Training / Behaviourist advice - perhaps Minimu can help?

[Boobz]

Hello - am looking for advice on training my 7 month old street dog and a fellow MNetter said I should shout out for the trainers on this site, including Minimu - hence putting your name in the title Minimu! I hope you don't mind...

I have got a book called Good Owners, Great Dogs, which I am working my way through, but it would be good to get other viewpoints from those actually working in this field, if I can.

Wolfy is an adolescent street dog who is primarily a lovely chap, but has 2 or 3 behavioural problems which I want to sort out ASAP. He was the last of 8 pups to find a home and I can see why now - he's painfully shy / scared of everyone and is petrified of going outside or generally being part of the family. We've had him about 10 weeks now, I think, but I've only just stopped working so now I have some proper time to devote to getting him more socialised and hopefully to become a more confident dog and member of the family.

This is how he came to us:

Wolfy on Death Row

So, his main problems are:

1. He is very very scared almost 90% of the day. During the day he hides in little cubby holes throughout the house (behind the TV, under the bed, upstairs etc) and I have to drag him out from these places just to get him to go for a pee outside. He will generally come out for food on his own, and when DH and I are on our own in the evenings, he will happily sit with us on the sofa / at our feet whilst we watch the telly or read - this is when he genuinely seems happy and relaxed and at ease with the world. He is still jumpy during these times though, if a bang goes off outside or if our other dog starts barking at imaginary monkeys in the garden (we live in Sudan), but as a rule, he seems like a "normal" dog in the evenings.

2. He is very jumpy (part of #1) and barks at anyone coming in to the house, even if it someone he now "knows" (the nanny, the cleaner, DH, my kids etc)... he does settle down but he does it EVERY time. He especially growls at my cleaner when she comes in and appears quite aggressive.

3. He is pee-ing, on average, once or twice a day inside. He has not had a poo incident in the house for weeks as he always does those without fail on his morning and afternoon walks, but we cannot, so far, crack the pee-ing. I take him out into the garden in the morning when we get up at 6:30am, then again at 7:15 when we go on an hour walk, and then again at 8:45am before I take the kids to playgroup. When I get back after dropping the kids off at 9:15ish, he has already done another pee upstairs! We have bought some special spray when I was last back in the UK, and use this on the spot he likes to pee on, but it doesn't seem to work. He never asks to go outside or shows signs of wanting to go outside; I think he genuinely hates going out for some reason and will always pee inside if he can (but won't poo inside now.... hmmm)

4. He chews stuff. This is getting better as we are keeping things up high so he can't get them (like my toddler's shoes etc) but yesterday he chewed through a lamp cable (which is was a v expensive one from John Lewis which I am very pissed off about!) Obviously we didn't tell him off as it had happened much earlier on in the day so he wouldn't have known what we were trying to correct him about, but it's so frustrating! We give him rawhide to chew, and a kong filled with that squidgy stuff. He still likes to eat my 1 year old's toys and my 2 year old's shoes!

So, here are the things we have been trying to do to solve these problems - but maybe I'm going about it all wrong?

-- We are trying to socialise him with people and other dogs as much as possible.
-- We are taking him on 2 walks a day (1 x 1 hour, 1 x 20 mins). We'd like to do more but the average temperature out here at the moment is 45 degrees so it's a bit hot to do more than that!
-- We are trying to get him into a routine for his bathroom habits - Out at 6:30am, walk at 7:15am, out at 8:45am, and then every 1.5 hours until his walk at 5pm, then again every 1.5 hours until the last pee before bed. We praise him when he goes outside, but so far he always has to be dragged out - he doesn't go out of his own volition.
-- We are trying to get him to do basic commands like sit, come, leave it. It's hard to do much more than that as he's always hiding somewhere and doesn't seem to be hugely motivated by treats and praise! He'd rather just sit on his own until the evening when he finally comes out of his shell.

So that's it basically. Sorry this is so long. It's hard to be brief when there seems to be so much background info. We rescued Wolfy from being put to sleep and although I still think we made the right decision, the daily grind of cleaning up his accidents, finding yet more toys / household items destroyed, the aggression towards the people who work with us, and the general lack of socialisation is starting to wear me down. I know the onus is on us to put it right, but he just seems so utterly frightened of everything, that it's hard to make progress (although he is better than when we got him). It's like some horrible thing happened to him before we got him which has produced this terminally petrified state and we can't seem to get through to him that everything is OK! He just won't relax.

Any help / advice gratefully received. We don't have access to trainers behaviourists in real life here as there are none in Sudan! And we're not coming back to the UK for at least a year, so we can't wait for professional help - we (I!) need to see if I can make him better through online and book help!

Thanks - sorry this is soooooo long.

Good on you for rescuing a dog, especially a problem one!

The best thing to do is to talk to an experienced behaviourist (your vet may be able to recommend someone or try the Association of Pet Dog Trainers). He does sound like he has quite a few issues, some of them may lead to aggression, so really you need a professional to come help you at home.

Meanwhile it might be worth trying a DAP collar and difuser, they seem to work very, very well with scared dogs, and try to avoid manhandling him when he is scared as he may bite - best to let him figure things out by himself or lure him out with a bit of food. A crate may give him a greater sense of security as well.

Sorry, sorry, just read the last senstence properly!!!

What about the people who rehomed him to you, can they not help with training advice? I'd be really careful what you do with a possibly fear aggressive dog.

The people who we got him from are not professional dog breeders or trainers - they're just a couple of expats that took pity on a couple of street dogs who were about to be shot by the police, took them into their home and then ended up having a litter of puppies from them! So no real advice to be had from them...

We do have a crate which we have put up in our bedroom and which I will start to try to get him into this evening, for short periods of time, building up to him sleeping in it.

