Chaos + over the top behaviour

[bendog]

Ben and Sash are both INCREDIBLY food motivated. I usually have kibble in my pockets for when I'm training walking them and Pops, but if I have food Ben and Sash just will not leave me alone. They just sit and look at me and Ben will paw me and Sash will bark at me. Poppy is actually the best behaved!

The other problem is just that Ben and Poppy do not stop in the mornings. They just play, and play and play. I don't mind if they play quietly - like playing tug, but it means I have to watch them and so I can't get on with getting ready. And often they play very noisily! Lots of barking, and it wakes everyone up.
I do walk them for half and hour in the morning, off lead with lots of fetch and running around, and they have boxes and puzzles with their breakfast in. This morning it was a pile of towels with kibble hidden amongst it. Then we do a few minutes of training, but again, the problem is I get pestered by all three dogs at once so no-one learns anything and it's just disaster. If I take Poppy or Ben off on their own to train the other will bark and scratch the door - they don't do this normally, just when they know I have treats and am doing training.

I can shut them all up by giving them their Kongs, or treat balls, but I prefer to save those for when I leave as they will then be on their own until lunchtime, and since Ben and Sash are overweight anyway I don't want to be over feeding them.

The rest of the day is fine, I go to Uni, the dogs are in separate rooms with Kongs and chew toys and they all just go to sleep. They get walked again in the evening for half an hour (and Ben usually gets an extra 20 mins walk as well). Even if I am in all day, by 9am they have usually worn themselves out enough to sit and chew, or sleep. But from 7am til 9-9.30am it just feels really stressful and chaotic.

They do play in the evenings and afternoon but it is nowhere near as manic as in the mornings!
Sash is a barker anyway (you can hear her bark a mile away!) which is something I am trying to fix, but of course if Ben and Pops are play barking (quiet-ishly) then Sash starts barking just for the hell of it!

I just feel like mornings are mental at the moment and I can never get anything done! I have an assignment due in today that I wanted to finish this morning and I just haven't done any of it because I'm up and down every 5 seconds sorting out dogs! They've just settled with their antlers, but of course now I have to leave!

Ben has always been such an easy dog, he used to sbe content to have a walk and go straight back to sleep! But he gets so hyped up with Poppy around, and I think he feels a bit stressed out with it all too (which is why I leave them in seperate rooms when I go out so he can have a bit of peace)!

[Dibbythedog]

Ben and Sash are both INCREDIBLY food motivated. I usually have kibble in my pockets for when I'm training walking them and Pops, but if I have food Ben and Sash just will not leave me alone. They just sit and look at me and Ben will paw me and Sash will bark at me. Poppy is actually the best behaved!

I hope you manage to finish your assignment. It sounds like you have a lot to cope with and Í'm sure someone will be along soon with useful advice.

The usual advice for pestering for food is saying all gone and doing a gesture such as a shrug and open hands. If you never give them anything after doing this and look away or turn away from them , they should get the message.
Alison

[minkee]

Firstly, I wouldn't worry about it OVERLY much right now. You're still moving, right? So things will all change soon enough, and for the better!

For the mean time, how about something like this:

- Give 2 dogs their kongs, train the other in a different room. Rotate dogs regularly!
- Shut all the dogs in one room, hide treats all around the other room, then let 2 out to go find the treats, and train with the remaining dog with the door shut.
- Train each dog to have a REALLY REALLY good lie down as their default position. Then train 2 dogs to have a really good lie down next to each other. Then train all 3! Once they can all stay lying down together, you might be able to train one with the other two present. Everyone always says to train each dog separately, but if that makes it HARDER (eg, they're scrabbling at the door, overweight) then maybe this would work out. You'd want to do it so that if you tell Sasha to lie down, she gets a treat for lying down, Poppy gets a treat for staying lying down where she is, Ben gets a treat for staying lying down where he is. Does that make sense? So if one dog gets something right for doing what they were asked, then the other dogs also got it right if they stayed chilled out. This might be a way off at the moment though! Probably working on some self control exercises first will help. Which you can't... because you have dogs everywhere.. catch 22!

