help dog out of control?

Question

My dog an 8 month old Mastiff mix is nuts. When i take him to the yard to play at night he usually wont stop jumping on me and nipping at me. He is 70 pounds of muscle and it hurts. If i tell him no it does nothing. If i walk away he bites my ankles. If i stand still he keeps jumping on me. Sometimes I grab him and hold him down on his back but when he gets up he keeps at it. Should i smack him with a paper or spray him with a bottle. I know he need s more exercise and hes hyper but I cant have him run if hes acting this way. What should i do at that moment.

Answer 1

Call the dog whisperer. Contact Bravo tv.

Answer 2

What an encouraging question! I can see you have high hopes for you and your friend. Right now, you have a big, overgrown baby! I can only imagine how much energy it takes to keep up with a 70 lb puppy.

My understanding is that Mastiffs love praise. They love cuddles.
They normally are pretty aloof... you know, no worrys.

My suggestions are:
1) Do a yahoo search on Mastiff training. Lots and lots of ideas.
2) Start taking your puppy outside on a very short lead. One where your hand is maybe only 3 or 4 inches from the top of his neck. You can control him very effectively on a short lead. Do lots of walks and stops. Set a simple goal for progress such as getting him to start and stop with you. Say his name as you give a slight twitch on his lead and immediately give the command for stepping out. "Let's go", or "Heel" or "ok"... whatever you are comfortable with, then "Stop", "Halt" or something similar to get him to stop with you while you simultaneously give a slight (not angry or mean spirited) tug backwards on his lead. Carry bits of chopped liver or a favorite treat (I like to use bits of cheese, but sparingly) and reward him only when he does well.

As you proceed with this, each day or when you sense he is ready, slightly increase the length of his lead. Evendually you will be able to have a comfortable 12 to 18" of lead which is ideal for walking and more for allowing him to read his pee mail.

3) Once you get him comfortable with his lead, all other training can be accomplished because you are now his alpha and he will want to please you. Use consistancy, repetition, calm demeanor, be more stubborn than he, and tons and tons of praise and reinforcement when he does well.

It takes almost superhuman patience to train a mastiff! When you grab him and hold him down on his back, no matter how frustrated you are, to him you have just rewarded him by playing his game! You never never need to smack him with a paper or spray him with a bottle. Sure, you can train him this way but your relationship with him will be maximally rewarding if you use some of the techniques mentioned here and on the multiple web sites. There, you will see you are not alone and that there is hope for the two of you to become best friends for years of rewarding interaction.

Answer 3

Your 8 month old Mastiff should have been in Puppy Kindergarten when he was 10 weeks old. That's when to start developing the tools to control him, before he's a raging adolescent.

Take him to a class. You need to have a person supervise your timing, whether you are using force and harsh corrections, or praise and cookie pushing. None of those things work if you don't have the timing for when to do them. And you won't get that from reading, you need to do it under the tutelage of someone who knows how to do it.

You have an overgrown puppy. Obviously, using force to lay him down isn't working, it is probably just making him more excited and worse. If you can't control him physically now, what makes you think you will be able to force him when he attains his full size?

Only the bullies and wannabees use force to get what they want. In dogs, you lose status by having to force the dog. Eventually you will get your comeuppance if you continue, look what happened to one of the most infamous of modern bullies, Saddam Hussein. Instead, lead your dog peacefully like Nelson Mandela.

If you use force, you will teach your dog to use force to get what he wants.

Answer 4

Holding him down on the ground won't accomplish anything, just make him more nutso when you let him up.

Hook a leash to his collar that when you are holding it, it well drag on the ground a little bit. When he acts like he's going to jump, step on the leash (it will keep him from rearing up) and either say "OFF" or "NO JUMP". (the "down" command is usually meant for "lay down", so "off" is a good one for this).

The biting, when he bites, pinch his lip and in a low growling voice say "NOOO BITE". He will more than likely try several times, so pinch him a little harder each time and make sure you use the low growling voice with "NOOO BITE". This sort of simulates what an adult dog would do in disapproval of his behavior.

If you smack him with a paper or spray him with water, you'll never get close enough to correct him properly.

The entire family needs to be consistant with your corrections. Keep play to actual toys, no rough housing like slap-boxing with him, and don't tease him with toys, feet or hands.

If he jumps on someone and you try to correct him and they say "oh he's ok", NO HE ISN'T. He's going to double in size over the next 10 months. Get it under control now.

