Hey there! Looking for advice for training my father’s 2 year old English mastiff. My father rescued him from an unfavorable environment a little before his first birthday. I ran into some financial troubles and unfortunately had to move back in with my dad for a few months. But I’m not sure if I can make it too long with this dogs behaviors without losing it. He was taught how to “shake” his paw.. and ever since he has been taking it upon himself to give you his 50 pound paw whenever he wants your attention and scratches the hell out of my legs! All day. Every day. My legs are so scratched up and bruised just from a few days here. I’m not sure how my father has put up with this for so long. The dog is already over 200 lbs, massive dog. So I’m sure you can see why this behavior is completely unacceptable. Looking for advice on how to start training the dog out of these behaviors? He also likes to jump on people when he’s super excited to see them at first, but again, 200 lb dog can NOT be doing that. Grandma can’t even come over anymore in fear the dog would completely take her out. Thank you in advance for any advice given
@fallencolin my dog used to do that paw thing, my mom taught her shake when I wasnt looking and then I had to suffer a month or two getting constantly slapped by my dog lol. If you dont reward the behavior he will stop eventually. Which means, if he does it looking for attention, absolutely ignore him until he takes his paw off you. Make sure your dad's on board with this too or it will literally never work.
You can kinda do the same thing with jumping but my dog still struggles with that one as jumping is very self rewarding. She wants to be closer to people's faces so if she jumps she gets that even if you do not pay attention to her. And shes pretty active so the physical act of jumping is fun. It's a tougher nut to crack that's for sure. You can also try asking for alternate behavior, like teach the dog that when hes excited he should sit instead of jump and make sitting more rewarding than jumping. This is something that has honestly never worked for my dog, as again jumping is just very very self rewarding for her, but it might work for your pup!
