Set up a schedule and carefully supervise our puppy.
The little puppy is very curious and will get into trouble every chance he gets.
To save ourselves a lot of pain and to save our puppy from stress, we want set up a fixed schedule which includes crate time, play time, walk time, as well as handling and grooming time.
When our puppy is out and about in a non-dog-proof area, we need to supervise him closely. Close supervision will give us the opportunity to teach puppy right from wrong, without too much damage to our furniture and belongings.
If I do not have the time,
- I usually crate puppy, when he is home alone, or
- I put puppy on a tie-down, when I am home but unable to fully supervise.
If you are concerned about crating your puppy, here is what the Humane Society of the United States and the American Dog Trainer’s Network have to say about dogs and crates.
When I am away for a long period of time (> 3 hours), I put puppy in a long-term enclosure. This can be a secure puppy pen or a safe room (e.g. kitchen). I make sure there is nothing in the enclosure that my puppy can destroy. I also put in some bedding, a water bowl, puppy pads, and safe chew toys.
As a general rule, the longest time to crate a puppy is (age of dog in months) hours. For example, an 8 week old puppy can be kept a maximum of (2 month old) = 2 hours in a crate. Note that this is just a general guideline for the maximum crate time.
Most puppies need to go outside more frequently than that, for exercise and potty training. I take my puppy outside as soon as he wakes up, and right after any kind of vigorous play. In the beginning, Husky puppy Shania needed to potty after about 10-15 minutes of play. Here is a more detailed table of maximum crate time.
At night, I crate my dogs in the bedroom. Sleeping together helps with the bonding process, and shows them that they are part of the pack.
2. Keep a drag-lead on our puppy
I put a drag-lead on my puppy when he is roaming freely in the house.
This will help us control our ball of energy without resorting to chasing games. When my puppy tries to run away, all I need to do is step on the drag-lead.
I use a regular, thick (1 inch wide), flat collar or harness and not an aversive collar (choke chain, prong collar). I make sure to cut off the loop on the leash, so that it does not catch on anything around the house. I start with a longer (6 feet), light leash, and then shorten it depending on my puppy’s behavior. I only do this while I am around to properly supervise my puppy.
Once he matures and is better behaved, I switch to a leash tab or remove the drag-lead altogether.
It is best to use a secure 6 foot leash during puppy leash training and not the flexi-leash. The 6 foot leash gives us better control of our puppy, and is necessary to keep him safe when he decides to go chasing after dogs, cats, or squirrels.
3. Start with reward obedience training
It is most effective and least risky to start our puppy with reward obedience training. I started out with aversive techniques, and it made my Shiba puppy develop additional behavioral issues, including aggression. In fact, my aversive based dog trainer said that it was inappropriate use pain based techniques, such as leash jerks and alpha rolls, on dogs that are younger than 6 months old.
Today, I prefer to use reward training because it is more effective at motivating my dogs, stopping undesirable behaviors, and building a strong bond.
With reward training, we establish ourselves as the pack leader by controlling our dog’s resources through the Nothing in Life is Free (NILIF) program. This simply means that my puppy has to do something for me, for example a Sit, before he gets any resource (e.g. food, toys, affection, freedom) in return. Any bullying will be ignored, or will result in the removal of that resource.
Many people make the mistake of equating pack leadership with the use of aversive training. Aversive dog trainers say that difficult, strong-willed, dominant dogs require stronger, punishment based methods in order to show him who is boss.
This is not true.
One of my dogs (a Shiba Inu) is extremely strong willed, and can be quite difficult, but he responds much better to reward training.
Be careful of advertisements for 10 minute puppy obedience training programs and the like. There are no miracle cures in puppy training.
4. Bite inhibition training
Puppy biting is common because puppies are naturally curious, and want to examine everything with their mouths.
The good news is puppies do not have the jaw strength of an adult dog, and will not do much damage to us when biting. Because of this, puppy-hood is a good time for bite inhibition, or soft mouth training.
One of the best ways to train a dog to have a soft mouth is through hand-feeding.
I hand-feed my puppy at least some of his kibble every day. If he bites too hard when getting his food, I do a sharp ouch or yelp and ignore him for a few seconds. Then, I retry the exercise. If he takes food from me gently, I praise him and continue feeding without any breaks.
We can also combine hand-feeding with obedience commands, and dog grooming sessions. Hand-feeding also helps with food aggression issues, so I continue with it even through adulthood.
Ian Dunbar’s book After You Get Your Puppy, gives a good overview of bite inhibition, and how to best train our puppy to have a soft mouth.
A puppy, and ultimately an adult dog who has a soft mouth is a great asset. Because my Shiba Inu has good bite inhibition, we were able to solve many of his behavior problems, which would have been difficult to deal with if he were biting at full strength.