Do they have crates? How do they feel about them?

[minkee]

Aha, here's a kikopup video on teaching a default settle while you train another. http://www.youtube.com/user/kikopup#p/u/12/NEx_KdF4p8M Of course she makes it look ridiculously easy and isn't working with hyper terrier pups!

[bendog]

Thanks for the video minkee.

I can get all three dogs lying down nicely and having treats in turn. But if I ask one dog to do something I end up with the other one trying to push in front and do it first! Thats why I tend to do "find it" games or retrieves because both Ben and Pops can run after the toy (though Poppy now thinks the idea is to run to the toy, touch it with her nose and then run back to me! whilst Ben brings it back!)

Because Bens trying to lose weight I even use cucumber as training treats for him just so I can treat him everytime I treat Poppy and he doesn't get left out.

I do think it might be worth teaching "all gone" - just so they get the message.

The problem is that the dogs all seem to think theres something better going on wherever I am! So even if I left them with Kongs stuffed with cheese and peanut butter, chances are they'd still prefer whatever I have, even if it's only cucumber!

Minkee, we are moving, but if we take all three dogs then things won't really change except that we will be in a different area. Will be almost worse in a way because the dogs will be left for longer on their own, but we will be walking more when Poppy is old enough to go further. At 6 months old even an hour a day is probably too much but I just can't leave her behind when I take Ben because she looks so pleadingly and sits so nicely for her lead! If we just take Ben and Sash then it's easy. But I'd like to take Poppy too if I can.

[ClareMarsh]

Because Bens trying to lose weight I even use cucumber as training treats for him just so I can treat him everytime I treat Poppy and he doesn't get left out.

I have visions of Ben at a weight watchers meeting

If you're anything like me you have treats with you all the time, Ted fortunately doesn't go mental for treats but if he does start sniffing or pawing a pocket he only gets a treat when he gives up and goes away. Do you think that it might work if you ignore the paws, pleading, impromptu tricks and reward them when they go off of their own accord and do something else/settle down?

[runlikethewind]

Another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecSWzZ-Q ... ture=share

One of the best ones I have seen - well explained, correct, easy to follow and ....includes a terrier

[bendog]

Pft, Ben could NEVER be that calm with cheese around!

Had a go with just Ben and Poppy tonight and it was still a little bit mental, but Ben has a solid "Leave" so I give him a treat to leave just in front of him, and he totally fixates on it so I can ask Poppy for something and then release Ben to get his treat. I don't like using "stay" since I know he won't and then I'll ruin his "stay".

I think the other thing I'll try is to limit training sessions to very very short (like 30 second-1 minute) time periods. We might not end up teaching anything new that way. But I don't mind about that as long as we manage to reinforce the important commands a few times a day. Ben just gets more and more wound up and stops listening the longer we go on and just starts trying to chew my hand off for treats. So perhaps really really limiting the time and literally just asking for a couple of reps each of one or two behaviours would work. I think the more wound up he gets the less he is actually learning anyway. He just follows the treat instead of using his brain! He's not the brightest dog in the world!

Honestly you'd think he'd never been fed the way he fixates on treats. I barely even get any eye contact, his eyes are firmly on my hands or the food unless I ask him to "watch me" when I get a millisecond glance! I know he is on a diet but he does get plenty to eat, and lots of apple and pear and carrots to fill him up too so it's not that he's hungry, just unbelievably greedy!

[Dibbythedog]

Thanks for the video minkee.
I do think it might be worth teaching "all gone" - just so they get the message.

I taught my dogs Pip and Dibby this and also Not You. When i treated one dog and the other one came forward , I would give a finger wag (if you know what I mean) I also use this if I want one dog to come out of a room and the other one starts to come as well.

Alison

[bendog]

Thanks for all the advice.

I've taken the cheats way out and am just walking them for a bit longer in the mornings so they go back to sleep quicker and don't want to mess as much!

[minkee]

That sounds like the sensible way around it to me

[bendog]

Yeah, I'm just wary of over walking Pops, she's only 6 months old still, and she does get a lot of walks (usually 2 or 3 a day).

But it works!