Training Help Plz

[Sasuke]

i recently adopted a 2-3 year old male rottweiler from our local pound. He is wonderful with people and very eager to please. He is the perfect type of dog for me except for one thing. When im walking him and we encounter another dog he will fight and pull and growl. He will also huff and pull for about 10 minutes after the encounter. I correct him by saying no and bad dog but after a month Ive seen no change in the behavoir. I was wondering if it is a behavior that can be corrrected and if so how. Thank you for any advice anyone has.

[Renee750il]

Your dog will probably always be somewhat dog aggressive. It may be a result of something he was taught by his previous owners. You're doing the right thing, though. He needs to be socialized, just as you are doing.

Try to distract him with something, a toy or even a small treat, when you are approaching another dog. If he responds to you and pays little or no attention to the other dog, praise him, pet him lavishly and, if you're using treats, give him one.

Remember, it's not just a matter of correcting the behaviour you want him to stop. Rewarding him for doing what you want him to do will give you a much better chance of restructuring his behaviour. Our dogs really want to please us (most of the time, anyway), so positive reinforcement is your most potent training tool.

Just don't forget, though, no matter how well things go, you won't ever want to leave him in a situation where he might be tempted to revert to his old, dog aggressive behaviour. He is a Rottweiler, and no matter how well mannered he becomes, if anything ever happened, he'd get the blame, even if he was completely innocent. I learned about that having German Shepherds. One of mine used to get blamed for things that happened in the middle of the night - when he was sleeping peacefully on the couch - in my living room!

[Sasuke]

thanks for the help

[k9rotehexe]

Originally Posted by Renee750il

Try to distract him with something, a toy or even a small treat, when you are approaching another dog. If he responds to you and pays little or no attention to the other dog, praise him, pet him lavishly and, if you're using treats, give him one.

I totally agree with distraction. Give him couple of small jerks and talk to him so he pays attention to you. I also have had good results from using the halti head collar. Give that a try. Its great for dogs that get a little aggressive around other dogs and for pullers as well.

Marion

[Brattina88]

I'll second what Renee said
Kudos to you for saving a life. I'm currently fostering a beagle mix from our local pound. (Don't know how long we're gonna use the 'fostering' tittle, I might just keep her )
Just one question... Is your dog neutered?

[Renee750il]

Right, Brattina, you're "fostering" Roxy. And I have very small dogs! HA! (By the way, would you believe, at 8 months, Shiva's up to 115 pounds - without a spare ounce of fat anywhere! Wish I could say the same.)

You may as well face it; you've got another dog. I'll bet Roxie and Maddie have all kinds of fun together.

try walking your dog with a gentle leader, this will deter your dog from lunging and pulling your arms off.

[PETOWNER]

Has anyone tried to use a harness to train, I have heard of allot of people using the roman style and cliping to the "o" ring on the chest so when the dog acts up you just turn them right around to you. Has anyone tried of heard of this method?

[Renee750il]

Hadn't heard of that; it sounds like a good method. I've always liked using a harness to walk a big dog since it's just easier on both of us, but the O-ring on the chest is a great approach. It would definitely be worth a try, especially with an aggressive dog.

[Sheba]

You should start with the easy words and go to the hard words.The easy words are:sit,lay,stay,come.The mild words are:steady pace (slowly walking),ground (lay),trot (kinda fast)The hard words are:gallop (fast run), race (race), slow(slow) That is how you should train your dog.Wendy knows all of those words already and she is learning more in my training class.