I teach a dog to obey a command at any time and under any distraction. This is his key to freedom. If I, or any other owner, can trust his dog to obey “come”, “stay,” and “down” commands at any given time and distraction, I can provide him with enormous freedom to smell, play, and do whatever he wishes the rest of the time.

Yeah puppies are usually very mouthy because they are very curious, very energetic, and want to interact and play with everyone and everything using their mouth. Some things that help my dogs with biting during puppyhood -

1. Bite inhibition training.
2. Frozen Kongs.
3. Redirection – teach them what to do instead of biting.

Here are a few more things that I do to control puppy biting.

Physically based methods, such as neck grabbing, finger jabs, alpha rolls and more, were not helpful with Shiba Sephy. In the longer term, such methods encouraged even more bad behaviors, caused him to lose trust in me, and made him very sensitive to handling and grooming. Some of these “techniques” may also encourage dog aggression.

Re: Crating

With Sephy, his crate location matters a lot.

Sephy is fine sleeping in his crate as long as it is in the bedroom with his people. In this way, he can smell us, see us, and knows we are very close by. When he was a puppy, we put-up a baby gate in the kitchen and put Sephy in there during his day-nap/rest time. I am usually in the kitchen with him, or right outside in the living room so that he also knows I am close by and can see me.

In the beginning, I also slowly desensitized Sephy to his crate so that he views it as a positive and safe area where he eats and goes to sleep.

Here are some of the things that helped with Sephy during puppyhood.
Here are some things that I learned while training Shiba Sephy.
I set up a very consistent routine for Sephy, and a very fixed set of rules. I also use the Nothing in Life is Free program with all of my dogs.

And I would suspect that the dogs that you mentioned in the beginning working in unison were not robots either.

I wish that were true, but sadly, the training philosophy stated at the site suggested otherwise.

In terms of commands and options, I think that options are a very good thing. I try to set my dogs up for success, and provide them with as many options as I can, so that they can pick which ones suit them most. I try out a variety of reward motivators, and use the ones that are most effective for a given context. I believe that a big part of living well with dogs, involves finding the right motivators at the right time.

I also believe that dogs are intelligent beings with needs and goals of their own. As such, they always decide for themselves whether to follow a command or not. Therefore, commands are *always* an option. We can certainly try to motivate our dog to follow certain commands with a reward or aversive stimulus, but ultimately, our dog decides how to act.

This is why with a real dog, commands are never 100% reliable.

With my own dogs, my main goal is to help them fulfill their needs and goals, while looking out for their long-term health and safety. To me, that is what leadership means – helping pack members achieve success.

I don’t think our shiba boy will be winning any obedience awards but he’s a happy and healthy pup and that’s all that matters.

I agree! Thanks for sharing your Shiba experiences with us.