philosophik
New member
Hey all. Just wanted to come here to vent a bit maybe get some recommendations or even just some reassurance that what I'm doing is the right way to be doing things.
My wife and I brought in a puppy we found about 8-9 months ago on the side of a road with his litter. He's a mixed breed, not entirely sure what with but he's smaller about 23 pounds. We assume that he was about 6 weeks when we found his litter and have been working constantly with him ever since.
Over the past 4-5 months there's been one there for sure we've dealt with is his reactivity in general to people, birds, other dogs, the wind, etc.. but his biting is driving me up a wall and I'm definitely at a breaking point with him. He's never broken skin from a bite until tonight when I tried to separate him and my other dog from playing too rough with one another. It's been a long week of frustrations from him and outside factors so it's my fault that I put myself in the situation to begin with but his teeth scratched the surface a little bit but not a true puncture.
Currently his three huge issues that we have with him is:
His barking is probably the loudest sound I've personally ever heard in my life. It's incredibly high pitch and it just resonates off my walls so bad that when he gets in his fits of barking I have to put headphones in so it doesn't hurt my ear. This could be set off by literally anything outside or inside the house. My wife could talk to loudly to our other dog or cats and he starts what I call attention barking. If there's someone walking their dog or sitting in their front lawn he will not stop until they leave his sight. We've tried everything with this from distracting with more training and high value treats, to shutting blinds and windows, (This is the least effective method as he just breaks our blinds so at this point we just leave them open while he's in the room.) or just taking him outside in our fenced in yard to play and tire out to distract him.
The last is a huge issue that I have with him and I feel like most of his issues stem from this. My man doesn't know how to stay calm for any amount of time or rest unless it's in his crate. His crate is in our bedroom and he doesn't have access to it unless we command him to go there (Multitude of reasons for this I'd rather not get into, so moving this somewhere that he can rest go in freely at the moment isnt an option). He's at a point now where I really only do enforced naps once a day for about an hour or two unless he just incontrollable then I get him to cool off for an additional hour. He does seem to try to rest but the smallest thing can just bring him from what seems to be 0% to 100% in seconds.
He gets plenty of stimulation from puzzles, training, playing with us and our other dog, and he goes on multiple walks usually 2 30 minutes for a total of a couple miles including plenty of time for sniffing throughout the day. I can tell that he's tired 9/10 times and just needs to rest but when he won't let himself do it he just becomes this terror. We've tried toning down everything with training and exercise to see if it's helpful but he honestly is just worse.
Every day it seems that it's a new challenge with this guy. I'm not going to say that I'm doing everything perfect, I loose my cool, I yell and cuss, but I really try not to because I get more frustrated with myself for not being patient with him. I love him to pieces and I can't imagine my life without him by rehoming or BE but I wish at least once every day that I could go back to my life prior to having him. We're going to continue pushing because he deserves a loving home and a happy life. With that said we're getting him neutered as recommended by the behaviorist we're going to start seeing shortly. Hopefully after the 6-8 weeks with them we will start getting back to a normality in our house. This has been the hardest 9 months we've been through from dealing with him and other life events shit is crazy atm.
Anyway if you've made it this far, thanks for reading. This has been relieving for me just to get it out into a space that I know people can understand.
My wife and I brought in a puppy we found about 8-9 months ago on the side of a road with his litter. He's a mixed breed, not entirely sure what with but he's smaller about 23 pounds. We assume that he was about 6 weeks when we found his litter and have been working constantly with him ever since.
Over the past 4-5 months there's been one there for sure we've dealt with is his reactivity in general to people, birds, other dogs, the wind, etc.. but his biting is driving me up a wall and I'm definitely at a breaking point with him. He's never broken skin from a bite until tonight when I tried to separate him and my other dog from playing too rough with one another. It's been a long week of frustrations from him and outside factors so it's my fault that I put myself in the situation to begin with but his teeth scratched the surface a little bit but not a true puncture.
Currently his three huge issues that we have with him is:
- Biting
- Barking (Yelping)
- Not sleeping during the day or resting.
His barking is probably the loudest sound I've personally ever heard in my life. It's incredibly high pitch and it just resonates off my walls so bad that when he gets in his fits of barking I have to put headphones in so it doesn't hurt my ear. This could be set off by literally anything outside or inside the house. My wife could talk to loudly to our other dog or cats and he starts what I call attention barking. If there's someone walking their dog or sitting in their front lawn he will not stop until they leave his sight. We've tried everything with this from distracting with more training and high value treats, to shutting blinds and windows, (This is the least effective method as he just breaks our blinds so at this point we just leave them open while he's in the room.) or just taking him outside in our fenced in yard to play and tire out to distract him.
The last is a huge issue that I have with him and I feel like most of his issues stem from this. My man doesn't know how to stay calm for any amount of time or rest unless it's in his crate. His crate is in our bedroom and he doesn't have access to it unless we command him to go there (Multitude of reasons for this I'd rather not get into, so moving this somewhere that he can rest go in freely at the moment isnt an option). He's at a point now where I really only do enforced naps once a day for about an hour or two unless he just incontrollable then I get him to cool off for an additional hour. He does seem to try to rest but the smallest thing can just bring him from what seems to be 0% to 100% in seconds.
He gets plenty of stimulation from puzzles, training, playing with us and our other dog, and he goes on multiple walks usually 2 30 minutes for a total of a couple miles including plenty of time for sniffing throughout the day. I can tell that he's tired 9/10 times and just needs to rest but when he won't let himself do it he just becomes this terror. We've tried toning down everything with training and exercise to see if it's helpful but he honestly is just worse.
Every day it seems that it's a new challenge with this guy. I'm not going to say that I'm doing everything perfect, I loose my cool, I yell and cuss, but I really try not to because I get more frustrated with myself for not being patient with him. I love him to pieces and I can't imagine my life without him by rehoming or BE but I wish at least once every day that I could go back to my life prior to having him. We're going to continue pushing because he deserves a loving home and a happy life. With that said we're getting him neutered as recommended by the behaviorist we're going to start seeing shortly. Hopefully after the 6-8 weeks with them we will start getting back to a normality in our house. This has been the hardest 9 months we've been through from dealing with him and other life events shit is crazy atm.
Anyway if you've made it this far, thanks for reading. This has been relieving for me just to get it out into a space that I know people can understand.