I am new to the forum and happy to have found you all! I have adopted Ruby, a 4-5 month old female Manchester Terrier mix from the shelter. She was in the shelter about 6 days after being picked up as a stray, so we really know nothing about her past. I live with my husband and 2 daughters, ages 9 and 7. Ruby has been home about 10 days now. She is affectionate, playful, and sweet with all our family members. However I have been getting concerned about a couple of issues, which I'll mention in order in which they have emerged.
1) leash pulling: on around day 3 or so of coming home she started pulling on the leash on walks, frequently in the direction of the house -- back towards the house when we walk away and towards the house at walk's end as we head home. She's only 16 pounds but STRONG as heck, lol! We're trying to use the technique of stopping and not proceeding when she pulls, and she's catching on and getting a bit better, but she's stubborn, especially when returning home from a walk! That last block on our way home is killer, stopping due to pulling every few steps!
2) Minor thing perhaps but she next began snatching up her training reward treats so enthusiastically that sometimes her little needle sharp puppy teeth scratch or puncture us. She also is a bit mouthy when playing - not nearly as bad as some puppies I've known but it freaks my older daughter out a bit. We're working on discouraging this behavior during play but any thoughts on how to teach her to take her reward treats in a more gentle manner?
3) Since about day 5 or so she's been starting to exhibit some aggression in the form of barking at neighbors and passersby, people and dogs, especially men. It seems to me like a combination of protecting what she has come to see as her territory and family, and fear, as when friendly neighbors approach to make friends she often shakes and urinates. Sadly I think we made matters worse on about day 7 when we walked in to the house without realize our housecleaners were there, and man and a woman. Ruby went nuts barking and semi-lunging. I let her off her lead and encouraged the cleaning man to speak to her in a friendly tone and gave him a treat to give her. She urinated, sniffed at the treat but refused it, all while still barking like crazy -- she was just so wound up at that point.
At any rate I am hoping to nip this behavior in the bud so to speak as we want a nice friendly neighborly dog who will be as sweet to others, especially as sweet with other kids as she is with ours! We began on around day 5 to implement some of the techniques we've read about to teach Ruby she is not the "alpha dog." We started with going through doorways first and eating first, and making her sit and wait before we give her her food. We've done some hand feeding as well. (My older daughter got discouraged with hand feeding though, again because Ruby gobbles so eagerly her teeth completely unintentionally get us sometimes) As her barking at neighbors etc escalated a bit, we started working on this harder and started teaching her her basic commands a bit more formally, mainly "sit" and "come" so far. We've also worked hard at socializing her - taking her out to a lot of different public situations - walking around our block, parks, walking to school in the morning, but trying to make sure she's enough on the sidelines to not feel too threatened and giving her a lot of encouragement and positive reinforcement when she is behaving well. We make her sit and try to keep her focus on us when she starts barking at human or doggy passersby and this seems to be starting to help some. She's met two very gentle neighborhood dogs so far with great results. And of course we're house training through all of this as well -- crate training with fairly decent results so far.
So, whew, Day 11 begins, and I'm exhausted! Any advice on any of this
Thank you so much,
DTis