I would contact the APBC and explain your situation. They may be able to find someone who is prepared to help over email, given the impossibility of you finding anyone, or even know of someone who can help you there (long shot).

In the meantime I think you need to find some way of confining him. Either a crate (but be very careful how you introduce it to an anxious dog) or by using gates to shut him in the kitchen (or any other room that might suit). Or indeed a combination of both. He will hopefully find the smaller space less worrying. It will keep him away from people coming into the house so you don't need to worry so much about him turning aggressive. It will also contain accidents hopefully to somewhere you can easily clean. Given that he is so anxious I suspect the wee accidents are fear related rather than a toilet training issue as such so if you can tackle his anxiety hopefully that will resolve itself. Thinking about it a crate/den could be a "safe" place for him to hide which would be a good coping strategy. Another thing that will help is a good consistent routine (so he knows what to expect when) which it sounds like you have. You have to remember it will take time though. It takes a long time to learn to behave that way and longer to learn how not to. There's no quick and easy answer. You may end up with a dog that will be prone to anxiety all its life but hopefully you can get it to manageable levels.

Something else to look at is the Learn to earn programme ignore the guff about pack hierarchy at the start, the principles are sound and will help give a consistency to interactions with the dog which will help him feel more secure.

Crate training you need to be careful you don't put him off it, it's a haven not a prison.

Well done for rescuing him - I am glad you said sod it and went for it!

My first reaction is to stop training him. Just let him be. Personally I would ignore him for most of the time, I would not give him eye contact and I would not touch him unless he approached me. I would not walk directly up to him at any time.

I would not let him have the run of the house and I would not let him out of one room for while. If possible could he have a room where he can get outside maybe into a small area where he could wee and poo.

Let him be very comfortable in the house before you start to up the anti and take him outside.

I would not even worry about the weeing inside - the fact he does it when you are out would indicate to me that he is worried rather than not knowing where to pee. As he gets more confident I am sure that this will stop. Same with the chewing however I would make sure that he does have things to chew at all times as this is a great stress reliever.

I would also stop the walks for a bit just let him have space and let his adrenalin levels drop. There is a lot of evidence that say it can take several days for a dogs level to drop once they have been aroused.

A good book to get is calming signals

This shows you ways in which to calm your dog down eg yawning (or peeing possibly wouldn't do that one!) and also you will see when he is trying to calm himself down.

I would get him a crate and I would cover it on all sides except one (if it is too hot where you are you may have to rethink that)

I would stop the socialising for the time being - if he is in an anxious state and being forced to meet new people and new things they will all just add to his anxiety and he will refer the anxiety to the situations. This means you will end up going round in circles.

So basically let him be - take all the pressure off him. This may take a while it may take weeks but at least then he will be in a better situation to trust you. be able to deal with the socialisation and also have a safe place to hide if it all gets too much.

Dogs are great and are very resilient - given time I have no doubt he will be a great family pet and will give back to you 1000 times what you are having to do for him now - he will be loyal and honest to you.

Re aggression re visitors and cleaners - I guess you know what I am going to say now - just keep them away from him for a while.
people you could get the cleaner to again ignore him but every time she passes to throw down a treat for him to eat - he will soon grow to love her.

This will take a while but in a few weeks you will see such a difference I promise.

Hth and yell if I can do anymore to help

I would get a DAP collar and possibly a DAP diffuser for the room he is in. This can help some dogs enormously but others do not seem to get benefit from it but worth a try.

Try the crate training, plus some kongs etc for stress relieving chewing and to help keep him occupied in his crate.

Another great book is ruff love. It has been misinterpreted by some regarding the crate training angle but it has some great ideas to get dogs trusting and working for their owners. I recommend it with caution though as you need to be able to adapt the programme for your dog and the crate training angle does not need to be as prescriptive as she recommends but if you see it as chill out time then it works well.

Thank you Minimu1 - for taking th time to reply! Admittedly it feels counter-intuitive to back off now I actually have time to devote to him, but you're the expert! Will give him the space and see what happens.

As an aside, we did give him space at the beginning of his stay, more through accident than design, as we were all at work and then DH went off on a business trip, so when I wasn't at work as I was concentrating on the kids. It was only when DH got back and we saw that he wasn't improving, that we started to be more proactive and "made" him be more social, got other people with dogs around and so on. He has really improved since we started doing this (and had felt guilty when we saw the improvement, thinking we had not been giving him enough help and attention)... so it feels strange now to go back to leaving him to it - I worry he will regress.

But like I said, you're the expert! He is already pretty confined (by his own choice!) to the bedroom (with the crate), but I'm worried if I stop taking him for walks then he will start to poo inside the house again. We started walking him about 3 weeks ago, and since then he hasn't had one poo mess in the house (he does 2 poos a day about 5 mins after each walk has started). When will he poo if not on the walk?

Sorry, if feels all a bit confusing. He's just come out to say hello to my other hound and is having a bit of a grooming session with her on the couch - should I leave them or take him back into the bed room now?

As far as I understand it there is a socialisation 'window' between 6 weeks and 14 weeks (there is some discussion about when exactly it ends) where you can't really over socialise a puppy. During that stage they tend to be fearless and the more things they come across they more used to them they are later on. For dogs who have missed this windon socialisation is still crucial but must be done at a pace and approach suitable to the dog. So, for example, if a dog has a particular problem with a certain type of situation they will need to be exposed to it, but only after you have gained their trust in a more settled setting and then only gradually and under controlled conditions. If a dog is serious lacking in socialisation, overstimulation may trigger the fear response rather than alleviate it. You may need to wait until the dog figures out for himself that his immediate surroundings are positive, starts relaxing and then take further steps.