questions about training Tomoe

Kenshi · October 2009

Tomoe is...13 weeks or 14 weeks old now, I can't count.

She is soooo mouthy. From what I have read this is normal. When she bites too hard we go "OUCH!" and pull our hands away, stand up, etc. Though I get no sense of this "clicking" with her. She doesn't usually bite too hard. Anyway, my feeling is, let her bite all she wants until after she's done teething, and then it may be time to start considering timeouts and ignores when she bites at all.

BUT - I had her in puppy kindergarten last night and one thing she really can't seem to figure out is Down. (Which, strangely, ALL dogs I have ever owned have also not been able/willing to do). So the assistant trainer comes over to work with her a bit and she starts mouthing the trainer's hand, and the trainer looks at me like, "Oh you are letting your dog be mouthy?" And I notice that none of the other pups in the class want to chew on their owners constantly.

So should I let it ride for awhile, or should I be concerned?

My second question regards how I am handling workdays. We'd like to crate her at night and let her loose by day. Partly because we don't want the crate to feel punitive, and partly to get her used to the freedom, we put her in the back room of our basement. It's pretty big though. I come home and feed / play / walk her at noon, so she's only by herself for about four hours at a time.

She poops in there one time a day. This week I started to worry that I am teaching her that she doesn't have to go in the morning, she can just wait until mid-morning and go in the back room. Then I have to stick her kind of unceremoniously outside, and clean up, instead of spending the time with her. I am not sure exactly what goes on in there when we are out but there is evidence that she might be amusing herself with her poop; at least, she has occasion to dance around in it.

So I started shoving her in the crate. There have been no accidents in the crate yet, but she won't crate up eagerly as she was doing up until this week.

Should I call this a win, keep crating her by day for another couple of weeks, and then give her another chance to succeed at hanging out in the back room? My goal is to have a dog that has free or large reign of the house by day; I don't want somebody breaking into my house or having some kind of disaster strike while she is confined to the crate.

Thanks!

kati · October 2009

Mouthy-teething pups are tricky because at the time it doesn't hurt anybody and sometimes is sort of cute as they nibble your finger but you don't want your dog to keep it up through adulthood. I'm not sure if it will work for your dog but for our pups we've actually gotten teething rings and put them in the freezer and given those to the pups rather than letting them chew on us. It may take some time but it would be better in the long run in my experience to break her of the habit early.

violet_in_seville · October 2009

Regarding crating, I think she may be a bit young to let her have run of a room. I understand not wanting her to see the crate as punitive. We had the same concerns with Violet and we also want to transition her so that we can trust her in the house by herself. Honestly, I would keep crating her for another few weeks during the day. I mentioned this in other threads before, but we found that having a playpen was a really great investment. Mind you, Violet is a really well behaved girl, so even though she can jump out of her playpen she chooses not to do so. We attached our playpen to the crate so that when the crate is open it opens into the playpen. We started by crating her when we couldn't supervise her directly, slowly transitioned to letting her roam the playpen sometimes, and crating for some of the time, to letting her have run of the playpen all of the time, and right now we're in the process of transitioning her so that she can have run of the room at least some of the time. However all of this was done gradually and only after Violet proved to us that she would not chew on things she wasn't supposed to chew on, nor try to escape, nor exhibit other undesirable behavior given that level of freedom. I think that you might want to rethink giving the pup unsupervised freedom (even if it is limited freedom) until it is clear that they understand the established rules. We tested her in stages and we would do our trial runs on the weekend so that the initial time limits were relatively small (half hour for the first time, an hour, the second, and gradually increasing the time that we trusted her). Eventually we want her to have run of the house when we're gone, but even though I believe she is probably trustworthy now, I will not do it until she is at least a year old. You want to set your dog up for success, and doing it when they're really young (and without some attempt at a gradual transition) can be confusing because they are likely less clear on what the rules are in these changed circumstances.

