Help, with my staffies excitable jumping up etc

baileysbattlebus

wizard3891 wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We have a little staffie girl who is 2 in January. We rescued her from my wifes colleague at work as he could no longer have her - he would keep her in a cage all day 9 - 5 and she had already been to a few other homes, this was when she was 7 months old. She has only one eye - as far as we know her mum turned on her when very little. Shes a lovely dog and doesn't have a nasty bone in her body.

Our problem is her behaviour - mainly jumping up when shes excited to see us and when shes in a strop.- occasionally nipping and she has ripped one or two of my t shirts doing this.

How can we calm her down a little? Ive heard about clicker training - how does this work? also would doggie classes be any help and where can I go for these?

Thanks for any advice

I can sympathise with you regarding the jumping - we also have a rescue Staffie - we got her in April of this year and she was 4.5 months.

Plenty of people had seen her in the centre and had taken her for a walk - but after the walk had not wanted her. She was like a husky pulling a sled. And so strong.

She is also very excitable and she nipped when we first got her - one of her favourites was to hang off the granddaughters' cardigans and skirts when they were running in the park. They were 4 & 6. And she would mouth our hands.

She is our first dog - and has been a handful - bright enough but hard work.

The jumping at visitors/us we cured by saying "a a" really firmly (a bit like Cesar Milan's "tst") and turning our backs and ignoring her until all 4 feet were on the ground - I used to say "a a" to our children when they were babies if they touched something they shouldn't. It took a while and now (she has just turned a year) she rarely jumps - sometimes the feet leave the floor - but never touch anyone.

The same with the nipping - it was "a a" in a firm tone - she doesn't nip and hasn't for months - the jumping was much harder to stop. The nipping and mouthing were easy. We also taught her the "leave it" command very early on - so what ever she has she will leave if told. It didn't work for the jumping though. I felt quite strongly that because of her breed she needed to be able to leave things when told and absolutely no teeth. If I tell her to leave her food in the middle of eating she will. Or leave a toy if she's playing. Or, if off lead in the park and is playing a bit roughly, if I tell her to "leave it" she will stop.

She has a nice nature - loves the grandchildren - they can do anything with her - but they are never left unsupervised with her. If they were older and not so excitable themselves, maybe, but not yet.

She is really food focussed so, apart from the jumping she has been quite easy to train. This week she has learned how to do "high five" - we go through her repetoire fairly often and add something new every couple of weeks - she really loves the "trick" type of training.

wizard3891

Well, my clicker training kit arrived. Im a little worried though as it hasnt gone to plan. I read up on how to get started with the training first so that I knew what I was doing, proceded to try a few of the basic behaviors in the guide but my dog is terrified of the clicker noise, i toned it down too so that it wasn't too loud but she just runs away scared and cowers if she hears the click!

HELP

sarabe

Put it in your hand in your pocket. Click from across the room and throw her a treat.

If she is still worried by the noise then use a pen that clicks on and off instead.

Don't point the clicker at her like a remote control, by the way (just in case you are).

wizard3891

sarabe wrote: »

Put it in your hand in your pocket. Click from across the room and throw her a treat.

If she is still worried by the noise then use a pen that clicks on and off instead.

Don't point the clicker at her like a remote control, by the way (just in case you are).

Hi, just had it in my hand and out of her sight. She just went all weird as soon as she heard it, its as if its been tried with her before and shes had a bad experience with a previous owner - not sure though.

She will usually take treats from me all the time but when offered with the click she will cower away

sarabe

wizard3891 wrote: »

Hi, just had it in my hand and out of her sight. She just went all weird as soon as she heard it, its as if its been tried with her before and shes had a bad experience with a previous owner - not sure though.

She will usually take treats from me all the time but when offered with the click she will cower away

Don't offer her a treat with the click. She is probably just a little sound sensitive.

Just click it in your pocket from across the room and toss a treat towards her. She doesn't have to be doing anything special at this point.

If the clicker you are using is one of those that allows you to tone it down then it is not a terribly brilliant clicker. You are far better off with just a bog standard box clicker.

tandraig

er - hasnt it occured to you that you can use that fear of the clicker to cure the jumping up? each time she jumps up at you 'click' right next to her! then when she backs off - give her her treat. simples!
reverse psychology hun - use the clicker as the AA AAAh to denote displeasure. when she stops - reward her!

wizard3891

We have spoken to a trainer about her and she seems really good so we will be booking little miss spoilt pooch in for some training sessions in the new year to help us with her training. Its not mega cheap but I feel its worth it in the long run.

fatlad9

foreign_correspondent wrote: »

I do hope this is a joke - but if not - have you thought of getting him neutered???

As the majority of the thousands of unwanted dogs put to sleep each year are staffies, anyone who truly cares about this breed should be very wary of increasing the numbers of unwanted dogs.

Yes it was a joke, i didnt mean to offend.

foreign_correspondent

fatlad9 wrote: »

Yes it was a joke, i didnt mean to offend.

No offence taken - but some owners do seem to have this sort of attitude sadly!!! Thanks for clarifying though!