Hello, we have a golden who is 10 weeks old now. A few more issues that have come forth and I have trouble wrapping my head around it.
1. He growls at me when I say no, and seems to protest everytime I scold him. It seems like the no word has no value to him.
2. He does not do this to my husband, but to me. He will sporadically come and start tugging at my pants and then even jumping at my legs trying to grab me. I hold still at times, and today I even tried to move towards him to stop him, it did not seem to work, unfortunately. I imagine its his invitation to play maybe, but it seems so rough and nothing is happening.
3. I have started to give him treats for leaving his leash alone, and also doing exactly what I ask of him, but it seems he is ALWAYS just looking for treats around me, watching my hands, or licking my hands whenever I bring them close to his face.
4. Lastly, the only thing that worked today was the change I had in a metal box/container, and shaking that got him distracted and stopped doing what he is doing.
Not sure what this will be, but any help from this community will probably guide me in the right direction.
A few suggestions:
Your question 1: I agree with gdgli, you shouldn't be scolding a 10-week old puppy. He's not behaving badly, he just hasn't learned to live in the human world yet. It's up to you to teach him. You're correct in saying the word "no" has no value to him. There are several reasons for this. First, it's a human word, not a dog word, so you can't expect him to know what it means. Second, IMHO it's a completely useless command. "No" is a word that humans use in all kinds of contexts, for all kinds of reasons. It doesn't just have one meaning, it has lots of meanings. For example, you may use it to tell the dog: to stop biting your legs, to get off the couch, not to jump on visitors, not to steal food from the counter, not to chew furniture, etc. The puppy can't possibly know what you mean. With my dogs, I use a different system. Instead of saying "no", I use "ah-ah" to signal that I don't like what they're doing,
and combine it with a command saying what I want them to do instead. For example, the dog jumps up at me: "ah-ah, sit". The "ah-ah" tells the dog I don't like that he's jumping up, and the "sit" tells him what I want him to do. Or the dog grabs something I don't want him to have: "ah-ah, drop it". And so on. Of course, this only works when you've taught the alternative behaviours. There's no point telling a 10-week old puppy "ah-ah, sit" if you haven't yet taught him to sit. But you can start using "ah-ah" to signal behaviour you don't like, and physically remove him from the situation - for example by picking him up and putting him in his crate for a few minutes.
Your question 2: If you don't want him to do this, use the "ah-ah" to signal that you don't like his behaviour, then pick him up and put him in his crate for a few minutes. You need to deal with this proactively. Standing still isn't being proactive: he's still doing what he wants, and you're suffering the consequences. It should be the other way round. Until you've done some basic training of commands you can use as alternative behaviour (sit, lie down, etc.), use the crate.
Your question 3: I also agree with gdgli that you have to be careful using treats for leaving the leash alone because if you do it incorrectly you might inadvertently train him to grab the leash and drop it.
Your question 4: I personally would not use this type of approach with a young puppy. Your job as a dog owner is to be more interesting that whatever the pup is focusing on. Start being a fun owner! He clearly likes to tug: so play tug games with him, and use it as an opportunity to teach the "end of the game" command and the "drop it" command. Or play any other interactive game - retrieving, finding stuff, exchanging a toy for a treat, that kind of thing. I have a special "treat bag" for training sessions, which I keep in the fridge. It's full of cheese bits, cooked chicken, that kind of thing. My pups quickly learn that the appearance of the bag means a fun training session with great rewards. My current dog is now 4 years old, and he still comes running when he sees me taking the bag out of the fridge. Right now you're just yelling at the pup and being frustrated with him. He needs to learn that humans equal fun.
If you haven't already done so, I would suggest looking round for a good training school that teaches humans how to train dogs using mostly positive methods. A good trainer will show you how to create a relationship with your dog where you make the decisions and he does what you want.
Best of luck! Hope you find solutions that work for you.
