My partner & I are first time dog owners who brought home a Samoyed puppy this past spring. He was a terror of a puppy: nonstop biting, barking, chewing all the furniture, jumping on everyone, and most of all, LOSING his mind at every single dog.
Now he’s 7 months and while he’s grown out of most of those habits, the one that we can’t shake is the reactivity to dogs. Be absolutely flips out at the sight of every dog: lunging, screaming, jumping to the point that the whole neighborhood is staring at us. And when he doesn’t get to say hi, he turns his frustration on US. Chasing us around in circles growling and biting our legs and leash. We walk around with peanut butter on every walk just to try and break his focus on dogs or stop his melt downs, which’s works 50% of the time. All other food works 0% so we take what we can get.
It’s so sad and frustrating because Samoyeds are supposed to have wonderful temperaments and because no other dog we see on walks EVER acts like this.
Did we do something wrong? Did we severely mess something up when he was little? We’ve done so much training and classes but nothing seems to work. Or did we just make a bad pick of the litter…
Now he’s 7 months and while he’s grown out of most of those habits, the one that we can’t shake is the reactivity to dogs. Be absolutely flips out at the sight of every dog: lunging, screaming, jumping to the point that the whole neighborhood is staring at us. And when he doesn’t get to say hi, he turns his frustration on US. Chasing us around in circles growling and biting our legs and leash. We walk around with peanut butter on every walk just to try and break his focus on dogs or stop his melt downs, which’s works 50% of the time. All other food works 0% so we take what we can get.
It’s so sad and frustrating because Samoyeds are supposed to have wonderful temperaments and because no other dog we see on walks EVER acts like this.
Did we do something wrong? Did we severely mess something up when he was little? We’ve done so much training and classes but nothing seems to work. Or did we just make a bad pick of the litter…