[Judy in Waco]

Originally Posted by wahawaha

My puppy is becoming bossy. It starts in the morning when I get his food. He starts "talking" (combination of whimpering & low yelps) to me if I take too long mixing the water with his food. Then after he eats he will do it louder to signal he wants to go outside to the bathroom (I don't want to discourage this, he just started going outside last month). If I'm on the laptop & he wants to play he will sit next to me, talks (it gets louder if I ignore him) and taps me repeatedly on the arm with his paws. If he's chewing on something & I take it away he tries to do this with me too. He's not growling, not barking loud, just sounds like he's trying to tell me what to do in a bossy way. He just turned 6 months, so I don't know if this is because he's getting older or if I've babied him too much. We've only had him for 7 weeks, but this just started last week or so. Any help on curbing this behavior? He goes to puppy training classes, so he's usually well behaved.

LOL! Sounds like my house! I don't really have a solution, but if it gets too annoying I have little signals I use. I started off saying "no" with the signal, and now I can just use the hand signal.

But I want to warn you. I really became annoyed with Gizmo once for this behavior, and it turned out that his water bowl was empty! So, I would make sure that nothing serious is going on first, then if you're sure it's just boredom or something, try to distract him/her. Then, if it's still an issue, you can work on it with firm commands and signals.

They can be bossy little things, can't they?