11 week old puppy with possible aggression issues, etc, please help

[BrookeElisabeth]

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post here, but I have been lurking for a week or two. I aplogize, but this will be a long post, as I want to give all the info.

We recently adopted a puppy (Remus) from the shelter. They guessed he was a Norwegian Elkound/Mini Schnauzer mix, but he was a found stray, so I guess that is anyone's guess. Age is approx just over 11 weeks, we have had him for about 3 weeks. It is my husband, myself, and my two kids (9 & 12) who live in the house. Additionally, we have another dog, a 6 year old SharPei mix (Benny) that we adopted just over a year ago, as well as two cats, and a rabbit (who has run of upstairs with the cats--though he sticks mostly to my daughter's room--the dogs do not go upstairs, except when we bring the puppy, Remus, to sleep in his crate in our room at night.

The first few days we took him home, he was a normal sweet puppy with the expected mouthiness. Then after a couple days the honeymoon ended. He has started growling and snapping at us at times---I did realize that this was partly because we were removing from situations by picking him up. So if he was too rough in play, we would pick him up to put him in time out. If he climbed up on the couch (and he can jump up on it now, so hard to keep him off) and went on the back, we would tell him off, and pick him up to put him back down. Then he started growling and snapping. We quickly stopped doing that, and I have been working to use positive reinforcement by luring him off the top of the couch and rewarding him when he does. However, there are times when my daughter is sitting in the couch and he jumps up and immediately goes to bite her (probably rough play, but honestly I am having trouble determining when he is playing or reacting sometimes). In those cases, sometimes it is not possible for her to get out of the situation safely, so I have removed the puppy, and he growls when I do it. When it is possible for her to get up safely without him going for her face, we all walk out of the room and leave him alone in a timeout for 10 seconds or so, then come in and repeat ad nauseum, but it doesn't seem to have much effect yet. Saying ouch generally makes him likely to bite harder, as does yelping, unfortunately.

He also snaps and growls when we try to take off his leash after walks. I am not sure what happened to make taking off a leash seem like a negative situation. He seems to enjoy walks and going out, but afterwards he won't let us near his collar. Then, after the walk he is usually a terror. He runs around like crazy, nipping and growling at everything, with the same fervor that he would growl and nip when we tried to take off his leash. I have been trying to get his attention and have him sit when he is misbehaving, so I can stop the behavior and reward him for the good behavior (sitting on command) but it seems that, especially at night right after his evening walk, he will not do anything but run crazed, biting everything, and any attempts to redirect him even to do something as simple as a sit are met with worse biting and lunging. I have considered having him crate up immediately after a walk in the evening, but I also don't want him to get a negative association with the crate. He is pretty good at night and will sleep in his crate from 10 pm to 6 am straight (although he barks for a minute or two when he first goes in). He isn't in his crate much during the day, as my husband and I both work from home, but I am working on him having his meals in there during the day and now trying to get him to sleep in there rather than next to us in the couch. Of course now he sometimes does the same thing when we say "off".

He also is a terror around our other dog, jumping in his face and barking and nipping...but then when my dog yawns (likely a warning to the pup?), the puppy will place his entire head inside the older dog's mouth. Our older dog gently closes his mouth and then releases, and the pup is chill for a little bit after that. I wonder how much I should let the puppy act like a maniac around our older dog, since he is generally patient, and if his increased warning to the puppy are ignored, he simply barks, gets up and moves away, or how much I should intervene. Is the puppy learning how to interact better or am I just allowing him to unnecessarily frustrate our other dog? Is this just simple puppy play, and he just hasn't learned what is appropriate because he may have been taken from his litter mates too soon?

Additionally, he did the same snap and snarl thing he does with us when with the vet's nurse when he went in for his first immunizations. We had been in for a vet visit the week before as an initial exam, and he was perfectly fine. Then again, he was fine for us that first week too. We had to give him oral meds for kennel cough after that first visit, which he would not take initially. My husband tried holding him and forcing it the first time, but after that I decided I didn't want him afraid of the syringe or us, so I would coax him with peanut butter and sneak the meds in the side of his mouth while he ate the peanut butter. Perhaps that one bad experience with the oral meds was enough? It is an oral syringe, so I suspect the needle syringes they use look similar. I have been working on having him around the oral syringe now that he is done with meds and giving him treats when he does not react to it, and I have been able to put it in his mouth with no problems, as he happily accepts the treat. Additionally, I have been pretending to,use it as a syringe like a vet would near his rump and shoulder and picking up the skin like they might, and treating him when he stands there without reaction. The vet nurse takes him back alone to do the immunizations, however, so I am worried all my work on this will be for naught if she freaks him out.

I feed him Purina Pro Naturals and use chicken liver or shredded sandwich meat as treat rewards, as those seem to be high reward treats. House training is going pretty well, as we are home all the time and have kept on him to make sure he has few accidents and we reward him successfully going outside. During the day, and especially after he wakes up from a nap, he is generally sweet and it is just normal puppy mouthiness. But after walks taking off the leash, or from basically 6 pm until he goes to bed, he is a terror. Is it possible some of this is tiredness? We initially though he was understimulated, hence timing a walk later in the evening before his terror hours, but that is not working at all. Our kids are gone during the day for school during the week and back from 3 pm on, so I wonder if he acts up more when they are around? He is definitely mouthier towards them, whether during regular puppy play or when he is in crazy puppy mode and attacking everything in sight. Regardless, it has been really bad the last 2-3 nights, so I feel like things are getting worse rather than better. Both my husband and I have received puncture wounds to our hands in the last two days. Do we just need to stick with it and expect it to get worse before it gets better? Am I missing some element? Honestly the last two days were so rough in his terror evening moments, we almost returned him to the shelter. I don't want to give up on him, but we are exhausted and unsure what else to do.

[MandaS]

Hi, I'm new too.

I take it as a rescue you have no idea what age he was taken from his mum. If taken away too early, he would not have had a chance to learn social skills and how he should behave.

Has he been checked for any possible pain? Just wondering as handling seems to be a bit of a trigger. Have you thought about using a harness rather than any restriction round his neck? Not knowing what he has been through in the past, restriction and pressure on him or his neck could have happened and now he is panicking about it.

Sounds like you are on the right track with using force free methods to deal with his issues. When he jumps at you or your family, I would suggest stand up and as soon as he stops ask for a different behaviour, such as sit and give paw and reward that, so he learns the right way to get attention.

I hope this has given you a few ideas to think about. It may be you need to ask a force free trainer to come round and see if there are any specific triggers you are missing and give some advice, it's always hard to recommend things when we can't see the behaviour itself.

Manda