Know the Early Signs of Dominance

If you own a dog or a cute puppy with the following habits, I promise you, unless you do something about it, more headaches and frustrations are heading your way.

Do you notice your dog:

  • Constantly jumps up on you, especially when you tell it to stop.
  • Refuses to end its barking, whimpering, and even barks back at YOU.
  • Listens to you only for treats. This means, you are not worth listening to me. When it comes to it, these dogs don’t even respond to you with biscuits.
  • Play-bites at your hands, feet, face and spray bottles, bitter apple, yelping a puppy, holding the muzzle shut, as well as time outs, do not seem to work anymore.
  • Hardly ever sits for you when you tell it to. Or, you find yourself mostly either have to push your dog’s rear down, present a treat, or shape your hand in tricking him that you have some beef jerky. Snapping your fingers and pointing to the floor won’t do it either. Sorry!
  • Tries to mouth you when you catch it misbehaving by its collar. Your pooch wants to be in control at all times. Leashes, collars and other training tools take this away from them, resulting in mouthing and snapping back at you.
  • Growls at you or others. Except while playing, any type of growling is a sign of a problem-dog that might and could turn on you.
  • Pushes you around, bumps into you, forces its way through doorways, and knocks down children and kids around. That’s one way of your dog saying: “Get out of my way you idiots. I am the King/Queen in here, let me check it out first.”
  • Pulls on leash, barks, and even snaps on walks especially when faced with: strange dogs, people, kids, joggers, cars, cats etc.
  • Keeps wrapping around you, walks away, or pulls backward by holding the leash tight in its mouth. In a way, your dog is trying to pull or yank YOU back, to see how it feels.
  • Tries to hump any dog it sees. Pushes its chin on them, hold them on their backs, or even tries to hump your spouse, your kid, and insists on mounting you. Don’t worry, that’s rarely sexual, but mostly signs of dominance.
  • Sits on your foot, leans on you, goes between your legs, and rests it’s paws on your body while you try giving it a command. Again, this is the same as bullying you.
  • Demand attention and rarely stop when you tell it to? These dogs jump up on you and they don’t care whether you are in the mood, sleeping, tired, holding a cup of coffee, and simply didn’t invite it yet. I need a head rub and ear massage mommy. Now, yes- NOW!
  • All of sudden urinates or defecates to upset you. You know for fact your dog had access to outside and its been years and months from the last accident. This usually happens when you leave town, work long hours, have a guest over, new boyfriend/girlfriend and stop giving your dog as much as attention as you did before. Oh yes, dogs do get even. And pooping on your bed is one sweet way to do it.
  • Hates to lie down, or lays down for a second but pops back up. Or, instead of laying for you, he sits, tries to shake or give a paw. Down command is the command of respect. If your dog doesn’t lie down for you, it will never respect you, nor do a reliable STAY. Try doing this WITHOUT bending over, holding a cookie, slapping the floor, getting on the ground, or pulling on your dog’s front paws. Good luck!

Remember, these habits will not only stay the same, but most definitely get even WORSE. It is all up to you. Contact us and enroll with our programs to get these bad habits solved or at least get it under control. If your dog does almost all of the items above, your dog has obviously done a great job in training YOU! Don’t worry, either you change this by our help and my expertise or you let your dog run your life. The choice is yours.