[Bella's Momma]

Please help! Any suggestions? I can see Bella try to restrain herself from jumping on me when I get home, but all bets are off outside. This is a huge problem as she jumps on my 4 yo and knocks her down then pounces on her (my four year old does not appreciate this!). It seems obvious to me Bella is treating her like another puppy but nonetheless not acceptable. And of course the muddy paw prints it leaves on us if it's first thing in the AM when the lawn is damp. I don't generally mind her tromping through my flower bedded areas, but I don't want to be jumped on afterwards!


And the counter cruising. It seems to be getting a little better, but I'm also just keeping anything out of reach. Any suggestions?

 

[cbrand]

Keep her on a leash. It is a pain, but then you have control over what she does and where she goes. I'd step up to a prong collar so that if Bella does try to jump up while she is on leash, you can give her a strong correction.

Next, I'd start doing some obedience work. In Novice Obedience one of the exercises is "Stand for Exam". In this exercise, a dog is asked to stand from the sitting position and told to stay. The expectation is that the dog will not move while the judge walks over and moves his hands over the dog.

I find this exercise very helpful in a pet dog. People who come to your home and people you encounter in public will want to pet your dog without being jumped on and knocked over.

Are you doing obedience work. Is so, where?

 

[Bella's Momma]

Yes, she's graduated one Puppy class, but we're going back again so my husband can also experience it. It was very positive reinforcement and worked quite well on the basics (sit, stay - doing okay in many instances but not the excited new people are here one, leave it, down-still working on it). The kids just went back to school today so our intensive revisiting what we've learned will start next week when we have more solitary (read: no children) time.

We put her in a sit command to keep her from jumping, but she's only 5 mos and sometimes the puppy-ness takes over, especially with my little one!

I definitely see her try hard not to with us. She will squirm a bit or take a tiny bounce then remember and sit back down and look up like "Please pet me all over and get close so I can LICK you!"

Oh yes, that's the other habit to get rid of : LICKING! Any ideas on that one? yuck! And aside from yuck I'm allergic to her saliva, but yuck! To compound the problem when we have people over, if they're dog people they seem to encourage her to lick their faces. I am a dog person, but we never did that when I was child so I'm not in favor of it.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Raiko]

But be warned you have to disenitise her to the prong collar, or she might get collar smart and only listen when the prong collar is on her..

They also make counter surfing boobietraps, its a matt you place on counters when you leave, when the dogs paw or face touches it.. well depending on the brand it will usually make a high frequency beep,

but the more effective ones have an attachment that you put on the collar she is wearing and when she counter surfs she get a spray of air or citrenella, or in some cases a shock.

when you are home you can pop her with the leash or give her a thump on her chest and scold her, when your gone u can put the mat up. {Mind you if u thump her, dont hurt her, its just supposed to be enough to make her get down) If you have the collar attachment on all the time, but have it on only when the mat is set up she wont know its the collar thats correcting her and when you take it off she wont get collar smart

 

[Raiko]

Licking can be tackled like biting, ignoring her when she does it,but push her away or have someone pop her on the leash when she does it, praise her and play with her until she licks, then just back away and scold her and ignore for a good 20 seconds or until she gets the mopey look then go back to playing. The playing is enough praise, and she will figure out that the longer she holds back licking the longer she gets attention.

In extream cases you can stick you hand in her mouth [not deep, just like a few fingers] and press down with your thumb. not hard, dont hurt her, just hold her tongue in her mouth with your thumb for a while 5-20 seconds. She'll wine when shes had enough. Human skin doesnt taste good, if she just loves licking you so much she came to love your taste you can buy "bitter apple" spray and spray it on your hand and do the same thing, or even spray it on her tongue when she sticks her tongue out to lick you

 

[littlemj]

I agree with cbrand. Keep her on a leash. We have been using a trainer since Baci was 9 weeks old, and he says to keep them on the leash so that you can correct behavior very quickly and easily. When I put our dog on the leash, he behaves better. Our trainer says to keep him on the leash when loose in the house for at least the 1st year. I know it sounds like a pain in the ass to do, but it works. The boobietraps also work for the counter surfing. Place a treat right behind a frying pan that is on the edge of the counter. When she goes for the treat, the frying pan should fall and scare her not to counter surf anymore. Good luck

 

[Bella's Momma]

Thanks. I actually have tried the 'traps' on the counter, using disposable aluminum pans so they are lightweight and noisy. She just doesn't jump up when they are up there. Clever Poodle. I didn't try buying either the stat mat or the mouse-trap looking ones, yet, I was hoping the cheap solution would work first.