I have a one year male dog named Canelo. I dont now what breed he is but he looks to be 1/2 pitbull. I want to train him but im afraid he'll attack me if i dont give him a treat or something. I also want to train him to not attack my cat when I bring her to him, it happend once n i dont want it to happen again.

It seems like your always giving him a treat like your not praising him so maybe give him a treat and praise him or the other way around. Also for your cat put your dog in its kennel cage thing and have your cat walk up to meet him make sure the cage is locked.
good luck megan

What you need to do is reward him for positive behavior and either ignore the bad behavior or tell him in a loud voice Ahh! Ahh! When he does stop the bad behavior reward him right away, within 2 seconds. He will soon be doing the positive behaviors for treats. When you give them attention or treats during a bad behavior, they learn that this is what they get rewarded for.

Why do you own a dog that you are afraid of?

I agree with abbeyrose07!

i think this is where alota people fail in dog training NEVER BE SCARED TO GET BIT and before you tackle the cat problem make sure your dog is submissive to you then you can do the kennel trick or make him submit to the cat

I agree witth abbeyrose07, badkittyamy, soshelper and pittman.

yea i agree with badkittyamy you shouldnt own a dog if your afraid of it attacking you and im sure its only cuz its a pit but you keep being scared and feeding it treats thats a big NO thats just training him to scare you so he gets a treat and since you've probly been doing this awhile its gona be a little harder to break

No no no, feeding it treats is not teaching it to scare you. That's silly. You also don't want the dog to submit to the cat, you want him to be friends with the cat. The only way your going to get a dog to submit to a species other than another dog or yourself is by force and that's not a good idea with aggressive dogs.

First thing I need to know is why are you afraid of him? How is he aggressive? Has he bitten you or somebody else? When he did, was he defending his food, toys, a couch or yard? Does he just growl? Will he approach you friendly at all?

Also, he will not attack you if you don't give him a treat. Dog's will not seek out vengeance like that. If he attacks you, it will be because you are not understanding him and what he needs.

i didnt mean its teaching it to scare him but giving it treats when its like this reinforces his behavior cuz im sure whatever its doing he wants it changed and you arent making them friends dogs are pack animals there are no friends in their system if you dont want the cat to be attacked you must simply make it higher then the dog and how do you think you teach a dog to submit when hes never had to before FORCE i mean you dont have to be rough but you cant be a little girl about it either.

but since he is aggressive it will take you longer then one who isnt aggressive

I never taught my dog to scare me, submit to cats, and I never once hit my dog or smugged its nose in it's mess. That is were most owners go wrong and why these dogs end up in shelters like mine did. She came to me from the shelter trying to kill any small thing that moved(including cats) because she was supposed to be a gundog but was scared of the gunshot. I taught a hunter to not hunt, to get along and nothing else. She doesn't have to be buddies, just co-exist peacefully. My dog also only peed in the house once in 11years because when she peed I brough her over to wear she peed and had her watch me clean it up, then let her sniff the rag and said to her," Ginger, you make that smelly stuff outside because this is your forever home and you don't dirty the house like that." She seemed to understand my lecture and has never done it again inside. When she would go outside to use the bathroom and if she did go I would give her a carrot so she'd know she's doing something right. We have had the same routine every since and she knows that she's a good girl.

look i dont know why everyone wants to shoot down stuff i say but letme break it down you may have not to this is just 1 thing he could do and i never put my dogs nose in its mess either cuz i found out it was useless since half the time they didnt know why it was happening but i'll say it again thats one thing he could do since people have diffrent methods im not gona find them all out and write em down

and thats all i got to say cuz i know yall probly them people that dont like to be proven wrong so you keep going at it believe me i know my bros like that but like i said thats all i got but good luck with your stuff

quote:

i didnt mean its teaching it to scare him but giving it treats when its like this reinforces his behavior cuz im sure whatever its doing he wants it changed and you arent making them friends dogs are pack animals there are no friends in their system if you dont want the cat to be attacked you must simply make it higher then the dog and how do you think you teach a dog to submit when hes never had to before FORCE i mean you dont have to be rough but you cant be a little girl about it either.

If she's giving him treats when he's growling, then she's just reinforcing the growling. She can easily put it on cue and be done with that. A dog will not accept treats or food when it's stressed or insecure and an aggressive dog is insecure, therefore will not eat. So if he's taking the food, then he's only growling to get the food, he's not being aggressive. My dog growls on command to, big deal. There's a difference between her growling because it was reinforced and it's on command and her growling because she feels threatened.

And we are shooting down what you say because we are NOT dog whisperer fans. You DON'T need to use force, pain or intimidation to get a dog cooperate. Half of his methods are trash anyway, all that hype about dominance. That is the human mind working, not the dog's.

When I'm working with an aggression case, I before I do ANYTHING, I ask why. Why is he acting the way he is? I'm not looking at it from human standpoint, I am looking at it from the dogs. I'm not looking for how another dog would "fix" that dog because I'm NOT a dog and any attempts I make to immitate another dog aren't going to work the way I want them to. I want to communicate to the dog to get him to do what I want, not force him to or intimidate him into doing it. The dog KNOWS I'm not a dog and any of those methods to immitate a dominant dog's behavior is going to come out as intimidation and force.

This dog can helped without being forced into submission or dominated if somebody would just look at his behvior and understand his true intentions for behaving the way he does.

