Teaching Them Not To Do Something...

[~Jilly~]

Bella is generally very good and she is learning the things we teach her to do easily and quickly.

However, we are having a little trouble teaching her the things she should not do!

The main example - we have put a little fence around the edge of the grass to protect the borders and also to protect Bella, who seems to eat anything and everything, so she basically has the lawn to play on. On the most part this has worked fine, she managed to squeeze through the fence once but we told her no and she didn't do it again (plus now she's too big ) but she keeps jumping over it now her legs have got longer! She is fine everywhere apart from one spot which is where next door's dog sits the other side barking at her so she is trying to get to her.

We've told her 'no', we've tried taking her indoors if she does it in the hope that she'll realise jumping over the fence means the end of the fun but she still keeps doing it

Any ideas?

[morgsangel]

We have exactly the same problem, we just can't keep Angel off the garden. He also squeazies through the hedge and into next doors garden. We have tried everything to stop him but nothing works.

[Penel]

Oh dear - I think now is the time for you to accept that having a dog means your garden will no longer be the same !!!!!!!!!!!!!  do what I do - concentrate on having a beautiful dog free front garden, and give up on the back for a few years until your pup is a bit more grown up.  Dogs will be dogs, and sometimes there is nothing you can do about that !!!

re Angel squeezing through the hedge - well thats easy - get some wire netting and put it over the hedge - problem solved !

[~Jilly~]

Oh dear - I think now is the time for you to accept that having a dog means your garden will no longer be the same !!!!!!!!!!!!!  do what I do - concentrate on having a beautiful dog free front garden, and give up on the back for a few years until your pup is a bit more grown up.  Dogs will be dogs, and sometimes there is nothing you can do about that !!!

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I understand what you are saying but I am more concerned about her eating the plants for her sake not ours. If she was just running/playing etc it wouldn't bother me - plants can be replaced. There is also an area beyond the 'little fence' that she keeps wedging herself in and as she gets bigger she may well get stuck.

I understand that dogs will be dogs but as her owners it is our responsibility to protect her. She doesn't understand not to do/eat things that might do her harm so it is our job to teach her!

There are lots of things dogs need to learn and a lot of them are for their own safety. When we get out and about we will be teaching her how to behave on lead/near roads etc - I'm not just going to let her run around in the road because 'dogs will be dogs'.

[PennyB]

You have to re-evaluate your garden. Raise up what you can using hanging baskets and build raised beds.

You may have to pull up any plants she's eating that you think may be poisonous now, or make sure any barriers are high enough. She thinks its probably a really good game that she can now clear the fence you have, and probably thinks how clever she is to have learnt that.

Think like they are small babies who's concentration span is very short and prevention is far better than cure. You wouldn't expect a crawling baby to always work it out either so neither will a puppy.

I still can't stop mine eating stuff in the garden even though they do it less and less now so I just don't put it there for them to chew. This year I've planted stuff in hanging baskets and huge pots that I've raised off the ground.

Inside the house do the same remove items you value that she may chew if you're not around. Don't expect her to know whats hers and whats yours. If she's chewing all your shoes etc. then don't leave them lying round. I also raised up cables using hooks to stop them chewing those. Every time you leave a room for a period of time and their not in a crate or pen then you must scan the room to make sure nothing is left for them to chew when they're bored (having told them not to doesn't often work when you're not around)

[PennyB]

I understand that dogs will be dogs but as her owners it is our responsibility to protect her. She doesn't understand not to do/eat things that might do her harm so it is our job to teach her!

There are lots of things dogs need to learn and a lot of them are for their own safety. When we get out and about we will be teaching her how to behave on lead/near roads etc - I'm not just going to let her run around in the road because 'dogs will be dogs'.

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I agree but I assume you're always going to be around if she's out and about away from the house but if your not (i.e. if she escapes) she isn't always going to remember her road safety on her own and she certainly won't have to worry about how to behave on her lead regardless of how much training you do.

[~Jilly~]

You have to re-evaluate your garden. Raise up what you can using hanging baskets and build raised beds.

Pull up any plants she's eating that you think may be poisonous now.

Think like they are small babies who's concentration span is very short and prevention is far better than cure. You wouldn't expect a crawling baby to always work it out either so neither will a puppy.

I still can't stop mine eating stuff in the garden even though they do it less and less now so I just don't put it there for them to chew. This year I've planted stuff in hanging baskets and huge pots that I've raised off the ground.

Inside the house do the same remove items you value that she may chew if you're not around. Don't expect her to know whats hers and whats yours. If she's chewing all your shoes etc. then don't leave them lying round. I also raised up cables using hooks to stop them chewing those. Every time you leave a room for a period of time and their not in a crate or pen then you must scan the room to make sure nothing is left for them to chew when they're bored (having told them not to doesn't often work when you're not around)

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I must not be explaining myself properly If the answer to my question is that you can't train them not to do things then we'll just have to go on as we have been.

In answer to the points you raised though, we don't have our pretty/special plants in the ground, we have already raised them to a level she cannot reach, either in pots or hanging baskets. We did all of this before we even collected Bella.

Indoors we have done the same, all wires have been moved/concealed and there is nothing lying around that she can get to and we don't leave her unattended anyway.

She's not left unattended in the garden either so each time she jumps over the fence we are always there to pick her up and bring her back over - we can't feasibly pull up every plant in the borders and although they're not listed as poisonous she literally eats one thing after another all the time she's outside and I don't think it can be very healthy for her to eat that amount of flowers/leaves/twigs etc whether they're poisonous or not.

