growling lurcher - only at me

[Acorncat1]

Hello all,
Luckily it's been awhile since I've posted here. You all were sanity savers for the first month of crazy lurcher life.
So now I wanted to ask, our lurcher (Male, 8 months) sometimes gets onto the couch, where he's not allowed, for now. My husband will pull him down by his collar and there's no growling but when I do it he's gives me grief, not really growling but kind of whining growling. He also did it it the other day when I was taking something he'd nicked out of the bin off him in his crate.
I do a good amount of training with him and enrichment but am a bit stumped by this.
I've read online to use lures instead of your hand to get him off the couch and I'm training the leave it but it's early days. I'm just afraid if we do it that way he might snap at one of the kids or something if they push him away if he's jumping up on them or something...
Any ideas???

I'm following the kikopup channel on youtube, she seems pretty good? any feedback??

My beagle figured the easy ones out in seconds and just destroyed the other ones

The idea behind them is good but you can do the same at home for much less money - eg. hide treats in rolled up paper or scatter them across the grass. Use a snuffle mat or lick mat for meals to make them last longer and to get him to use his brain.

Snuffle mats and licki mats are both less than £10 each and will last you ages.

Thank you! I was putting food in toilet roll holders and he liked that. I must try the lick mat too thanks.
Are you in the market as a dog trainer?!!

I'm a dog walker

I do some basic training with puppies etc. and I have done some courses but I'm not registered as a trainer or anything lol.

Kikopup is great! Really rate her. The down stay video has been a life saver for us!

Agree on previous posters re prevention rather than trying to solve it after the fact.

I'd love a cuddly lurcher on my sofa! I know there are reasons people don't but I'd give serious thought to whether you'll allow it. Some people put a special mat on the sofa that they can only be there on their mat. That way you can train them to not be there if their mat isn't there if you didn't want her to be up there with guests or other people's houses.
But prevent first so she works it out. Ie if the mat isn't there she physically can't get up. If the mat is there she can. And keep at it.

ah! that explains it! It's all so interesting. Said pup has been moved from lap to very comfy bed with fleece (and jumper...) I envy him! Box in background is package just arrived with agility poles in. Probably need to go back to basic training too though!!😀

Look up positive reinforcement teaching dog ‘place’. ‘Off’ isn’t really a comment or doing word, if you teach him ‘place’ aka go to bed or a mat you’ve trained him to go to positively then you can ask him place rather than off and he should happily go there knowing he will get a reward.

toy wise - licki mat (freeze dog friendly peanut butter onto it), frozen kong or a kong wobbler! Look up dog enrichment groups on Facebook they’ve loads of ideas!

Pup!

Oh to be a dog!

do you mean seriously consider not doing it or doing it?? I'd prefer if he could come up but I don' want to reinforce bad behaviour.

Sometimes it's easier to pair up commands - so you could teach 'get up' (onto the sofa) with 'get off'. (Only if you are seriously considering letting them on the sofa though, I wouldn't opt to do this if there is still growling at you. Same with barking /noise - sometimes it's easier to teach 'quiet' in the process of teaching them to 'speak' (bark).

I'd try not to take things off him when he is in his crate as he is probably guarding both the location and the object, giving a double whammy of stress.

With my dog who guards I try to get his consent to take things off him - so he knows 'Give it to me' - he has has to take steps forward to either hand me the item or drop it for me, and then I know he's not going to have a bad reaction. Then swap for a valuable treat.

He's reacting differently with your husband because he is getting an impression, one way or another, that he wouldn't 'get away with' growling at him. People are quick to dismiss dominance theory, and in the sense that you shouldn't use some of the old style dominance training techniques, I'd agree. But they do size up other dogs and humans to get an impression of how they can behave with them, and with you. Calm, consistent authority will get you a long way.

god, it seems overwhelming the amount of stuff I have to learn to teach him! I'm working and studying and have a family! I'd forgotten how much time and effort goes into a dog! It's so hard to know who to follow, there's so many differences of opinion out there! Training with our 15 year old collie x was way more dominance based as that was what was out there at that time!!

I do agree with the idea what he doesn't growl at my husband because hes much more firm with him and doesn't let him away with anything. Whereas I'm just more nervous he'll bite me and he probably picks up on that.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed, you don't need to teach everything all at once.

Training is ongoing - some days it will feel like it's not working, but if you're consistent and patient, you'll wake up one day and realise everything is so, so much better than it was!

@Acorncat1

do you mean seriously consider not doing it or doing it?? I'd prefer if he could come up but I don' want to reinforce bad behaviour.

I mean seriously considering letting him be on the sofa. If there are times you'll let him up but other times you won't you can teach him a signal.
Signal can be his blanket is on the sofa.

So what you do is-
When blanket is not on the sofa - prevent access and make super comfy bed elsewhere.
When blanket is on the sofa - he comes up.

It will take time getting it which is where the prevent comes in handy- because he'll learn by observing. But overtime he'll just auto come up when blanket is there. Then you can use the blanket elsewhere - like holiday homes or people's houses - he'll know to only be on his blanket on the sofa.

You can do this alongside teaching a place - place is his blanket wherever it is.

Hope that makes sense! Then you can snuggle on sofa but more controlled!

We did very little active training with ours.
Genuinely all we did was treat him when he did something we liked (didn't have to ask him - just if he was on his mat he got a treat, if he stayed still at a traffic light - treat. Looked cute - treat. We probably treated him about 30 times a day!
Then the rest we just prevented/ blocked.
Dogs are smart - they do what works and what's rewarded. If they don't have a chance to do something they stop doing it.
It helped me not get over whelmed.
He knows commands now just because I started saying them when he did them already (rather than lured or taught him - he just heard the word enough times when he was doing the thing.

The only thing we actively taught was recall as that was super important- but even with that a lot of it came naturally - he checked in with us because as a puppy when he was off lead and he went one way- we went the other way, or changed direction when he got too far in front.

So just saying that don't get overwhelmed with teaching - just try and reinforce the nice things and prevent the stuff you don't want. It will come with time.

Thank you all so much. I feel like I've learned alot from all your advice!