My dog is a monster.

[Taqroy]

I mean you all already knew that. But she's being a particular monster about shedding - a not nice monster. I was scritching her down the other day and pulled out a few tufts of fur from her butt and she snarked, flipped around, and landed on Murphy (who was laying on the floor minding his own business). I repeated this yesterday without Murphy in the room and she flipped around and put her mouth on me. She immediately followed that up with a weird combo of submissive/play behaviors.

I have been working on her accepting uncomfortable contact for the last four years. Treats have not made this better - I hate to say it, but the main thing that has made it better is forcing her to accept it (I'm talking things like paw handling and brushing here, not holding her down and tweezing her ear fur or something). How should I proceed? I don't want to make this worse but putting her mouth on someone plucking fur is not an acceptable behavior. I want to fix this permanently - I don't want to manage it long term so I'd really prefer options that don't include long term management (short term is fine).

 

[FG167]

Just out of curiosity, have you tried marker training (I saw you said treats). But actually MARKING that certain things are good?

My ex's Border Collie would bite at me when brushing out his pants. He had never been brushed and was seriously matted (his testicles were matted to his legs). I started with a touch, then a light tug, then a firm pull etc while marking. Initially when trying to JUST treat, he was having none of it, but when I switched to an actual teaching game, he did better. ALTHOUGH, I also leashed him to a pole and basically made it: either you accept the click/treat or else I'll continue to do it and you won't get the click treat. It took literally one session (Border Collies...)

 

[Taqroy]

Just out of curiosity, have you tried marker training (I saw you said treats). But actually MARKING that certain things are good?

I have not! I never really considered it and now I'm not sure why. That's how I got Mu to accept handling during training sessions (I like petting her but she didn't like being touched while working). I'll try this tonight and report back!

 

[Taqroy]

So I tried marking the brush the way you described FG. It sort of worked - I mean she let me brush her but it was very ears back, giant stress eyes, occasional brush biting, and overall it was a little unnerving. I switched to rewarding for me petting/pulling on fur (all over, not just the tufts) and that sort of went better but she still bashed my hand away a couple times. It went better yet when I started rewarding with a toy. I'll keep it up and hopefully we'll see some improvement.