Reply To: Focus and ankle biting issues with our 6 month Lhasa Apso

[Jake]

Congrats on your progress with training/crate training! Three weeks without an accident is great. And look at all those badges. Nice work. 🙂

For the ankle/clothes biting: Yes, if the whole sequence of different redirection options doesn’t work, then a rest break in the crate is the next step.

When biting becomes “redirection-resistant,” especially if they’re ignoring high value treats, that sounds very much like hyper attack mode.

With this behavior, are there times when redirection DOES work? And do you notice any times of day, or any specific triggers, that start the ankle-biting?

It could be that your play/training time could be going a bit too long, leading to the biting.

Another option when he starts biting incorporates management: leave him in the kitchen play area, step just outside the gate to physically prevent him from being able to bite you, and work with him from there. You could play tug or the puppy taming game this way.

Regarding the focus issues, Joey is approaching adolescence, which brings some changes in behavior. They become more independent and easily distracted at this age, so it’s not surprising (and not your fault!) that you have a hard time getting him to pay attention in these situations.

Are you taking the Engagement and Focus Foundation course we’re currently running? I think that would be a good choice for Joey.

In the meantime: when you’re in distracting situations, try to avoid using the super recall cue or any other cues like leave it or watch me. Instead, I’d focus entirely on the foundation attention games found in the Super Recall course and that new Engagement course.

There’s also a lesson in the leash manners course I think will be relevant: Working through distractions

Lunging at dogs/people/cars: to make sure I give the most appropriate advice, I have a few questions for ya:

-How is Joey with other dogs in general? How was he with the people and dogs at your training class? Does he like to meet new people?

-When he lunges, does he bark or growl? Does it seem to you like he wants to play, or he’s trying to scare them away, or something else?

• This reply was modified 6 days, 9 hours ago by  Jake.