Answer 5

i have a 18 month mastiff who did the same. its just a puppy thing and he doesnt realise his size and weight. my boy leans on me when happy but it almost pushes me over! do what i did- take him to obedience for socailisation and discipline. I used a halti as it was a gentle but effective way to control his hypo moods. your voice should be loud and firm and dog classes will teach you that force and spray bottles are wrong. if you are at work all day he is probably just excited to see you and wants you to play with him. give him a large kong sealed on one end with peanut butter and freeze chicken/beef stock inside. this should help keep him occupied. if all else fails maybe a walk around the block with a halti on will help use up some energy, or take him to the park or beach on a extenda-leash.hope this helps!

Answer 6

He's 8 months old, so he's just being a normal, playful puppy. However, you should really start training him to start minding you, especially with him being a large-dog breed: they seem to grow fast physically, then the mental growth would catch up later. :)

A prong collar and/or basic obedience class should help. Please don't smack him with your hand or with a paper in your hand: he will only learn to run to avoid your hand...even if you're later trying to pet him.

When you go to an obedience class, they'll show you how to use the prong collar to train your dog. You only want to put the collar whenever you're around to correct him. Assuming that you speak English at home, it's recommended to use another word to tell him "No", because you use the word "No" even when talking on the phone with your friends, or to your family at home, so he would learn to ignore the word "No"..thinking it's not always directed to him.

When I first adopted my German Shepherd, he also nipped at me. Different trainer probably have different methods, our dog trainer told us that everytime he did that, we should tell him "No" (using the other word I've explained above), and sprayed the bitter apple into his mouth. It really didn't take my dog long to learn what that meant.

If he jumps on you, say the equivalent word "No" again, then tug his collar with the leash upward..(our dog trainer told us now to tug his collar downward, since it's a natural reaction for dog to kinda stay down low to the ground, so it wouldn't teach him anything). Again, different trainers have different methods: some say to lift one of your foot/leg up by bending your knee in front of your body, so when the dog tries to jump on you, he'll get automatically pushed away/down by your knee & most dogs don't like that & learn not to repeat it. This way, it kinda protects you, too, without being mean or harm your dog. In another word, he'll fall because of his own action.

Once you're able to communicate with your dog & have some sort of control of him, I would start taking him to a dog park or take him walking or jogging with you...to drain his energy down. I wouldn't want to do this now yet, since it'll probably a little stressful to you to try to control him, and what if he sees a squirrel & won't stop chasing it, and what if it jumps on some little toddler & hurt him, etc.

Maybe for now you could just play with him at your house. Maybe chase him around the house a bit, & give him a rubber ball. The rubber ball really worked well for my dog. The ball kept bouncing & rolling around all over the place & kept him busy without me having to keep playing with him.

Good luck!! I'm sure your puppy is cute and all that, and I'm sure it takes a lot of your time to work with him now, but believe me, you'll enjoy him a lot better later. Start now before he gets too big for you or anybody to control.

Answer 7

Ooooh - bad idea to smack him. Worse idea to use a shock collar - those collars cause extremely negative changes in behavior. Don't use them. Just turn right around when you see him gather himself to jump. Not only will you remove his reinforcement for jumping, you are sending a signal that dogs use themselves, amongst each other. "Leave me alone."
Dogs learn through repetition. Be consistent and learn to watch your dog - you'll get good at it pretty fast, I'd imagine! Ask your friends and family to help out by doing the same thing. If your dog gets to jump on one person, he'll never understand that it's unacceptable behavior. Hope this helps!

Answer 8

I have a pit with the same problem. Growing up when our dogs would jump (we always had big dogs) we would see they were about to jump and bring our knee up pretty fast. Dont knee or kick the dog, but if he does come in contact with your knee in that motion he will know it hurts. Always follow any action with a command....No Jump, Stay Down, something. Tone also helps. I can tell my pit to stay down and she just looks at me. When my husband does it she obeys. I am just alot softer. As for the biting, an open palm tap on the lips works for me.

Answer 9

i know exactly what you mean. i adopted a st. bernard from our local shelter who did the same thing. she weighs about 105 lbs.when i took her to the vet they suggested a fairly new product called a gentle leader.it fits around the dogs head like a collar but also has a piece that goes over the snout loosely which helps to control your dog. works wonderfully. i can finally walk her instead of vice versa. just so you know exactly what i mean we have only had her for about three weeks and now my eight year old can walk her. a true lifesaver

Answer 10

get the dog in classes don't smack him a paper this might make him afraid of sounds get a shock collar (even the dog whisper)used one of these and i have one for my rottie i shocked him once when i first got a year and a half -two years ago no0w i can show him the remote for the TV and he dose a one eighty they really are not that mean and they do work(and my male is 140lbs) and he don't jump any more