[user=93]sally[/user] wrote:Quote:7 yr oldMgolden retriever, 5 year old MNewfoundland, 3 year old Mbasset hound, and1 yr old F pitbull. The males arenot fixedthanks to my idiot husband and I'm not sure if nutering them would even maked a difference now. The female is spayed and she is the best one. It's just the 3 stooges who do the barking, I really have no problem with the female.
I agree with TA that your golden is probably bored. He needs to get out and burn up calories every day for an hour at least. Retrievers really do like to retrieve, so just teaching him to fetch a 'kong' over and over would help (I would not suggest a 'tennis ball', he's just the right size to get that lodged in his throat).
Bassets are generally hard to motivate, even though they are hunting dogs. They are usually pretty mellow and very stubborn. No doubt, he is just following the lead of the other two and I wouldn't be surprised if the golden was the instigator of the whole thing.
The first thing you really need to do, is get them all doing some basic obedience. You have to work with them one at a time to start with, but they all need at least a solid 'sit' and 'down' (note: 'sit/stay' and 'down/stay' is redundant because they should not 'break' the command until released from it anyway). I believe you said you already know something about training, so I won't go into details on that right now, but once you have each dog so that it will sit and stay put until you release it, you need to start setting them up with 'distractions', for example, rolling a ball past them while sitting. Be creative with it.
Once they are to the point where you can get them to SIT on command and ignore distractions, try putting a leash on one of them and put the other dogs in another part of the house, then have someone help you out by doing something to make the one dog bark at the window. Be ready for it and grab the leash while ordering the dog to SIT! Keep at it until he does. Do this over and over until the dog sits on command, then work with another dog. Eventually, you will be able to simply say 'SIT!' and they will all sit on command (and of course, stop barking).
There are ways you could use conditioning to teach them to NEVER bark at the window, but you probably want them to bark sometimes.... you just want them to stop when you ask them to, which is perfectly reasonable.
It's not going to happen overnight.
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Maggot Wrote:She's has hated me since she came in the house without knocking and caught us fucking on the floor. She couldn't close that door fast enough and the sight of my white ass has hopefully scarred her for life.::b33::
well when you put in my furnace i saw your lily-white ass crack....nothing scary there honey. ::lmao::::dlaugh::
PS i love you. ::hugs::
SyberBitch Wrote:The first thing you really need to do, is get them all doing some basic obedience. You have to work with them one at a time to start with, but they all need at least a solid 'sit' and 'down' (note: 'sit/stay' and 'down/stay' is redundant because they should not 'break' the command until released from it anyway). I believe you said you already know something about training, so I won't go into details on that right now, but once you have each dog so that it will sit and stay put until you release it, you need to start setting them up with 'distractions', for example, rolling a ball past them while sitting. Be creative with it. No shit; Syber does know her dogs pretty well.
I would add to this that with all dogs; especially intact males, they should be put into a sit/stay before they are fed. They receive permission to eat from the pack leader -you - and they don't eat before the humans eat. You put their food down and release them from the sit/stay before they are allowed to go to the food bowl. This consistently reinforces your role as alpha.
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Sinister Wrote:SyberBitch Wrote:The first thing you really need to do, is get them all doing some basic obedience. You have to work with them one at a time to start with, but they all need at least a solid 'sit' and 'down' (note: 'sit/stay' and 'down/stay' is redundant because they should not 'break' the command until released from it anyway). I believe you said you already know something about training, so I won't go into details on that right now, but once you have each dog so that it will sit and stay put until you release it, you need to start setting them up with 'distractions', for example, rolling a ball past them while sitting. Be creative with it. No shit; Syber does know her dogs pretty well.
I would add to this that with all dogs; especially intact males, they should be put into a sit/stay before they are fed. They receive permission to eat from the pack leader -you - and they don't eat before the humans eat. You put their food down and release them from the sit/stay before they are allowed to go to the food bowl. This consistently reinforces your role as alpha. That is something I've been doing wrong. They all eat out of one food bowl. I fill it up with dry food and they eat whenever they want. I do this out of convenience for myself and they don't fight over the one bowl. This is doing nothing to reinforce my role as alpha as you said though. I do make them sit and stay for treats though.
sally Wrote:Sinister Wrote:SyberBitch Wrote:The first thing you really need to do, is get them all doing some basic obedience. You have to work with them one at a time to start with, but they all need at least a solid 'sit' and 'down' (note: 'sit/stay' and 'down/stay' is redundant because they should not 'break' the command until released from it anyway). I believe you said you already know something about training, so I won't go into details on that right now, but once you have each dog so that it will sit and stay put until you release it, you need to start setting them up with 'distractions', for example, rolling a ball past them while sitting. Be creative with it. No shit; Syber does know her dogs pretty well.
I would add to this that with all dogs; especially intact males, they should be put into a sit/stay before they are fed. They receive permission to eat from the pack leader -you - and they don't eat before the humans eat. You put their food down and release them from the sit/stay before they are allowed to go to the food bowl. This consistently reinforces your role as alpha. That is something I've been doing wrong. They all eat out of one food bowl. I fill it up with dry food and they eat whenever they want. I do this out of convenience for myself and they don't fight over the one bowl. This is doing nothing to reinforce my role as alpha as you said though. I do make them sit and stay for treats though. Ah shit; you free-feed them??? Do you want shit convenient or your dogs well-behaved? One mealtime, sometimes 2, depending on the dog; at the same time every day so the dog has a routine. Free-feeding is baaaaaaaaaaaad.
The Antagonist
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Why don't we start a separate topic for this?
Syber, my forum can easily be opened. I'd have to rearrange the information sections in time. It was relatively new and just started to get going actively when I went to upgrade the information pages and found the whole thing got fucked up and I called it quits. I just didn't have it in me at the time to redo over 100 pages of information from scratch.
sally, I agree with Sin and Syber on the food thing but I feed free style like you do. There are differing opinions on that. But each of my dogs although they eat free style all day long, have their own bowls which they eat out of.
I only feed a dog on schedule if they're eating a raw diet (which I'l be feeding any dog i get in the future) or the dog is gulping it's food.
Syber is right about obedience. I didn't want to get into a long reply with all that because I was sort of holding out to see what they thought about me reopening my pet site.
Start with the sit. 4 of them is going to take quite a while to get that cemented in to start with and I can get the site back up and running while you're working on that. Should only take me about a week. I would need to know before the shop I need to build for someone needs my attention is all.
Do NOT tell the dogs 'sit down'. It should always be 'sit. stay.' Saying 'sit down' is confusing for a dog. You're telling it two separate commands.
Sinister Wrote:Ah shit; you free-feed them??? Do you want shit convenient or your dogs well-behaved? One mealtime, sometimes 2, depending on the dog; at the same time every day so the dog has a routine. Free-feeding is baaaaaaaaaaaad. Definitely... and while it can work for laid back situations with a couple of farm dogs, or whatever, if you want dogs you can actually control (and it's a happy control, a respectful control, not based on fear), just basic things like Sin mentioned are very important. In fact, dogs who are sure of their place in the pack, with a solid pack leader, are happier dogs.
One of the most important things to the psychology of a dog, is where its meals come from... and of course if they know they eat by YOUR permission, it goes a long way toward establishing true leadership. If they 'free feed', they figure the food is just always magically there and they don't give you credit for providing it.
The Afterbirth Wrote:Glad you didn't have anyone like that in your squadron and hats off to you guys as well... We had some wild folks in our Squadron, don't misread me. We had to be a little wild to burn off the stress of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. I just thoroughly enjoyed my job and the people I worked with, even if the missions were stressful.
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