A truely "dominant" dog is hard to come by. People only label things as dominance because it's easier than admitting that they are doing something wrong and that the dog is what they make it.

you just want the dogs to be little people but no matter what you do dogs are pack animals and still have wild instincts and behaviors. so you can do your little training a "person" thing but i had better results with a mix training of the dog whisperer and a couple others peopeles.
and my mom had did that training with treats and all that with my lab and now hes unstable, he cant calm down anywhere the house, on walks, and even out in the back where hed be the most calm(hes like 10 years old with thiroid and who knows what else), will bite little kids and kills things all the time. to me seems pointless but people have diffrent methods and most like to argue how theirs is superior but i think thats human nature


but thats all i gots to say

quote:

Originally posted by pitt-man:
you just want the dogs to be little people but no matter what you do dogs are pack animals and still have wild instincts and behaviors. so you can do your little training a "person" thing but i had better results with a mix training of the dog whisperer and a couple others peopeles.
and my mom had did that training with treats and all that with my lab and now hes unstable, he cant calm down anywhere the house, on walks, and even out in the back where hed be the most calm(hes like 10 years old with thiroid and who knows what else), will bite little kids and kills things all the time. to me seems pointless but people have diffrent methods and most like to argue how theirs is superior but i think thats human nature


but thats all i gots to say

And that's exactly what it looks like you are trying to do. It looks like you are saying that sugarbird's methods aren't good enough and that she is wrong and you are right. She never said that they were "people". Just because she has different methods than yours doesn't mean that hers aren't good enough, because she is trying to convince the dog to do something instead of forcing it to like you do. Forcing your dog to do something will just make everything worse and harder to deal with.

Ok so your lab misbehaves. What are you doing about it? If he was correctly trained from the beginning I really doubt that he would be doing this now.

If dogs were supposed to be "little people" dogs wouldn't exist.

i aint saying hers aint good enough but they didnt work with my dogs and dont get started with my lab cuz i was too young to train a dog and it doesnt seem to matter how much i work with him hes the same.

and dont try to contridict my methods you think im pushing the dog down and im not and i do give them treats after but im not showing them it so they'll do it and when i did this it didnt make things harder cuz my pit was trained by the time she was 3 months which is probly when most people are taking their pups to walmart so im guessing i did something right

Yes but you never said that. And you left all of those facts out of it. If you said all of that I probably wouldn't have posted that.

When you train your lab don't give yourself the feeling that its doing no good. Then its not going to get you anywhere. Try to train him when you are in a good mood, and don't push things too far. If he or you gets stressed out, stop. Just leave and try again later when things calm down.

I know it seems like I am against everything you say. I just want to get my opinion out there and try to help people take care of their pets properly (I'm not directing that towards you, I'm sure you're a great owner). Sometimes I need to rant a little to get my point across, whether I'm right or not.

If you used them correctly, then they would have worked and if I were available to explain and demonstrate them to you, I would guarantee it.

quote:

my pit was trained by the time she was 3 months which is probly when most people are taking their pups to walmart so im guessing i did something right

I had a pitbull/basenji mix once and trained him using my methods and nothing but positive reinforcement, no corrections, no force, no domination, no dog whispere methods. By the time he was 4 months old, he knew all the basic obedience commands (sit, stay, laydown, wait, heel, come) along with stand, beg, left paw, right paw, left circle, right circle, roll over, back up. He would bring me his rope and tennis ba*ll on command and could distinguish between the two. He could fetch. He would balance food on his nose and paws. And he also stuck his tongue out on command and scratched himself on command. That's not all he knew either. Granted he was a smart dog, but he wouldn't have gotten that far had I not trained him the way I did.

And if you want to try throwing out failure stories because your mom didn't train the dog correctly using MY methods, I can do it too with your methods. My stepfather used dog whisperer methods to train his dog to heel and when I became responsible for the dog, she would run when she saw the leash. It took me 3 months of work before she would finally come running happily and excited like a normal dog when I picked up the leash and said "wanna go for a walk!?".

im never in a good mood since i suffer from depression but ive been trying to train him for like 2 or 3 years and nothing seemed to happen.

and my pit wasnt scared of her leash shed get excited when she saw it but she probly could've known all them tricks too but when she was born the guy i got her from had to bring her back to life twice so when i got her she had looked like she had suffered from it but she learned fast or it seemed like it to me

I don't think that the fact your dog almost died twice has anything to do with her learning capabilites and trainability. Being trained in three months is about average for people who start training at an early age and are consistent with it. Waiting until that age or more to take it to a training class only makes it worse for the owners. My pups start training the day they come home, there is no waiting for a certain age.

My point of posting all of the tricks I taught my pit mix to do was to point out what you can do with positive reinforcement. It would make it difficult to train several of those things if your dog has even the slightest fear of you and that's unfortunately what dog whisperer methods do. This cannot be done with any puppy though, Buddy was smarter than average.

What methods are you trying to use to help your labrador? If your interested, you can tell me in detail exactly what he does that you want fixed and I can offer you my best advice without seeing the behavior in person. That is if you don't mind trying my "little people" dog training methods

im doing what your saying positive reinforcement but it works for the day i train him then the next day he just forgets it or even if someone else comes to watch he doesnt pay attention. he has too many things wrong for me to write down and most cant really be fixed cuz i know most dogs suffer from fear of thunder plus hes gona die soon anyway and most we have fixes so he cant do it

breaking in-- lock door
and some others i cant think off the top of my head but maybe something to make him calm down inside cuz i know my mom wants him inside now since hes old and our blue heeler mix is calm so theres no problems with him

Stay calm, reward good behaviors as soon as they are done, never intimidate but establish that you are alpha. Basic obedience helps and it gains respect from your dog. As far as your cat, take a towel or come cloth and rub your cat down real good leaving it's scent and place it under your dogs food bowl so it becomes used to the smell. Good luck!