The Shiba Inu is a beautiful Spitz dog. You will get many compliments and turn many heads, while walking next to a Shiba.
A Shiba can get you a lot of attention, and open doors to many social encounters. Get used to hearing, “He looks just like a fox!”.
In fact, it is this foxy look that often gets Shibas into trouble.
Many people fall in love with the ‘Shiba look’, but are not equipped to handle his larger than life personality.
If you like the Spitz look, there are many other breeds that fall into this group, that may better suit your lifestyle.
The Good
1. A dog that is more like a cat
A Shiba Inu is independent and very clean.
My Shiba Sephy, spends a fair amount of time not just grooming himself, but also helping to groom my Siberian Husky.
Their inborn cleanliness make them generally easy to potty train.
Sephy only had potty mistakes on the first day that we brought him home (10 weeks old). After that, he has always let me know when he needs to go outside. In fact, he naturally dislikes soiling his living space, and even prefers not to go in our backyard.
Shiba Inus like having their humans around, in the general vicinity. However, they are aloof like cats, and do not need or want human affection, much of the time.
2. A good watch dog
A Shiba Inu is not a noisy dog. However, when there are strange people or strange noises around the house, Sephy will bark to alert me. Once I go and check things out, he stops barking.
Sephy also has a great memory, and will alert me if anything is out of place around the house, or in a familiar neighborhood. One day, he started barking at the fence, because somebody had put a piece of wood on top of it – amazing!
3. Graceful, agile, and high energy
A Shiba Inu is graceful and agile.
He can leap tall fences in a single bound, and can scale walls like Spiderman. If properly directed, his super powers can be used for good. However, when left on his own, the Shiba will likely turn towards the Dark Side.
Sephy is a great hiking buddy, and is always up for a new challenge. He can easily learn and conquer an agility course, but he will only do it, if I make it worth his while.
A Shiba running is a sight to behold, and a Shiba at play is poetry in motion.
4. A doggy Einstein
A Shiba Inu can learn many dog obedience commands, and he can learn them very quickly. He also thinks that he is much smarter than you, and will only obey you when it suits him.
Sephy can quickly solve complex interactive dog toys and puzzles. I am always trying out new ways to deploy his food in toys, because he figures things out so quickly.
A Shiba will challenge us and keep us sharp and on our toes!
5. A larger than life personality
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
~~[ Aristotle ]
A Shiba Inu may be small in body, but he has a ginormous personality. If a Shiba were a person, he would either be an extremely successful egomaniac or in prison!
Sephy always surprises me and makes me laugh; at least when he is not making me cry.
He has this one move, where he puts his head down on the ground, with his butt sticking up in the air – it is just too precious.
The Bad
1. Bold, strong willed, and stubborn
A Shiba Inu has a “Never give up, Never surrender” attitude.
He will not back down from a challenge, and will often fight back when he perceives a threat. Because of this, many Shiba owners face aggression issues with their dog, including food aggression, dog to dog aggression, and people aggression.
To successfully live with a Shiba, we must be extremely patient, and have a good sense of humor.
Turn a Shiba’s annoying habits against him.
For example, a Shiba gets bored easily. If we ignore him and give him nothing to react to, he will quickly lose interest, and move on to something else.
Sephy can also be very competitive. If he sees another dog getting praise and rewards, he will want to strut his stuff and show that he is better.
Work with a Shiba’s innate personality, and use it motivate him in the right direction. Passive resistance and reward obedience training, work best with my Shiba.
A Shiba will hand you many lemons, which is good if you like lemonade. Otherwise, just cut one up and squirt it on his muzzle.
~~[ just kidding! ShibaShake ]
2. A sly, rougish intelligence
A Shiba Inu is super intelligent. He will most often use his brain power to “push your buttons“, and get what he wants.
Sephy is always trying to figure out how he can outsmart me, and all the humans around him. A trainer once told me that Sephy was spending the weekends, “Devising new strategies to defeat her”.
In another life, my Shiba was probably a Catholic priest. He can guilt me into doing almost anything for him.
Beware the Shiba look – it is one of his most powerful weapons, and he will use it to great effect, if he senses any weakness in you. Before you know it, your Shiba will have gotten you trained to fetch, stay, and rub tummy.
- Remember that a Shiba will do whatever he wants, if he can get away with it.
