Some advice, please

[jonathon087]

First off, I'm new to these forums. I got my wife her yorkie back when I intended to stay in the USAF. She's now a year old, I'm no longer in the service, and my wife is madly in love with Daisy (our yorkie.) Now, there's a few problems. I wouldn't necessarily call them problems, as she's extremely small and literally presents no problems. One of my biggest concerns is her inability to control herself when it comes to passerby... I'll walk her down the street and she'll lose all sense of self awareness and bolt towards whoever she sees. Luckily I have her on the leash. Is there a way to get her to calm down a bit? Is that just her puppy tendencies acting up? Or is this a problem I can fix now rather than have it get worse down the road? Another problem I'm having with her is the down command. She is completely obliterate to it. In my opinion, she's a wonderful and extremely intelligent dog. She learned sit within seconds, and surprisingly, shake with relative ease. She also fetches and drops the toy, albeit about two feet away, when I say 'drop it.' Any advice on these 'problems'? I love my dog deeply, as does my wife; I'm just concerned about her well being when she loses control over herself and I believe that her learning the down command would greatly help her out. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated!

[jonathon087]

A few notes on the down command. I've tried placing the treat near her nose and then slowly lowering it to the ground by her feet and moving it away. She'll be interested until I get about half way to the ground and then gives up. I've also tried applying gentle pressure on her shoulders, to no avail. And giving a little downward pressure on her collar just causes her to dig her paws in.

[4doggiemama]

Bumping this for you. Have you done a search of the net for ideas? I'm not too go with dog training. Good luck. ~Joanne~

[cathys]

First off our you using a harness or a collar? You should always use a harness, this gives you more control. Also shorten the leash, if she can run off she has too much leash. Start teaching her to heal. Don't let her away from your side, that will give you complete control. Hope this helps.

[darnlora]

Just do not give up!!! Yorkies are extremely smart! Sometimes smarter than their owners ... how else can they steal a humans heart so fully? lol Love and perseverence!!!!

[jonathon087]

I have a harness, but I've always used the collar. I'll start using the harness more, though. Any tips on the heal command? Other than that... I really need to persuade my wife to let me try and crate train her... She sleeps with us at night and I'm afraid that's going to end badly one night with us rolling over on her...

[capt_noonie]

Well, I'll try to help you with the down command, bc Uni is a spaz on the leash and I won't go there right now. But if you want to browse the training forum, you can read all about my crazy monkey.

Anyway, I'm going to assume your Daisy is either tiny or a puppy, or both. Try the down command with her sitting in a chair or stool, instead of the floor. Go for the sit, then with a treat in your hand, slowly lower it below the seat level of the stool. Sometimes with these tinies, their nose is only a few inches from the ground, so when you lower the treat to the ground, they just look at it and go, Yeah? what? So if you lower is past the seat level, they will have to go in a down position to get to it. Keep your free hand ready over her butt in case her booty goes up while her head goes down. As soon as you see her elbows bend say good girl and slowly keep moving the treat lower until she is all the way down. then praise praise praise!!!

[jonathon087]

Wow... I never would've actually thought of that. That's actually... really smart. Now I'm going to be trying that all the time tomorrow...

[capt_noonie]

Good luck!!! I'm good at trick training, but TERRIBLE at leash training, so if you've got questions. Here's Uni's vid when she was 4 months old.

YouTube - Smartest 4 mo old yorkie knows right...

If you check out my profile page, you can see her most recent vid. Now she is doing it without hand signals, just voice commands. BUT understand that at each and every meal is trick training time, and she does not get treats, only on the rare occasion. Trick training every day 2x a day, even if she already knows the tricks, she still do it.

[jonathon087]

That's a pretty amazing puppy you have there! I don't know... Our Daisy gets so out of hand sometimes. She loses interest really easily all the time. Especially when my wife is around. She adores my wife. She'll listen to every word I say until she comes around, then it's all energy. She's really intelligent, in my opinion. She practically learned fetch on her own. My wife just started tossing her toy across the room after a game of tug-o-war and she'd just bring it back like she wasn't done. Then she just got better and better. Eventually I got her to listen to 'drop it', and then she'll drop the toy. A little far away, but it's coming around. I've got some extra time on my hands here lately, so I'm going to be doubling down on her training.

[capt_noonie]

Good job for both of you! I say if she favors you wife, perhaps ask her to do the trick training for now. Uni liked my bf more at first (now me more heh heh ) that's how he got her to do all that in the vid. He stayed home from work (we own our own business, but still...) for 2 weeks to teach her all that. Each day I would come home to a new trick. It was awesome.

