Hi,
We took Snow at 2 months from a friend. It is our first dog and we chose this breed based on its reputation. It is not a dog with pedigree and we didn’t knew much about his parents when we took him. Later on, we found out that his mother is having the same possessive and aggressive behaviour when bones are involved.
In the first days there were some problems with accomodation, he has not been eating about 2 days or was eating a little, which seemed to be kind of normal. He has received all the vaccines for his age (4 months now).
At the beginning he was biting and playing all the time. We tried some tricks („OUCH”) to make him release, which didn’t work, and we have also tried some kind of Alpha role playing by keeping him from his neck but that seemed to make him even more angry. That happened at 3 months when the bites where not so easy to handle. In the following weeks he was tearing off some of the clothes we were wearing ). However he seemed to be happy to please us when learning some basic commands: sit, stay, lie, come when he was rewarded. As reward we use boiled beef meet.
One day I boiled some beef with bone, then gave him the bone to play/lick it and eat some meat over it. When I tried to take it from his mouth he became very aggressive and tried to bite me or whoever else tried (my wife, my sister). So we realised at that time that we really had a problem. Then was the first day out of the apartment, when he showed possesive aggression towards anything he takes in his mouth and he takes a lot .
Also he showed some aggression at the vet’s, when he tried to bite the doctor when checking his ears to see if otitis has dissapeared.
So we decided to go to a really good dog trainer and behaviourist from Romania, probably one of the best in our country. In the first session he confirmed that Snow isn’t really acting like a Golden and, joking, he said that it would be much easier to make him a defense dog. Here is a video from the asssessment meeting. Actually he was not so aggressive as I expected because he didn`t like so much that raw bone compared to the one I was giving him at home.
The first ground rules were to also leash him in the house, to have him carry kind of leash all over the place and stop saying anything to the dog by only correcting him using the leash. So now he is not allowed to do many things starting with getting up on the couch, sleeping with us in the bed, chewing the furniture, biting us etc. Actually he was extremely possesive on the couch. For example when giving him a toy down he was taking it on the couch and there it was impossible to take it back from his mouth. Down on the floor, the changes of not getting aggressive were smaller.
We had 4 sessions with the dog trainer so far and there are some signs of submission. The last session was a special submission one with leash conditioning. Snow was really not happy with it and started to tremble when he realised that he doesn’t have control anymore on my wife. Moreover, today he was suprised when I applied the same leash control techniques and food limitation (with food as reward). Also in the 2nd session the trainer showed us that he doesn`t like it when people were touching him and we are working on that too. I understood the thing with food possesion, but this kind of things I don’t get: he was sitting in the car and my wife as usual tried to touch him and he growled and tried to bite her. He is not allowed to get near people/dogs without the leash because we cannot trust him.
It is obvious we were doing some mistakes at the beginning leaving him to control us, based on the fact that „he’s still a puppy”. He is not a happy golden, doesn’t like to play so far or run outside and probably that’s because he is still trying to get the Alpha Power.
It should be enough as a presentation. I hope I didn’t bored you so much. We start from here and let you know the outcome. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
We took Snow at 2 months from a friend. It is our first dog and we chose this breed based on its reputation. It is not a dog with pedigree and we didn’t knew much about his parents when we took him. Later on, we found out that his mother is having the same possessive and aggressive behaviour when bones are involved.
In the first days there were some problems with accomodation, he has not been eating about 2 days or was eating a little, which seemed to be kind of normal. He has received all the vaccines for his age (4 months now).
At the beginning he was biting and playing all the time. We tried some tricks („OUCH”) to make him release, which didn’t work, and we have also tried some kind of Alpha role playing by keeping him from his neck but that seemed to make him even more angry. That happened at 3 months when the bites where not so easy to handle. In the following weeks he was tearing off some of the clothes we were wearing ). However he seemed to be happy to please us when learning some basic commands: sit, stay, lie, come when he was rewarded. As reward we use boiled beef meet.
One day I boiled some beef with bone, then gave him the bone to play/lick it and eat some meat over it. When I tried to take it from his mouth he became very aggressive and tried to bite me or whoever else tried (my wife, my sister). So we realised at that time that we really had a problem. Then was the first day out of the apartment, when he showed possesive aggression towards anything he takes in his mouth and he takes a lot .
Also he showed some aggression at the vet’s, when he tried to bite the doctor when checking his ears to see if otitis has dissapeared.
So we decided to go to a really good dog trainer and behaviourist from Romania, probably one of the best in our country. In the first session he confirmed that Snow isn’t really acting like a Golden and, joking, he said that it would be much easier to make him a defense dog. Here is a video from the asssessment meeting. Actually he was not so aggressive as I expected because he didn`t like so much that raw bone compared to the one I was giving him at home.
The first ground rules were to also leash him in the house, to have him carry kind of leash all over the place and stop saying anything to the dog by only correcting him using the leash. So now he is not allowed to do many things starting with getting up on the couch, sleeping with us in the bed, chewing the furniture, biting us etc. Actually he was extremely possesive on the couch. For example when giving him a toy down he was taking it on the couch and there it was impossible to take it back from his mouth. Down on the floor, the changes of not getting aggressive were smaller.
We had 4 sessions with the dog trainer so far and there are some signs of submission. The last session was a special submission one with leash conditioning. Snow was really not happy with it and started to tremble when he realised that he doesn’t have control anymore on my wife. Moreover, today he was suprised when I applied the same leash control techniques and food limitation (with food as reward). Also in the 2nd session the trainer showed us that he doesn`t like it when people were touching him and we are working on that too. I understood the thing with food possesion, but this kind of things I don’t get: he was sitting in the car and my wife as usual tried to touch him and he growled and tried to bite her. He is not allowed to get near people/dogs without the leash because we cannot trust him.
It is obvious we were doing some mistakes at the beginning leaving him to control us, based on the fact that „he’s still a puppy”. He is not a happy golden, doesn’t like to play so far or run outside and probably that’s because he is still trying to get the Alpha Power.
It should be enough as a presentation. I hope I didn’t bored you so much. We start from here and let you know the outcome. Any feedback would be much appreciated.