- If he cannot get away with it, he will figure out another way to get what he wants.
- When he gets caught with his nose in the cookie jar, he will give you the innocent, “What did I do?” look, and then come over to lick your hand.
As soon as you turn away, he is back in the cookie jar!
3. Like the evil, black Spiderman
A Shiba Inu is capable of great feats of agility. However, if left untrained, he will use his powers to destroy and cause great havoc in the household.
If bored and lonely, he will escape by jumping over or burrowing under your fence. He can squeeze through small holes, bite through leashes, and achieve amazing great escapes, that will make Houdini proud.
If not properly supervised, Sephy will pull down items from counters, and shred them to pieces. He may even eat some of those pieces. Once, I left him unsupervised for about 10 minutes. In that time, he pulled down a phone headset, dismantled it into little pieces, and arranged them in a strategic pattern all over the floor. Luckily, he did not swallow anything.
A young Shiba Inu has a lot of energy.
It takes a lot to keep him occupied, and away from trouble. Supervised play sessions with friendly dogs can help. Another alternative is to put him in dog daycare, or to employ the services of a dog walker.
4. A Drama Queen
My Shiba will whine, mope, and act like it is the end of the world, when he is unhappy about something (e.g. wearing a harness).
Woe be to you if your Shiba gets hurt, or even just thinks that he is hurt.
Sephy acts like he is close to death’s door, even for small things like getting grass stuck between his teeth.
Woe be to you, woe be to your vet, and woe be to anyone who tries to help.
Shibas are extremely touchy when in this state, and may snap or bite at anyone who comes near them.
In addition, Sephy is extremely sensitive to the energy of the people and dogs around him. If I am scared or stressed-out, he picks up on that immediately, and gets that way too – except with a thousand times more gusto!
5. An accomplished singer
A Shiba Inu does not bark much, but he has a wide range of vocal stylings.
The most well known is the Shiba-scream, which is a high pitched, loud scream, that will make your blood curdle. Your neighbors will think you are torturing your poor little ball of fur.
A Shiba will quickly learn to use his Shiba-scream against you, if you let him.
Do not get embarrassed, and do not give him a reaction during a Shiba-scream. I just ignore Sephy and go about my business. He quickly learned that screaming is not very effective at getting him what he wants, and he stopped doing it. Remember that a Shiba can see your outward appearance, as well as sense your inner energy.
6. Dog royalty
A Shiba Inu does not like being touched or handled.
Cutting nails, bathing, or a vet examination, is never fun for any breed of dog. However, with a Shiba, it can be total hell.
After a lot of desensitization work and management, Sephy still protests to some of these activities. He sometimes throws a fit when I pick him up, and he only likes human contact when the mood suits him.
A Shiba is like dog royalty. He wants his subjects close enough to serve him, but not too close as to sully his royal person.
7. Pretends not to understand ‘Obedience’
Obedience? What’s that?
Shibas Inus think that you should be obedient to them and not the other way around. If you want a Shiba to do something for you, you had better make him a good offer. Sometimes, Sephy bargains with me. He will sit there and wait until I have the acceptable number of dog treats in my hand, before going into his crate.
A Shiba can be a good citizen at home, but he must be properly managed.
Shibas are strong willed, independent, and bred to hunt. Aversive training does not work well on them. Shiba owners need to be creative and flexible when interacting with their dog.
A Shiba is not to be trusted off-leash, unless in a fully enclosed area.
8. Nasty, wicked teeth
For a small dog, a Shiba Inu has very large teeth, and he is not afraid to use them.
Shibas can be very mouthy; more so than many other dog breeds. When I first got Sephy at 10 weeks old, his mouth was all over me. Now, it is in control, but his instinct is still to bite.
Shibas are a primitive breed, and they lose control more easily than other more domesticated dog breeds.
The Quirky
A grass connoisseur
Sephy likes grazing, but he is picky about what grass he will eat. Dogs may sometimes graze when their stomachs are upset, to clear their digestive systems. However, my Shiba just enjoys eating grass, provided it is the right kind of grass.
I recently found an article suggesting that there might be something to this grass connoisseur business after all.
“We at Green Foods believe that dogs and many other carnivores, including cats and bears, eat cereal grasses because cereal grasses contain nutrients not found in meat that are essential for the animals’ good health.”