[jonathon087]

Oh, she definitely favors my wife more. That is, until we both go to bed. I stay up a bit later in the evening because of second shift, but the minute I come to bed, Daisy moves away from her and snuggles up with me. I don't know if it's the Alpha male that she thinks I am, or if she's just comforted by sleeping next to me. Either way... I've just gotta figure a way of calming her down. And maybe socializing her with large puppies... She tends to be rather hostile towards them. She's fine with older dogs, and she loves full grown bigger dogs... she just doesn't seem to like the small puppies, at all. And that worries me because my wife and I plan on getting a Rhodesian Ridgeback in a few years...

[DvlshAngel985]

Originally Posted by jonathon087

That's a pretty amazing puppy you have there! I don't know... Our Daisy gets so out of hand sometimes. She loses interest really easily all the time. Especially when my wife is around. She adores my wife. She'll listen to every word I say until she comes around, then it's all energy. She's really intelligent, in my opinion. She practically learned fetch on her own. My wife just started tossing her toy across the room after a game of tug-o-war and she'd just bring it back like she wasn't done. Then she just got better and better. Eventually I got her to listen to 'drop it', and then she'll drop the toy. A little far away, but it's coming around. I've got some extra time on my hands here lately, so I'm going to be doubling down on her training.

One thing that I have told my parents and siblings now that I live with them is never and I mean never give Kaji treats for nothing in return. It teaches them you're the source of free meals and they'll walk all over you. Kaji is on the "nothing in life is free" training program. He works for his meals similar to Capt Nooonie's dog. Plus, there is more than one way to teach a trick. Nothing worked with Kaji especially since he's not really food or toy motivated. I had to find another way to teach him. Down took us two whole months to learn. The way I did it was I started from the sit, I took a treat and placed it on the floor with one hand, with the other hand I grabbed his two front paws. I said the command, "DOWN", and then pulled his front legs forward (gently). This pulls his front paws out from under him giving him no choice but to go into a down position, as soon as his body was down it was "Good Boy!" and treat time. I didn't yank or pull his arms, I just placed him into the down position. Eventually, you phase out the help and they do it on their own. Now I can do either hand or vocal command and he obeys both. Just another method.

As for walking, that takes practice and consistency. If you don't want your baby bolting toward strangers, have her on a short leash. As soon as you see a potential distraction, stop put her in a "sit and stay." Treats work great here too. If she pulls as you are walking, stop! The leash must be slack before you can continue to walk. Kaji pulls out of fear. He tries to run away. So when I see a potential "scary" situation, I have him sit, stay, and focus on me. If he sits and behaves, his reward is walking away from the scary thing that just passed us. If he pulls, I stop. He must come back, sit right besides me and waits for the "Ok" command so we can start walking again. I'm pretty strict with this and he's getting much better.

[jonathon087]

Both those tips seem like they might work really well with Daisy. She's definitely food motivated, but she just seems to get -really- bored -really- quick. My wife worked and worked and worked on her when it came to the shake command, but she never got it down. I came home one day and decided to give it a try. Within about ten minutes I had her shaking on command alone. No hand gesture or anything, just the word shake and she would hold her paw out. Now I can do it at anytime of the day without a treat and she does it with perfect ease. My wife spoils our dog and she could get away with murder before my wife saw how terribly she's spoiling her. I too follow the line of 'you work for what you deserve' method, and it goes well with Daisy. Like I said, though... she just gets too excited.

[Cirlonde]

Because each dog can be so different, I'm not sure if I'll be any help but here's my similar situation! When our Yorkie was a puppy and we'd take her out to a nearby walking track, she did that same thing you're talking about with Daisy. She'd try frantically to get at all the people walking by. This made it absolutely impossible for my husband and I to walk for exercise as we were constantly having to stop and wait on the "distractions" to get by us. My solution was to ignore the people, because unfortunately the sit/stay/focus on me idea just wouldn't work for my overly hyper dog. She'd do sit and stay at home just fine, but you get her outside and she forgets everything she knows. Even food doesn't work with her outside, so I'm having to teach her solely by repetition.

So, instead, I'm teaching Chloe "By me" and I keep her pulled in very close to me on a short leash with her on the opposite side of me from the other people. I also usually speed up as we go by people. If Chloe is having to concentrate on moving quicker, she tends to not have as much time to do anything else. Chloe's "no" word is a sharp "uh-uh" sound, so if she barks or pulls, I tell her "uh-uh!" and that usually distracts her from the people as well. This is a much slower method, but the more often we encounter people, the better Chloe does as she gets used to the situation and learns what I expect of her. Dogs are creatures of habit, so I just try to get Chloe into good habits before she can develop bad ones!

Also, I definitely second the harness idea. We use a step-in harness b/c it is a lot easier to put on her and it gives you SO much more control over the dog without having to worry about hurting her. It's also great for getting her out of danger quickly. You don't have to worry about choking her if you need to snatch her back to you really fast.

Good luck with Daisy!!
-C