@dumbfounded Naw, all dogs can learn to chill tf out in the house after getting appropriate mental and physical exercise. I guarantee hunters with working gun dogs aren't tolerating their Weims nipping, stealing, and chewing in the house when they aren't hunting.
@the_journey Reward calm any time you can, even if dog settles for 30 seconds. Atm you are meeting dogs needs but you are also building an athlete adolescent. You need to teach dog that calm is good. Also look at some of the resources for teaching calm in the other dog training sub. I like karen overalls protocol for relaxation because it is very nicely structured and planned.
@the_journey Look up controlled relaxation, capturing calm, as well as place from Kikopet. She’s a positive trainer and will help with the relaxation bit. For manners and corrections we layered on an e collar and used it in the house to set boundaries.
We wouldn’t use it as a correction I guess but more as a way to provide correction when he was ignoring us in the house. 99% of the time he was a great boy but sometimes he’d do stuff.
@the_journey We enforced nap times from the time our girl was small (she would have played and misbehaved all day of left to her own devices). We also captured calm every time she lay down next to me on her bed she was rewarded for a nice “settle” and praised (literally had a Tupperware container sitting on the coffee table with her kibble to reward good behaviour). For the first several months of her life she was created during meal times and gets absolutely no table or people food at all. Now we can have any meal with her around and be sitting on the couch and she will either take herself to her crate and lay there until we put our plates up or she will lay on her bed beside me on the floor until I put we put plates up! It took a lot of repetition and rewarding the behaviours we wanted to see (why we used kibble so we could subtract out of her food intake as she outgrew the puppy stage and could have whatever she wanted) but she’s a year and a half now and knows how to go settle and knows that she is not allowed in the kitchen when we are prepping food, has great threshold boundaries and it just became habit to reward her and praise her for the behaviours we wanted! Dogs can bark outside and we will praise and reward that she doesn’t bark or react etc. Its a matter of teaching them what behaviours get them rewards so they understand what you want! It sounds like you have a smart pup from his outdoor behaviours so he should pick this up quickly. Our girl has tons of freedom too and I can trust her in the house and have been able to for months (paper towel and socks seems to be the only hard fought battle lol but everyone has a vice so these are manageable). She now loves to sit on top of the couch snoopy style and watch the world go by and I reward and praise her for that good behaviour as well since she’s just chilling on her own!