~~[ Green Foods web site ]
Thanks to all the posters at Shibatalk and ShibaInuInfo for their many humorous Shiba stories that inspired this article.
ShibaShake, thank you for such an entertaining and informative post! When you mentioned that your dog enjoys grass as a snack, it made me think of how my mom’s Shiba used to mirthfully eat an amazing variety of non-food items (miraculously, never making him sick!). At five years old, he’s doing it less frequently. But it makes me wonder, are Shibas prone to pica disorder? Thanks!
My mom had a black shiba that loved to eat rough cucumber leaves.
My Shiba does have a more obsessive type personality, so I suppose that could lead to something like pica if not properly managed. As I understand it, dogs with a higher tendency for obsessive behavior are at greater risk. However, I have not had this problem with any of my dogs.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/pica-eating-things-arent-food
Thank you for the informative article, ShibaShake. It says that boredom can contribute to pica. Exactly… My mom plays with her dog, but I can see that he should ideally be getting more exercise than he does. I think she should hire a walker (or a runner, lol). Hana, I agree that cucumber leaves are a weird choice to munch on; they’re like sandpaper – blech! Maybe edible, but not very palatable.
I have a 16 year old shiba that acts like a puppy. She was given to me when she was four yrs. old. I didn’t know she was not socialize until I got her home. She was wild and wanted nothing to do with people. I put her in a 60′ x 160′ pen and she loved it. Also she made a good watch dog. After ten yrs. she will let me pet her some, but only on her terms. I would never recommend this breed for a family pet.
Actually, my parents raised two shibas from puppies and they made excellent companions for kids. I’d come home from college for the winter holidays missing the family shiba and be like, “hey , where’s Kuro?” only to find out that Kuro the shiba had been invited to a playdate with the seven year olds across the street. Or that my mom’s friends family had asked to borrow Kuro for the day.
But I can’t stress enough the importance of early socialization with kids and dogs. A four year old shiba is hard to train.
I have always loved Shiba Inu’s and wanted to own one for years! because I work an 8 hour day + commute time I fear it would be grossly unfair to leave it alone in the house all day. I was thinking maybe I could pay for a dog walker ? and just spend all weekend with it but I worry it is just not fair if there is nobody at home with it unless of course I do use a dog minder?
Advice welcome please
My Shiba really needed a lot of supervision and structured activity when he was young. He calmed down a lot though, as he got older and did more training. We still walk him twice every day, but he is pretty good just chilling out the rest of the time.
One alternative instead of getting a puppy is to adopt an adult Shiba. There are many Shiba rescues in the US. Not sure as much about the UK.
http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/services/public/findarescue/display.aspx?breed=4110&id=2119
http://www.shibas.org/rescue.html
Also, the Club breeders here will sometimes adopt out their retired show dogs. Make sure that they are a registered club breeder.
http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/services/public/acbr/Default.aspx?breed=Japanese+Shiba+Inu
Let them know your schedule and make sure to get a dog that is calm and comfortable being home alone (i.e. does not have separation anxiety).
becky, it would be mandatory to get a dog walker to take her out
a minimum of an hour, and even play and rough house with them back at the house for awhile upon return. Schedule the visit at the midpoint of your work schedule. Have the sitter spend some time with her while you are there. Human contact is so very important at the get go. I say her be-cause females are less aggressive than males, and should be fixed and have at least some entry level obedience training. If you have a secure yard, a doggie door is a must.
I have been lucky perhaps, as my sheeb does great with kids, strangers and non aggressive dogs. Please understand how important it is to put in the time getting to know the traits of the breed. They truly are unique!
A puppy is the only way to go, as well as AKC cert. purebred, IMO. The “juvenile delinquent” phase is from 6 mo. to 2 yrs. plus. This is the most challenging stage, and critical time to bond with a sheeb. Just stay on top of things re discipline, but recognize it’s give and take with this breed. If you can master sit, leave it and stay, that’s pretty good. Amazing what they pick up
too. I throw the ball with mine and when I’M done, i say “one more!” and stick to that. She’ll know that’s what it means and won’t push for more.
Hope this helps. Fare thee well!
I don’t understand the mentally of some people why adopting a dog if all his/her needs are not going to be taken care of it is inhuman and not acceptable if you are not going to treat your dog like a family member don’t get one especially rescued dogs they have been through a lot they need special treatment… it breaks my heart the some people are towards animals.
