New to the forum, need advice!
We have an eight month old male OES named Charlie. While he is very loving and sweet, he is also driving us crazy! He has much more energy than I'm able to burn out of him. Long walks don't wear him out. I find the only way to get him to behave at all lately is to bring him to the dog park two times a day, for an hour at a time. When I don't do this, he seems to look for ways to misbehave and attacks my kids by lunging at them and biting or taking toys away from them. I would appreciate any advice on how to handle our rebellious, high energy puppy! |
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| Welcome to the forum! Question: how old are the kids? I'm asking only 'cause I'm wondering if any of them are old enough to help you with what I'm going to suggest. You're certainly doing your share to physically tire him out. Some times that's a losing battle, however. Reason being that the more you exercise him (which is great, don't get me wrong  ), the fitter he gets, so the more exercise he needs to tire him out. What you're describing, however, sounds to me like a dog who needs to be mentally exhausted. I have an 11 mos old like this. Dogs like this frequently require a JOB. They are frequently above average in the smarts department and bored out of their heads. This is to be expected with a dog that was intended to be a working dog. Unfortunately, most of us don't have actual jobs for them and, overachievers that they are, they invent their own   Are there any age appropriate classes he could go to? Anyone in the family perhaps interested in getting involved in obedience or agility or, i don't know, nose work, free style, tricks, SOMETHING, anything? Ideally something that requires some mental effort on the part of the dog as well as homework so somebody is working with him every day. These tend to be really fun dogs - they learn quickly and are always up for a new challenge and you can almost FEEL them breathing a sigh of relief once they're given something constructive to do. But they're not easy to live with in their younger years or until they start to feel "fulfilled" Kristine |
| What Kristine said. My 1st OES show dog (not my 1st OES tho') was this way. My friends called her my Border Collie in an OES suit! Mental work did the trick. She learned everything in obedeince very quickly & enjoyed practicing years later when we were no longer competing. I trained her in conformation & obedience at the same time. She loved it. |
| We tire out our dogs with a nice long game of tug, if they don't just tire themselves out (ah, the benefits of having 2 dogs!) Kristine is right, you probably oughta give him something to do! Teach him to do things, even fun things like shaking hands or rolling over (: |
| I've never had a puppy, I just want to jump in and saw "Welcome!" to our little high energy bundle of fur on the web. Yours too! |
| Thank you all so much for the warm welcome and advice. We just started him in basic obedience classes last week, so he won't be able to start agility classes until we complete that. I agree he needs a job. Maybe the work with obedience will keep him mentally challenged. I know I'm supposed to work with him daily on obedience, but I'm not sure how many times a day or how long the training sessions should be. I've also been wondering if giving him a backpack to wear would help satisfy his need for a job. |
| Winston's backpack has changed a lot about him. He is much better behaved on walks and sleeps through the night now! It doesn't exhaust him, he still has zoomies and chases in the yard with Dexter every evening and plays just as hard. Obedience helped Dexter focus but didn't do much about his energy levels. He would respond to correction better and quicker after obedience. If you try a backpack be aware you can easily overload it, a little goes a long way; Winston's pack and load total weight is a little under 3 pounds. |
| Thank you for the advice. Should the backpack be worn only for walks? Also, I've been reluctant to play any tugging games with him because I've heard that a dog will lose respect for an owner if the owner doesn't win every time. Anybody have thoughts on that? |
| obedience training......try short sessions at 1st. 5-10 minutes a few differnt times a day. Work on just a few things. When he does it right 2 times in a row, praise big time & give a treat & move on to something else. Otherwise if you keep repeating it, they think they are doing somethig wrong & try to do it differently to please you. Becareful on the agility. the trainers sould be using equipment geared for puppies. Don't want to start jumping young dogs too high too soon. Ask Kristine about that. She has all the facts. |
juliedcoughlin wrote: Thank you for the advice. Should the backpack be worn only for walks? Also, I've been reluctant to play any tugging games with him because I've heard that a dog will lose respect for an owner if the owner doesn't win every time. Anybody have thoughts on that? As far as tug goes, I'd be more worried about his bite going off than anything at a young age. Soft tugging is fine when they are young & still growing. Leave hard tugging go until most of the grwoing of the head is done. It can grow for a long while & in sections! Some grow evenly, some growing in 4 different sections. |
| Thank you! |
| Welcome to the forum from Tennessee-- Lot's of great advice above-- I agree that short training sessions throughout the day keeps them mentally tired and along with regular exercise should help settle the energy moments! |
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