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Is my trainer crazy?

16K views 135 replies 52 participants last post by  hunterisgreat 
#1 ·
Our GSD, maverick, is now 8 months old. He's been developing a bit of dominant/aggressive behavior. He bit me a few weeks ago (drew blood, required trip to ER with no stitches), and bit a friend of ours over the weekend. Since the bite with me, we decided to get him a new trainer. Our usual trainer wanted us to hand him over for 3 weeks and they would kennel him at the boarders and train him during the day. I was totally uncomfortable with him being in a kennel... especially when I believe that my husband and I should have a direct role in his behavior training.

The trainer was landed on is a German Shepherd specific trainer. Very pricey, but has lots of awards and trains K-9 dogs as well as domestic and guard dogs.

Our first training session was last week. It was pretty good and I was happy when we left. At this session yesterday, it got pretty intense.

I'm 8 months pregnant and already hormonal and emotional. After Maverick tried to bite my husband during training a few times, the trainer took him over and chained him up in the yard. Then he put a second choker collar on him tied to a leash and proceeded to antagonize him. Everytime he lunged, the chain would choke him, and he would get "corrected" from my husband. This went on for 5 minutes and I had to walk away. Maverick finally stopped lunging and just laid down. Then after the rest of the training session, the trainer took him inside and had him on his choker with his leash and used a foam baseball bat with a glove on it to antagonize him again. He never hit him, just tapped him to make him irritated and rubbed him all over with it. Maverick bit it so hard a few times it ripped it out of the trainers hand. Eventually he just put up with it and tried to crawl under a table instead of biting.

Has anyone else had any training this intense before?
 
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#129 ·
Practicing NILIF is great for managing both canines and kiddo's(especially when they reach the teen years)
 
#131 ·
While I find a lot of similarities in working with children as in working with dogs, in the context of this thread, and the way the comment was phrased, it should have ticked off everyone, as it was probably meant to do.

And someone is out there still having a jolly time watching us continue to discuss it.
 
#132 ·
I'd agree with the consistency and fairness thing. Even though dogs think differently from us I think we share a sense of justice and know when it's not been handed out.

I have a four year old GSD that I adopted 5 months ago. She has grumbled at two men in the last few days, one my neighbour that she has been fine with before. I live alone with her and wonder if she is getting to feel too protective towards me. Does anyone have any ideas? Should she go to kennels one day a week for example?

My last dog I regularly confined to his kennel every day for a couple of hours to stop him "claiming" the house. Should I do the same with her - would it help?

RIP Jade Anderson mauled to death by four (unsupervised) dogs in the home of a friend in the UK. Owner yesterday was sentenced to four months suspended (the harshest sentence British law allows - at the moment)
 
#133 ·
Sorry its taken me so long to respond...

We've done alot of talking with this particular trainer. Since the day that he antagonized Maverick into biting and then corrected the biting, we haven't done training like that. Every training session has been walking on leash (with choker collar), sits, downs, and stays. When maverick is in the house, he keeps his choker collar on with a 4 inch dog tab so that we can "correct" him when he bites. He hasn't shown any aggressive tendencies to me or my husband since then, but he does bite when he gets bored or wants to play. The trainer's thought process is that before we can correct the majority of the biting, we need to put someone in charge. With me being as pregnant as I am, I'm not in the best condition to be dealing with correcting a 90 pound puppy (he's a big boy). So my husband does all the training and yes I go and watch. We still do training everyday and when my husband is home, he's pretty good. He listens to him and hardly ever has to be told things more than once. When my husband is at work, however, its another story. I have no authority over him so he takes advantage of that. The trainer says that once he learns the commands and what is right and wrong, then it will be my turn to do the power struggle. I still correct him, but it takes alot more corrections from me than my husband.

Those of you that talked about owning a german shepherd blah blah... I know what comes from a german shepherd. He is not my first, he is actually my 4th. My family bred them as I was growing up and we kept one out of the litters. We did donate 1 of the 3 to the police K-9 department and ended up giving the last puppy to a family, but we kept one until she died at 15.

A few talked about his breeding. I'm not sure what information you wanted to see... but his father's AKC number is DN05848408 and his mothers is DN25285702.
 
#134 ·
What are their registered names? I agree with the trainer, you need to step up your authority and at the same time have a good bond with the pup to succeed. Praise and corrections should be balanced. Make sure you are praising him often!
 
#136 ·
Possibly you aren't describing what he was doing accurately due to your untrained eye, and possibly he was doing some poorly conceived form of horrible table/back tie training used to teach a protection dog when aggression is allowed and when it is not
 
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