Comments on: Nothing in Life Is Free (NILIF) Dog Training

By: Ruth

Ruth — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:41:29 +0000

This does make sense. I rescued a male pitbul mix pretty sure weinerreiner. He gets aggressive in play with my pitbull female when playing or being possessive. I think Im getting a muzzle to protect my other dog. I think this may help I hope so I rescued him to give him a good life. He was found on the side of the road in a crate under feed. Animal control put him on Facebook. I hate this aggressive behavior. He is very sweet with me. Doses want to share me or anything else.

By: James Dascoli

James Dascoli — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 18:04:05 +0000

As a professional trainer and founder of a GSD rescue group, I enjoyed your explanation of NILIF. I especially liked your description of The Spirit of NILIF, as sometimes NILIF has been interpreted as an end in itself, or to exert dominance, when as you mention it is a technique to develop a bond between the dog and owner. Thank you.

By: shibashake

shibashake — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 23:46:05 +0000

In reply to Tracy. Food and more generally resource guarding is a common issue with many dogs. My Shiba also exhibited some of those tendencies. Given what you describe I would try to find a good trainer who has a lot of experience with both Shibas and resource guarding issues. I have a couple of articles on my experience with resource guarding with my Shiba BUT they are more for prevention. “Mine!”, Says the Shiba Inu More on food aggression.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 21:42:34 +0000

Hi
We have had a very upsetting incident with our Shiba today. He is one. He is very protective over certain things. On a couple nights of occasions he’s been aggressive to us when we try to take something off him that he’s picked up in the garden. This time he full on aggressively attacked my husband when he had upended his food by accident and my husband tried to clean it up. He also went for me when I tried to pull him back. The behaviour seems to be escalating and I don’t know what to do…

By: Kchan

Kchan — Wed, 26 May 2021 03:27:22 +0000

Hi, I am so glad to have found your blog as I just recently became a Shiba owner. Though I had dogs before but Shiba is very different. She is currently 8 weeks old and only home 3 days, but us barely eating or not very interested in food, which makes it really difficult for me to train her with incentive. I am also concerned she’s not eating enough and have tried canned tuna and sardines but mildly interested only. Hope to get some advise from you. Thanks!

By: louise

louise — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 07:16:31 +0000

Hi,

Thank you for this article it is very informative. Was wondering if you have any further advice for us. We have a 13 week old golden retriever puppy called Cora. She is a good girl most of the time, however sometimes she wrinkles her nose up at us when we tell her off the couch. I have started to teach her the off command and when I show her a treat she comes off for it. However if I try to mive her off or pull her collar then she makes this face and shows her teeth a bit. I am worried this is aggressive and want to resolve this before she gets bigger. At the moment she is ot allowed on the couch at all and wears a lead. If she won’t come off on command for a treat i will use the lead to get her to come down. Do you have any tips? Any advice would be appreciated

Many thanks

Louise

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 14:00:54 +0000

We have recently adopted a 10 month old male border collie-lab mix. He is high energy and, initially, seemed like a good match for our female border collie-catahoula. They love to run together in the yard and wrestle but occasionally things escalate and our female ends up with bite marks on her muzzle. I’m not sure how to handle this as we are not always present to “referee” their play. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as we cannot allow this to continue and the alternative of rehoming him is also unacceptable to us. I really enjoy reading your posts and your common sense approaches to modify behavior. Thank you for sharing your knowledge/experience.

By: Sara contois

Sara contois — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 23:38:58 +0000

Please could you help me. I have a 6 year old American bulldog I got him in south carolina at 5 weeks..he is really sweet .loves people was very well socialized with other dogs.I own a horse farm he has always been loose cause he loves everybody.3 years ago he got attacked by another dog and since then he has been unpredictable and dangerous with dogs he doesn’t know..I am very worried and at a lose as to what to do now..I always keep him on a leash if we go anywhere and he has an e coller he respects.but I can not always rely on a perfect world where people don’t suddenly show up her with a stranqe dog .I love him but he just attacked my neighbor s dog when he came over..I am now fencing that whole side of my property.but I miss the life we had when I could take him everywhere with me and it didn’t matter what dogs came to the barn….
Can you help ?

By: Ruth Keattch

Ruth Keattch — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:20:45 +0000

In reply to Vanna. I know this comment is 2 years after your original comment, but my suggestion with a puppy like this is to teach them 'sit'. That involves with a puppy making sure you issue the command then put their bums on the floor, then treat and 'good boy' or whatever your approval word is. Repeat a few times, and see if they start to get it. Then you can build on teaching 'sit'.

By: Aggressive Little Morkie - YorkieTalk.com Forums - Yorkshire Terrier Community

Aggressive Little Morkie - YorkieTalk.com Forums - Yorkshire Terrier Community — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 18:01:13 +0000

[…] Make it fun. When I first got my babies, I used the "Nothing Is For Free" technique (Nothing in Life Is Free (NILIF) Dog Training). Basically, for anything Latte wants, he must first do something you want (i.e. sit down politely […]