I have an ~2 year-old Jack Russell mix that I adopted from a shelter about 1 month ago. He ended up at the shelter when he was caught running as a stray, but I really believe he originally had a home, as he came to me basically house trained, as well as very people oriented. We are currently in our third week of obedience training, which is going very well. With the help of the clicker, he has learned Watch me, sit, down, leave it/take it, and drop it. This week we are working on stay, come and continuing to work on loose lead walking. All of that said, I have two questions that I need your help with.
The first has to do with attention seeking behavior. I work from home for 4 hours a day, and spend much of the rest of my time with Rusty. He gets a minimum of 2 30-minute walks (plus 3-5 potty walks as we don't have a yard) every day. I work on his obedience 2-3 times a day for about 10 minutes a session. He gets most of his food in the form of puzzle toys (his favorite is the Chill Pill), plays fetch for 15-20 minutes several times a day, and will occasionally decide to do zoomies throughout the house. He regularly has a variety of chewies like rawhide, bully sticks or hooves. Two days a week he goes to daycare at someone's house, where there are sometimes other dogs - and always the resident kitty. His daycare mom and I have both taken him to the beach on several occasions, although he hasn't been off-lead because I don't have a reliable recall yet. That gives you a pretty good idea of what his daily life is like.
On to the attention seeking. I say this is attention seeking because it only happens when I am occupied (usually on the computer) and not actively engaged with him. I know that the best way to deal with attention seeking behavior is to ignore it, and that's exactly what I do as much as possible. Sometimes, though, his behavior gets destructive - like chewing a hole in the couch cushion or trying to chew the legs of the dining room table. I've already removed all of the movable items (throw pillows and such). My thought to this point has been to redirect him to an appropriate chewable, but that seems to be rewarding his behavior - and sometimes just doesn't work. I've thought about putting myself into a 'time out' location where he can see me but not interact with me, but he is a prodigious jumper, so I'm not sure how I would achieve that. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
The other issue has to do with him marking in the house. He was only neutered when he arrived at the shelter (the end of August), so part of it may be habit. The reason I talk about marking - rather than a housebreaking problem - is that it occurs almost exclusively when we return home from one of our potty walks. Particularly, there are times when we go out for a potty walk, but he wants to go further. The battle of wills can be quite intense. Not that he gets nasty - his modus operandi is to lay down in the street (we don't have sidewalks) if he wants to keep going and I'm ready to turn around. On the rare occasion when he does it in a safe place, I will usually wait him out (although I don't always have the time.) Too often, I end up picking him up and carrying him for a brief period until I can get him headed in the direction I wanted to go. And I realized yesterday that it is most often after one of these incidents that he will raise his leg on one of the pieces of furniture in my dining room. It's not that he hasn't relieved himself. In fact, he has usually raised his leg on a number of spots outside the house before it happens. He does this in addition to all of that. I know that it has nothing to do with spite - dogs don't have the capacity for spite - but I'm not sure what it could be about, or how to deal with it.
As always, any help is much appreciated!
Attention seeking and marking (two separate issues)
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