Any ideas to help? This 6.5 month old male Golden has been really BAD lately. He shredded our deck umbrella this morning with my wife right there. We try to stop him with the suggestions from the trainer but then he just bites. He is scheduled for neutering soon. He is always mounting and biting. Getting costly with all of the destruction — trashing mini blinds, digging up sprinkler heads, pulling shrubs apart ...
Help! He was very sweet until the past few weeks.
We had him to his Vet Friday and she gave us a prescription for Prozac (for him, not us!). We're waiting for the neutering first to see if that helps.
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Yikes!
I think it's important to say that if your family is being made miserable, I know everyone has suggestions, but ultimately if you're getting hurt and it's disrupting your family, you may decide that he is just too much for your family, and you are the only ones who can make that call. All puppies are not created equal. Some of them need a certain type of environment. Yes, some people give up their animals without any attempt to solve the problem first, but it doesn't sound like you're one of those people.
I've heard that neutering can make a big difference in behavior. I hope that does the trick.
I agree that exercise is key. When Cooper was young, I would actually take him to the dog park BEFORE a hike. If I didn't do that, he didn't listen to me. It was ... a lot. I didn't do that with Loki, and Loki drove me up the friggin' wall, but he wasn't aggressive and maxed out at 60 pounds.
The walking thing is easy to fix. Hopefully you have a leash and a choke collar. If you don’t have a choker, get one. The idea obviously is not to choke him or hurt him, but to train him. Put it on him and go outside. And start walking. And then at completely random, unpredictable times, stop and change direction. The neighbors will think you’ve gone nuts, but you are going to be switching direction every four to 10 steps. And when you do, the dog gets a pop from the choker and then follows you. It’s best to ignore the dog while you are doing this. And then it’s 20 steps and so on. The dog eventually will learn to follow you such that you are walking the dog and not the other way around. 5-10 min a day for a few days should do the trick.
This technique doesn't require a choke collar. There are martingale collars as well if you do think this route is appropriate - they limit the constriction if fit correctly.
Our trainer had us start this sort of randomized walking in the yard, to minimize distractions. Only once the dogs got the idea were we allowed to take it to the sidewalk. They made great progress; unfortunately we humans got into a situation where they couldn't keep the training going. The trainer did have us using a carefully fit martingale collar with a "pop" technique to communicate. I found it difficult to time it and do it correctly, but at least with the martingale, I knew I couldn't actually choke them. Although I don't think that's the same thing as saying they can't be harmed - which I suppose one could also do with an overly aggressive yank on a regular collar, but it would be less likely.
I was able to train Cooper to stop pulling, even when there was a rabbit running away from us, using the "I am a tree" method combined with randomization - if he pulled toward a rabbit, I'd stop dead or even switch directions. This was with a regular collar. When we got Loki, training fell apart because I wasn't willing to walk them separately, and it's really hard to train this way when your dogs are doing different things. In hindsight, it would have saved me a lot of trouble to do two walks ... I also have other friends who've trained this way without having to use choke collars, just regular collars.
My dogs have/had Easy Walk harnesses, which help tone down some of the pulling, although it's no substitute for training. It does make them easier to control when they pull, because the forces don't allow them to pull straight forward.
