[Verivus]

Sorry for the long post!

Within the last 6 months Kaiser has become (what I assume is) very territorial of the house. When a stranger enters the home or anywhere on the property he will charge and bark at them. If they stand still he will stop and back off while whining and pacing. If they move even 1 step he will charge & bark again. He makes no move to bite. This does not stop until I remove him to his crate, which of course is immediately. Obviously this behavior is unacceptable.

I feel that it is my fault that he does this. I never have guests over at my place. Ever. I don't have anything against people coming over, it just doesn't seem to happen. We meet outside instead like the coffee shop, so he has never really had the chance to learn how to acceptably greet strangers in the home. Outside of the property he is a perfect gentleman on or off leash, and he's getting older (will be 2 in April) which is why I think it's territorial, but maybe it's reactivity; I don't know since I'm not too experienced in these types of things.

Well now I live with my friend as my roommate and, while he doesn't have guests over very often, he does bring people to the house a few times a month. While Kaiser can always be crated or put in my room when people are over, that really isn't a fix to the issue. I'm annoyed with crating him every time someone wants to come over, but I don't really know the proper way (if there is a way) to train him out of this behavior by myself.

I know I should get a trainer or behaviorist, but money is way too tight right now for me to do that. The earliest I can possibly even think about spending money on a trainer would be April... more realistically probably not until June. So I guess my question is what can I do to stop this behavior on my own? The only thing I can think of is to practice with people coming over to the house, but I don't really have anyone to ask who'd have the time to do that. Plus I'm not sure that idea would work anyway...