How is she with her toys? Does she stay very occupied with them? Is she a big chewer? Having lots of toys available is helpful, but only if she's not a major chewer. Violet is less of an aggressive or destructive chewer than a lot of dogs so we learned that she can be left unsupervised with chew toys and stuffed toys without fear of her hurting herself or choking on something, or chewing on our things for that matter.

Migoo · October 2009

About the mouthy things... I recommend you to have other things that she can bite on. Our Kira was terrible mouthy. She was biting us all the time in the beginning. One of the first things we learned her was to understand the meaning of the word "no". The biting thing was actually a good thing to use. So when she was biting our fingers we said no, then we gave her a toy to bite on. When she took that one instead we told here how good she was and so on... With this she learned both not to bit us and how we sounded when she did things she wasn't allowed to do and how we acted when she did something good.

I'm not that good of describing things like this in english but I hope you understand

dlroberts · October 2009

I personally don't mind mouthy dogs as long as they have soft mouths. Lucy has never been very mouthy. Joey always has been, and I never really discouraged it. That being said, I'm well aware that not everybody likes dogs being mouthy. To guard against Joey's mouthiness being a problem, I make sure to never allow him to initiate play with me using his mouth. I let him be mouthy with me only after my invitation. It is one of those situations where teaching a dog not to do a particular behavior you first teach them to do the behavior on command. I'll say, this approach isn't fool proof. Sometimes when Joey is excited he'll get mouthy with house guests. But I can call him off easily so I don't worry too much.

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As for the crate, I concur that crating her is a good idea. Historically dogs dug dens to spend time in and a crate with a blanket over it can be exactly that to a dog. I've crated both my dogs. Joey was crated day and night until he was about 7 months old, then only during the day. At night both he and Lucy are in my bedroom with the door closed, so it's like a big crate. During the day, Lucy and Joey have an x-pen sectioning off a portion of the kitchen that contains their crates. When I put them in the x-pen before I leave, they both willingly go into their crates and 9 times out of 10 they are still in their crates when I come home 6-9 hours later. In the evenings, when I'm home and working in the kitchen, Joey will almost always hang out in his crate. Lucy, once she has decided I'm not going to be dropping food or feeding her will also go and hang out in her crate.

Anyway, the moral of the story is crates are not punitive unless you use them as punishment. If you use them right, they become a safe place for your dog. Tomoe will willingly go in her crate once she gets used to it being a part of her routine. I know it seems cruel to put her in there a lot, but trust me, it is a lot harder on you than it is on her.

I'll also add this. Preventing a dog from learning a bad habit is FAR easier than trying to correct the bad habit after it has been learned. If Tomoe learns that she can poo in her room, it will be a lot more difficult to teach her down the road that pooing in the house is wrong. Use the crate. Similarly, if she learns that mouthiness is alright now, it will be a LOT harder to teach her later that it isn't. Either allow it by invitation only or trade her for something it is acceptable to be mouthy with.

Just my $0.02. :-)

Kenshi · October 2009

Thanks everyone!

I have resolved to strategically place chew toys all over the house and begin "correction-redirection-praise" with Tomoe when she bites inappropriately.

Tomoe does have a soft mouth - the problem is, she'll often get "zoomy" and forget her softness. I am discovering that its kind of hard to balance her energy levels - going into this puppy ownership experience, I figured, eh, we'll just keep her tired out, my friends with GSDs say this works. Problem is, for one, she got TONS of energy - should have anticipated that really - so there are a couple of days in the week where we just can't put out enough to tire her out.

The worrysome thing is that she can get "overtired" and she'll tend to act the same way - if you try to engage her in unstructured playtime, she just wants to zoom all over you and chew on your hands, and if you don't make the hands available, she gets even more zoomy and snappy. Sort of gets this cranky, frustrated edge to her.

Anyway, I am going to assume she has had enough experience with biting us that she knows how to have a soft mouth and stop letting her do it whever she wants.

The crate thing - ooch, I am in the midst of an argument with my wife over that. She really doesn't get the concept of dogs liking dens, and she thinks I am being cruel by crating Tomoe during the day. So we're working on that.

questions about training Tomoe

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