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Originally Posted by rob11g  Sorry I have not been on for a while. Buddy is 2 years old and I have noticed that he is now pulling away from going in the house after our morning walk. I have to keep him on the leash and persuade him to come in the house with me. Another new thing he is doing, he starts panting and shaking during the day and he will stare into the kitchen and nothing is running, the house is quite. I was going to keep him on the leash and have him stay with me in the kitchen. |
He's probably smelling the coffee machine in the kitchen, even though it may not be on, and worrying that it will soon fire up. More than likely something about it scares or worries him or he got scared at some point while it was on and now associates the two things - his fear with the coffee maker. The best thing you can do and what I would do if little Buddy were my dog is try to get him to associate good, fun things with the coffee-maker being on or with getting delicious, boiled, warm chicken when it fires up. Try it for two weeks. Just hold a treat out in front of his nose for a while and then feed him a treat every so often once you turn it on, treating only when he turns his head away from looking into the kitchen or stops shaking, circling or whatever he does briefly. Do not reward the unstable behavior with a treat - just the looking away or relaxing/approved behavior. The rest of the time keep the treat in your fist in front of his nose - with him getting totally focused on that scrumptious chicken so near his mouth vs. that noisy old coffee maker.
Or you could toss a ball or play tugowar or whatever he loves doing during the coffee-making sessions or any time you see him beginning to worry about the coffee-machine in the kitchen - all to distract him and give him better associations with the scary machine.
When he begins to pull on the leash, either stop dead in your tracks and don't move forward until the leash goes slack or walk him in the opposite direction - each and every time he pulls. Do either one matter-of-factly and not in anger - just stay in teacher mode, confident and calm. You might say "uh oh" or "no" when he starts to pull but during training don't shout or discipline him for pulling as you are retraining him what will happen if he pulls.
In about two weeks of doing this, he will begin to learn that leash-pulling will just stop him from getting to where he's trying to go so he'll begin to police himself and learn in time not to pull. Once he learns not to pull, I'd treat and praise once he gets in the house without pulling.