I do understand that she's only a baby and I don't expect her to learn everything straight away I just wanted advice on the best way to teach her right and wrong on an ongoing basis so when she's older and has a longer attention span we can build on what she's already learnt.

[PennyB]

all you can do really is say no, or distract her from being a plant eating puppy while you're there (my two ate half my garden as pups) and reward her for doing something else as soon as she turns away or drops the thing she's chewing. My neighbours must get quite annoyed at my 'Ruby noooo', 'Wilf nooo' routine. Mine probably don't feel the need to chew as many plants anymore not because I've taught them as such but they just can't be bothered.

They still 'help' me with the garden and their favourite is running off with the weeds I've just pulled up and 'ragging' them so the dirt ends up hitting you in the eyes.

[~Jilly~]

all you can do really is say no, or distract her from being a plant eating puppy while you're there (my two ate half my garden as pups) and reward her for doing something else as soon as she turns away or drops the thing she's chewing. My neighbours must get quite annoyed at my 'Ruby noooo', 'Wilf nooo' routine. Mine probably don't feel the need to chew as many plants anymore not because I've taught them as such but they just can't be bothered.

They still 'help' me with the garden and their favourite is running off with the weeds I've just pulled up and 'ragging' them so the dirt ends up hitting you in the eyes.

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Thanks, that's pretty much what we've been doing so we'll just continue with that.

You can distract her with a ball/toy most of the time or if you call her away she'll come most times, she does seem to understand because if you tell her no she stops and looks at you. Just sometimes with her cocker selective hearing she does it anyway I'm sure it will improve with age and I imagine her desire to eat everything in sight will reduce we just wanted to make sure we were doing all we could in the meantime

[Cob-Web]

It sounds like you are doing all the right things to teach her what is acceptable and what isn't Jilly - but until she (eventually) learns, you will either have to be able to move at the speed of light, and/or have eyes in the back of your head    It will take longer to teach her NOT to do things, because she is motivated to do them, so you won't get the same quick results as you may be getting with basic commands    Then, once she has mastered them, she will then become a moody teenager, and forget them all over again  

Molo managed to rip up our kitchen lino while I was sat next to him on the floor - and my newly planted lavender hedge has big spaces in it where he dug up the odd plant and ran aruond the garden triumphantly   I forget how many times we removed him from the flowerbed and into the area he was allowed to dig.....it felt like millions  

Continuing to distract him, and taking him away from the area, will teach him that there is no reward in playing in areas you don't want him to be.  You might also find that teaching him to "leave it" will get results some of the time  

[Annette]

I've heard of people using a water pistol on dogs, to give them a bit of a shock, connected with the "crime" but not connected with us owners. It doesn't hurt, doesn't reinforce any attention seeking on the part of the dog, and might even work!!

We tried it with the daffodil eating phase, but the water pistols kept breaking!

Armed and ready to go with the rest of the tubs. If that fails the tubs are heading for the front garden.

[Penel]

If that fails the tubs are heading for the front garden.

I'll give the tubs 48 hrs before they are in the front garden lol  

[clairep4]

It's a tricky one because young pups just want to explore everything and test boundaries and practise jumping etc with their new, growing legs, and because all of those things bring them rewards ("ooh, look I can jump over this now/this flower has a nice texture when you bite it" etc) it is hard to train them not to do it. My Bella insists on eating the water lily leaves, every time a new one grows there she is, up to her chest in water munching away. I can distract her for a few minutes but she'll go back to it unless I remove her from the garden.

It says in a book I've got about "environmental correction" eg the water pistol, or shaking a tin can full of pebbles to make a loud noise that takes their attention away from what they're doing. You could try that, but I have to say neither really work on Bella - she is obsessed with water so getting squirted with a water pistol just adds to the fun, and she seems to be virtually bomb proof so shaking a loud can at her will work 2-3 times but after that she'll just pause and then keep going!

I'd say just keep going with what you're doing, make sure you puppy proof the garden as much as you can (maybe even put some kind of netting up around the flower beds to stop her in the meantime if you're worried about her eating poisonous things?) and ride it out until she gets a bit bigger. She'll soon move onto a new phase (Bella is currently testing out whether or not she does actually have to come when called   ) and the plant eating will be a thing of the past...

Good luck!

[suki1964]

Hubby put a little picket fence up to keep Alfie of the flower bed with all the poisonous plants in and Alfie promptly jumped it So he added an "extension" which although wasnt the prettiest of things done the trick To protect trunks of bushes we put empty coke bottles round them as Alfie did take a liking to wood when teething

Alfie has just turned one and we took the "extension" off last week and hes not bothered to try to jump whats left so we are thinking maybe we will be safe to take it all down now.

Have to say last year our garden was ruined:( The lawn was either wee burned or just ripped up and eaten, and plants (even those in pots) were dug up or ripped out. But its growing back and Alfie is more controllable so is not doing so much damage

[Anita]

Jilly - it sounds like you are doing everything you can - just be consistent and carry one - she will get the message. After having gone through it once and now starting again you are always saying no no NO! but with phoebe it really was the consistency that got her trained. She doesn't eat plants in the garden (never did really though being a winter puppy) and doesn't dig.

Have you though about using a training lead so she's easier to catch and then gently move her away from problem areas and distract her with something else?

Just a thought