5. Practice calm and assertive energy
This is something that is always emphasized by Cesar Millan (the Dog Whisperer) and it is extremely important; especially for a hyperactive puppy.
If we interact with a dog using nervous, submissive, fearful, or otherwise weak (non-assertive) energy, the dog will sense that and start acting out even more.
Anger, impatience, frustration, and all other non-calm energies will only excite our puppy, and cause him to exhibit even more extreme behaviors.
In order to achieve calm, assertive energy, we must first overcome whatever fears we may feel toward our dog, and become his pack leader. This is much easier to do if we have achieved good bite inhibition.
6. A busy puppy is a good puppy
Puppies have a lot of energy, and will get into trouble if we do not keep them busy.
I make my puppy work for ALL of his food. Instead of presenting everything to him in a silver bowl, I use his daily kibble and treats for obedience sessions, bite inhibition training, handling, and grooming. If there is food left over, I put it in interactive food toys.
I also schedule play time with my puppy. Some games that my dogs like include flirt pole, the water hose game, and sometimes soccer.
When I start with a new game, I make it fun by handing out lots of treats for effort. Once my puppy understands the game, I switch to only treating his more stellar performances.
Make sure to always have control of a puppy’s play-time. This means that we own all the toys, and we decide when to start and stop the games. Play-time can be very useful in training our puppy to calm down, and to pay attention to us even when he is excited.
I also schedule two or three short obedience training sessions (10-15 minutes) with my puppy every day. This helps to establish me as the leader, gives my puppy some mental exercise, and provides a good bonding experience.
Other good ways to exercise our puppy (after full vaccination) include neighborhood walks, walks in the park, dog playgroups, and dog sports.
7. We are not alone
The most important thing to remember while bringing up a difficult puppy is that we are not alone!
Our puppy journey will be filled with a lot of joy, but there will also be challenges and pit-falls. Sometimes, we may feel discouraged by our puppy’s behavior, or with his performance in dog obedience class.
We are not alone!
There are many support groups out there where we may post our questions. I also find it helpful to visit these groups when I feel discouraged, or when I feel like my puppy is some mutant strain of devil dog.
Do not think that you are a bad dog owner or trainer when your puppy behaves badly. Many other dog owners are facing the exact same problems. Also remember that with proper rules and training, our puppy’s behavior will improve with time.
When you teach your dogs commands, how do you come up with the method for teaching them? For example, google searches, books, videos, trainers, etc. I am trying to find new commands to teach Marcus so he doesn’t get bored. Also so I don’t get bored repeating the same few commands over and over and over, haha.
Also, your advice is doing wonders. Marcus now knows to follow silently and plops down in the bathroom corner when I say time-out. Definitely less furniture chewing incidents (still working on leash as a chew toy)!! 😀
Hey Alice,
I am so glad to hear that things are improving with Marcus. He sounds like a really fun and awesome puppy.
I usually try to break the command down into little small steps and then use hand targeting to achieve each step. Sometimes I use shaping (waiting for the dog to offer behaviors that I want), but that requires a lot more patience.
The other thing that I do is carefully observe them, and see what action and stimulus trigger certain behaviors. For example, my Sibe Shania sings whenever I squeak a toy. So to train her the “Sing” command, I first start with the squeaky toy together with a hand gesture, then I move on to just the hand gesture tied to a verbal command, then I try it with just the verbal.
Big hugs to Marcus. Let us know what works best for you in terms of teaching him new commands.
I asked about time-outs somewhere else too, but for getting him to the time-out place, what do you do? Once Marcus has figured out that we’re heading there, he buckles down and won’t budge. I don’t want to drag him by force, but you bring up good points about keeping handling / restraint positive, so how do you get Sephy to go to time-out without a big struggle?
Sephy is on a drag-lead and I use that to get him to timeout.
Sometimes he will pull back or do alligator rolls in order to prevent me from taking him to time-out.
Sound aversion techniques can work at this point depending on the dog and his temperament. For example, with Sephy, I put some pennies in an empty soda can and tape up the opening. Then I just shake the can. He does not like that sound and would get up on his own. When I am outside and do not have the can, I would scrape my shoe against the sidewalk. He also does not like the sound and gets up on his own.
If the sound does not work, then I just lift his chest up so that he is standing on his front legs and then move him along at a fast clip. If he mouths on me when I try to lift him with hands, I put some straight up tension on the lead which he absolutely does not like, and that gets him moving.
In this way, he learns that if he escalates, the consequences escalate as well. Also, it is important to tailor the training to the temperament of the dog. Be flexible and tweak the techniques based on the likes and dislikes of your pup.
