Re: If I use the spray bottle as a punishment does
For fence fighting they will get sprayed with the hose in the but. Normally, when I grab for the hose, they fly for their houses.
I very rarely spray any of them, and never did when they were puppies, but if the barking becomes incorrigible (they failed to respond to my ENOUGH!), then I can reach for the nozzle, and you could hear a pin drop. After a few moments, I will say "Good Quiet" and put the nozzle up. That is usually followed by a few whines that I have to either ignore or reach for the nozzle again, but it is fairly effective.
I am really too soft with puppies. I do not like to "punish" them at all until they are about five months old. I do not punish for house training problems, even if an older dog lets go in the house. If it not a normal event, I figure the dog was sick or did not do well with a change in routine, like me getting up going to the bathroom and five thirty and then going back t sleep for four hours when I usually let them out at five thirty. With puppies, punishment for that in not necessary. Proper scheduling and vigilence keeps accidents from happening. Accidents are charged to the human.
I do wonder if I would have sprayed The Screamer just once good when she was a puppy if that would have knocked that behavior out of her.
But I really do not want my dogs to fear me. I prefer to provide them with a task they know how to do and praise them for that. Puppies in particular, I am careful with. Dogs give puppies a puppy license where they can pretty much get away with anything, then one day they decide they need to lay down the law. Usually the puppy license expires around five months. So I kind of like to give them that five months.
