I just got Izabella less than 3 weeks ago. I really don't know anything about her life before me other than that the people who gave her up said they had too many dogs. She's a bit food and toy aggressive. I'm not sure the best way to deal with that. I raised my boy from a puppy and we never had that problem. Also, she has no training. Right now we're working on 'sit' and she's doing pretty good, but can anyone give me some tips on training her with stay, lay down, shake, etc.? I took my older dog to obedience training, but I'd like to try training her on my own.

We've been through the same thing with both of our dogs. Our exciteable herding dog had really not been socialized and I don't think he had ever been walked on a leash until he ended up in rescue.

With the toys, you can practise trading. It's best if she thinks the toy you are trading for is better than the one she already has (she might think it's better simply because you've made it seem exciting). Then she learns that if she gives something to you she gets a better toy or a treat in exchange, and it seems like a good thing.

Someone posted a great training video for teaching the 'drop it' command in this forum a while back, so that would be worth a look.

The trick with teaching 'stay' is to try and keep within her limitations, if possible, so that she doesn't move before you have told her 'okay' (or whatever your release command is) and rewarded her. I like to pair a hand signal with it in case I ever have to tell them to stay from distance. So to begin with you say 'stay', signal it with your hand (I use a stop sign), take a step back and then immediately step back to her and give her praise/a treat/affection. Then gradually step further away each time. Once she's got it in the house then you can practise in the garden, and then outside on a long line, and then with you giving the command from a distance. I make the dogs sit and stay while getting their food ready so they practise this every day.

I use a hand signal with lie down too. To begin with I had to actually put my hand near the ground so that they would get it, because then they would follow my hand.

With 'shake', I have tried teaching it by pairing the command to the action, i.e. when the dog happens to shake, saying 'Shake. Good shake.'. The herding dog got this very quickly, but I'm still working on this with Ghost. Maybe someone else will have a better way.

I like dogstardaily because some of the training videos on there are very helpful, and they all seem to follow positive methods. These work much better than negative reinforcement, and its more fun too.

I always use to train by trial and error but after taking Mylo to obedience way back in 2001, I really feel when teaching dogs they also learn so much better learning off each other rather then singularly.

Thanks for the ideas... she's so sweet... and so obviously abused or something. She cowered from my dad yesterday. I'm going to have to be very careful with discipline. I'm not sure how to deal with that either.

Hey there!

our dog Shiro is the same. He's only 10 months old though so he might still be a bit more malleable. It's hard to train a dog like that i think. All i can really think of is that more then "normal" dogs you HAVE to be consequent, that makes you dependable, trusted.

I agree... it's going to take a while for her to trust people. She already loves me, but she even cowers from me sometimes. I think she'll get there, but she needs lots of love.

Sometimes the cowering never goes away. I've had Adobo for over 4 years now got her at 17 months and she still ducks your hand if you bring it in at an over hand way.

Awww... I really hope she gets over some of it. I just hate to see her scared, but we'll deal with whatever comes our way.