When I got Sephy, I also got some private training sessions from a professional trainer. That really helped a lot because the trainer could observe Sephy and let me know what are some of the better ways for dealing with his own particular brand of stubbornness. 😀
Hi my Shiba is 6 months old and has a TON of puppy energy.
Do you take Sephy to the dog park and how do you make sure the energy level stays at a respectable level? As you know, Shibas tend to play rougher than other dogs, which in my case, scares away some dogs and their handlers. However, I know that all he wants to do is play but is unaware that his playing may appear scary…
However, he was recently chased on his walk, by an unsocialized offleash dog up the street. Ever since then, he’s been acting up and amping up at the dog park. So much that I’ve resorted to pulling my dog away when he starts to amp up, which is rather quickly.
How do you deal with Sephy at the dog parks? I’m trying to socialize my dog as best I can, which means he goes to the dog park around 4 times a week to run/smell/make friends…
Thanks!
Hello Terry,
I used to take Sephy to the dog park but I stopped after a few months. He displayed many of the behaviors you described and would often overwhelm many of the dogs there. Sometimes people would let their little dog into the big dog area and little dogs really do not enjoy Sephy’s company. His favorite playmates were young pit-bulls who have the same play-style and energy.
Sometimes we would have really good dog park visits, but it is so highly dependent on the mix of dogs there. Also, Sephy really dislikes dominant dogs. If a dog tries to dominate him, he will not back down or surrender even if the dog is much larger.
Another thing that Sephy liked to do was to go steal a ball and then start a chasing game. Some of the dogs there just wanted to play fetch with their owners and they would get aggressive if Sephy tried to join in on their ball games.
Finally, Sephy started to develop some undesirable behaviors. In particular, he would often be so amped up that he would redirect his energy and his mouth onto us when we tried to calm him down.
For all of these reasons and more I stopped taking Sephy to enclosed dog parks. The environment there was just too chaotic and unstructured for a dog like him. What worked best for Sephy are more structured and smaller playgroups. One of our neighbors at the time had a really sweet and playful puppy called Kai. We would bring her over whenever we could to have one-on-one play sessions with Sephy. We also brought Sephy to our local SPCA to play, train, and socialize with the friendly dogs there.
Here are some stories about my dog-to-dog socialization and dog park experiences –
http://shibashake.com/dog/enclosed-dog-parks-good-or-bad
http://shibashake.com/dog/is-dog-socialization-a-good-thing
http://shibashake.com/dog/socializing-a-shiba-inu-to-other-dogs
http://shibashake.com/dog/my-dog-is-friendly
Okay thanks I might have to try that. She is a Shiba and very stubborn and she loves to be outside. So I would hate to take that away from her.
I was wondering what I can do to stop my dog from digging. She is 5 1/2 months old and this is a new habit she has picked up. We walk her every day play with her but as soon as we turn our backs she is digging. anything you can suggest would be helpful. Thanks.
Hello Michelle,
My Siberians are also big time diggers. To manage their digging –
1. I give them a digging area. There is an uphill area in my backyard that is not landscaped. They get to dig there whenever they want. In this way, they have an outlet for their digging and my yard doesn’t get destroyed. 😀
2. If they try to dig in the grass areas I non-mark them (Ack, Ack) and body block them away. If they are stubborn and come back to continue then I bring them inside. This teaches them that if they don’t listen and continue digging they lose backyard privileges.
3. Sometimes, Shiba can be stubborn and he will start digging in the house on the carpet. If he does that he goes to time-out in the laundry room which is tiled. He does not like digging on tile.
When my Sibe started digging in the backyard, I lengthened our walks which helped a lot. I also increased our number of play sessions.
I really like this article on how to stop dog digging –
http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/digging.html
HI,
thank you for your wonderful site. it has been so extremely helpful to me since I got my shiba oliver. I use many of your tricks and have managed to have a fairly well behaved puppy until now. Oliver is 8 month old and much of his training seems to have gone out the window. He is still house trained and knows what the commands mean but he is now starting to choose when to obey them. In addition he has started scratching at the door just because he wants to go out side and not because he needs to eliminate. Oh and he also has started biting me alot, just to get attention. he doesn’t bite super hard, but he bites hard enough for it to hurt. If you have nay tips on dealing with puppy adolescence i would love to hear them.
Thanks!
Hello Stacey,
Yeah Sephy was also very difficult during his adolescence. The worst was his leash biting – it was scary. This article contains some of the things I did with Sephy during his ‘difficult period’ –
http://shibashake.com/dog/pack-leader-to-an-aggressive-dog
In terms of biting, time-outs work the best with Sephy.
Hugs to Oliver. Let us know how it goes.
Very informative and interesting site you have.
