With Sephy, he really needed some off-leash play time. He really loved to play with other dogs. Some things I did with him before he got all his shots -
1. Puppy class. I enrolled him in puppy class where we did both commands as well as short play sessions with the other puppies in the class.
2. Puppy play groups. There is a daycare center in my area that does supervised puppy play groups. They check to make sure that all puppies that come by are current on their shots.
3. Puppy play dates. My neighbor at the time had a really awesome puppy so I would go fetch her as often as I could and have supervised one-on-one play sessions at my house.

Here are some other things that helped with Sephy when he was a puppy -
http://shibashake.com/dog/puppy-training-tips-and-advice

Shiba puppies do take up a lot of time and attention though. If a Shiba puppy is not a good fit for you, consider re-homing her through a rescue. She is still very young, so the transition would be easier for her.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

Even though you may want your dog to stay home most of the time and don’t plan on entering it in contests or competitions it’s important to train the dog properly.  Even house dogs need to have some obedience and other training, to make them the best d…

Make sure you do not reward your dogs for their excited behavior. This means they get no attention from you until they are calm. In general you want to make leaving and coming home as low key as possible. Just come back, let them in, and don’t give them any attention or affection for a while.

There are several methods that you can try.

1. I would start small and set the dogs up for success. So first, set up some time for training where both you and your husband are free. You stay in the house and have your husband go out and click the garage door. When the dogs start barking you have two options – either give them the “Quiet” command, or just ignore them. Wait until they settle down. As soon as they do, mark the behavior, “yes” and reward them by having your husband come back in. You can also throw some food in initially. Once they are good with this you can challenge them a bit more. You may have to repeat this many times before you start seeing a change in behavior. Just do short training sessions every day.

2. Again set up some training time where the both of you are free. This time, both of you leave and click the garage door. Listen for the barking, and once they stop, you come back in – and just do the low-key non-greeting. Once they get better at this, you can slowly lengthen the time when you return.

If you want to go a next step, you can take the care out for a short spin and then return. But I think if you keep to the low-key greetings and the garage door desensitization you will see an improvement.

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes

We have two dogs, a cairn x shih Tzu (who hardly ever barks) called maddie and a kelpie x german shepard called codei. When we leave to go out we take them outside and close the windowed sliding door ( they can see inside). At this point there is no barking. We then go out the front door. There is a wall in the way of the front door so they cant actually see us go out.

However our car is in the garage and as soon as they hear the garage door go up they start barking. The same goes for when we get home. I dont believe they bark while we are gone just at the beginning and when we get home. They are both also very excited when we open the sliding doors to let them in again, including some barking. Is this ok behaviour? I would rather they didnt bark when we came home, because of the neighbours, and it isnt a good habit for them to do.

Can we desensitise them to the sound of the garage door? For us to do that one of us would have to be there giving treats for when they dont bark. This isnt really realistic because we both generally leave at the same time. Is there a way to sort this?

Thanks so much! We need help

I think the get away bark for puppies is normal behavior and good for the puppies as long as there is *no real aggression* behind it. Puppies learn their social boundaries from older dogs.

One thing you can try is to change the time at which you go to the park, and go when there are fewer, and less active dogs. Then you can non-mark her (ack-ack) and take her away for a short-break every time she does the referee-ing behavior.

When she is behaving well, make sure to reward her by playing with her and tossing her some balls.

She sounds like a real sweetie. Let us know how it goes.