down and relax and he seriously needs help to do that. He has improved a lot in the last few months, though. He will be a wonderful dog when he matures. He's still only just over a year and has some growing up to do. At the moment just when you get one thing under control finally another problem pops up, but it is getting better! Fewer problems that are easier to handle. I like that I can't be lazy with him or take things for granted. He teaches me plenty and challenges my ability to understand what drives his behaviour. I like being forced to think outside the square, and he's given me plenty of opportunities for that. I think challenging dogs are the best.

But I also think my perfect angel cuddlebear of a Lapphund is pretty freaking amazing as well. I'm glad I don't have two Eriks, but I wouldn't want two perfect angels, either. It's awesome having one of each.