We added another member to our family after Christmas. We got a Shiba Puppy, Saki, who is now almost 12 weeks old. She is very high strung and my wife is having a very difficult time with her right now. She is displaying what could be aggression when she is corrected but it could also be “puppy” play. She’s quickly becoming very frustrated with the nipping, and back talk when she is corrected. She seems to be good all day long when they are alone but when the kids come home she changes personalities. Any advice or thoughts?
Yeah, Shibas can ramp up on the excitement scale very quickly, and once they get excited, they get nippy because they want to interact. Whenever anybody gets home, Shiba Sephy goes from lazy Shiba to super-charged Shiba in seconds.
What seems to work well with Sephy is to make coming home as low key as possible. I ignore him until he settles down. If he jumps I just fold up my arms and turn away from him. After a bit, he calms down then I give him a command, e.g. Sit, and then I give him affection.
How are you correcting her? Shiba Sephy does not respond well to physical corrections. I started out with physical corrections (aversive techniques) with him, and the results were not good. He just kept fighting back and got more aggressive. Finally I switched to reward training and controlling his resources and that worked out much better for everyone.
Here is an article on some of my experiences with Sephy during his difficult stage –
http://shibashake.com/dog/pack-leader-to-an-aggressive-dog
Hi I just want to say how great your site is! I just got my shiba puppy last weekend so I’m currently putting up a fight against his shiba scream and his teeth XD~
I was wondering did your shiba ever put up a struggle when you are walking him? My little boy would decide to sit on the floor and not move at all, I could pull him if I wanted to since he is just 8 weeks old but I didn’t want to cause any troublesome habit that might come back n’ bite me on the butt later on…
Thanks ^_^
Congratulations on your new Shiba puppy!
Very much so! Shiba Sephy and I had a lot of struggles during our walks. The worst was his leash biting phase.
Nowadays, he is a lot better but he still likes to sit and look at the scenery. I usually don’t let him get into a lying down position because then, he really doesn’t want to up. Some things that have worked for me in terms of getting Shiba Sephy to get up –
1. I slide my shoe on the concrete sidewalk. This creates an unpleasant sound that startles him and makes him get up. I only use this sparingly, or Sephy will get used to the sound and it will no longer work.
2. As soon as he tries to lie down I non-mark him and start moving forward at a fast clip. It is much easier to get him moving again from a sit position. I only let him lie down when I am ready to let him stay in one spot for a while.
3. When he is lying down, I will usually push his body up and lift the collar at the same time to get him up. Sometimes he will do alligator rolls, so I make sure to hold the leash very close to his collar for good control, and use my leg to stop him from rolling.
Big HUGS to Shiba puppy!
Hi guys,
I just wanted to say that your site rocks…I swear I have read through the whole thing :). So creative and insightful it makes me think that my future pup and I will be just fine!!!
I am getting a new pup Febuary 12th, that is when I can bring her home and have been researching everything I can to make our new member of the family feel as comfertable as she can. I am too excited and it feels like the day will never come.
I just wanted to say thanks and your pups are just beautiful 🙂
Molly
Thank you very much Molly.
Congratulations on your soon to be new family addition! Take many many pictures and share them with us. They grow up very quickly; one blink of an eye, and they are all grown. 😀
Hello! I’m gonna be a first time, actualy dog owner this christmas. I’ve always loved dogs and the Shiba Inu definitly caught my attention from the start. The way it looks and where it is from and how it acts. I’ve been doing a lot of research about this dog, because I want to be the best dog owner for my new puppy when I get it. All of your information has been so helpful!! Thank you so much for putting up all of these things. I’ve even kept your site as a favorite! But there is one thing I’m curious about….Since this will be the first time I’ve ever had a puppy, I’m going to need to poty train it. Is there a specific way to training a Shiba Inu where to go to the bathroom and where not to? I kind of have an idea of how it should be done, but I just want to make sure I have the correct idea.
Hello Ashley,
The good news is Shibas are generally very clean dogs. When I got Sephy at 10 weeks old he was already potty trained by his breeder. He got stressed and made some mistakes in the house on his first night with us but on the next day he went to the front door and asked to be let out. I was very impressed with this particular aspect of him! 😀
This is something you can ask the breeder about. I would stick to established AKC breeders with health certifications for the parents. Shibas breeders usually check the parents for hip dysplasia.
Shibas naturally do not want to soil their living space but it is still necessary to take them out pretty often, especially in the beginning to do their Shiba business.
Here is an article on puppy potty training.
I wrote this after potty training my Siberian Husky. I didn’t need to do much (in terms of potty training) with my Shiba but I did take him out 4-5 times a day (in the beginning) to potty. I also stopped giving him water and food after about 7 p.m. so he wouldn’t need to pee in the middle of the night.