[dands]

You sound like us when we first got Kona. He was very high energy, leader of his littermates, and barked until we thought we were going nuts when in his playpen. We read so many books and watched so many videos on dog training. Now, he's a great dog, barely barks, loves his crate, and is mostly without potty accidents. He is still not well socialized but we're working on it. But he's great with us.

Here's what helped us the most:
- caesar millan - dog whisperer. We watched many many episodes, got his DVD, and read several of his books. Watching him really helped us and our dog so much. We think our dog has a very strong leadership personality so we needed to learn how to be a good leader for him. We learned how to tell him how we want him to behave and how to correct him. Not everyone likes his methods but for us, he was a totAl life savor.

- for potty training, we took him to the peepad and eventually outside everytime and say "go potty" and watch him pee or poo. We praised like crazy and gave chicken. When we caught him in the act inside, we'd say no no no and pick him up, take him to the pad and say go potty here. If he finished there, we'd say good boy. If he didn't, we'd let him walk off Knut at least he knew where we wanted him to go. There's a book we read called housebreak your dog in 7 days or something like that that helped us.

- for barking we did 2 things. I'm not sure which did the trick but he's pretty quiet now. He still barks at strangers but we're still working on that. So the first thing we did was we tried to ignore it. The worst was when we got home from work, he'd start barking as soon as our car drove up. So we started parking on the street and creeping in. We tried to catch him being quiet when we came in and praise like crazy. If he barked, we'd stop walking in and stay there or go back out the door until he stopped barking. When he stopped we would go towards him, etc. This took a while for him to get but he got it. I had to wear earplugs during these weeks because my nerves were on end. The other thing we did was say no bark when we barked when we were already near him.

- we had private trainers come by our home to see what we were doing wrong and give suggestions. This was decent but watching dog whisperer was what really helped us the most.

- we took him to puppy obedience classes. This helped get him more socialized which was also part of the problem. Were still working on the socializing him. But I think the classes helped him a bit.

- oh, for shredded peepads, we sprayed bitter apple on them. Then he kind of grew out of it. You might want to try those reusable peepads if he still hasnt grown out of it.