I own my little girl Shiba for 14 years. She was the mos sweet natured dog, very catlike but so funny. I own a Canaan Dog and she spent her time dominating him. She never bit him, but it was not unusual to see his foot or tail in her mouth. He would take it for so long, then he would stand over her with HER head in his mouth. She had a look that said, “Oh, I forgot you were bigger.” I loved her dearly and someday I will get another Shiba girl.
I’d like ao.e advice on my young Shibas behavior. He’s only agressive towards one of my dogs and just randomly goes up to him and attacks him
We first thought the problem was because it was near his room. But he just attacked him outside as well.. I don’t know if it’s because before I let him outside he was barking at something andy other boy was there.. i have been bitten trying to get him off the other dog.. please help! Any advice would be helpful
Near his food.. not room sorry auto correct on my phone
How many dogs do you have? What kind, what ages, and what temperament? How is the dog that gets attacked different? Is he older? Is he neutered? Is he nervous? How old is the Shiba? How long have you had him? When did this behavior start? What training has he had?
Dog behavior is very context dependent so the temperaments, routine, past experiences, training, and more of the dogs will all play a role. When there are multiple dogs involved, things become even more complex. Therefore, especially in cases of aggression, it is best and safest to get help from a good professional trainer. When I was having troubles with my Shiba, I visited with several trainers, and I also read up a lot on dog behavior.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/finding-professional-help
https://apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/
With my dogs, I set up clear dog-to-dog interaction rules, and I supervise them to make sure that everybody is following the rules. As soon as I notice the start of any undesirable behavior, I call and redirect my dog. For my in-training dog, I put a flat collar and light leash on her (only under supervision and absolutely no aversive collars). In this way, I can easily control my dog if need be, and I stop things before they escalate. Prevention is best.
With rules, routine, and supervision, my dogs know exactly what to expect from each other, what to expect from me, and what I expect from them in return. This creates certainty, and certainty helps to reduce stress and conflicts.
I try to manage my dog’s environment so that I always set her up for success. Calm, supervised, and successful experiences with each other, help my dogs to build confidence, trust, and positive associations. Similarly, negative experiences or reactive events will undermine that trust, set back my training, create negative associations, and result in more stress and conflicts down the road.
More on how I help my dogs get along.
I do not leave my dogs alone unsupervised until I am very very sure that there will be absolutely no issues. If I am unable to supervise, then I keep my in-training dog separated. I use leashes, gates, enclosures, and other equipment to keep everyone safe. Given what you describe, I would contact a good trainer as soon as possible.
My shiba does this to one of my pugs. It’s because they are a dominate dog and if they sense the other dog is passive they will attack. I have 4 dogs and the shiba only has issues with the pug. I use a spray bottle now and when she attacks the pug, I spray her. Stops her immediately and it’s cut down on the frequency. Just be careful not to spray in the face.
I agree with SQ that it is uncaring and harmful to care for a dog that you know needs surgery that you refuse to provide out of fear of some future costs related to aggression. I have a five year old Shiba female and while she always shows aggression on leash, and won’t back down from a fight, she is the smartest, most soulful and most loyal of all my dogs (others being Goldens and yellow labs). Please consider the bounty of joy this dog will bring to your life and be patient.
I rescued a 3 year-old Shiba and he attacks me and my other dog. I thought at first he was protecting his chew toys, but the other night I went to pet him and he started growling without a chew toy. I thought my other dog was walking into the room. Thankfully I pulled away in time before he got me. He needs both rear knees operated on (luxing) and I just don’t see putting that much money into the surgery if I’m going to get sued later on by someone else for his aggression or spending a lot of time in the Vet ER because he hurt my other dog. When he is good he is fantastic but this all of the sudden no reason of attacks has me freaked out.
How long have you had him? What was his previous environment? When did the aggressive behavior start? When did his knees start having issues? Pain and physical issues can cause a dog to feel more vulnerable, and cause changes in behavior, including aggression.
http://shibashake.com/dog/how-to-deal-with-bad-dog-behavior
My Shiba is also very sensitive to the energy of the dogs and people around him. If I am stressed, frustrated, or fearful, he will pick up on my energy, get more stressed himself, and his behavior will worsen. I need to control my own energy first, before I can help my dog control his.
http://shibashake.com/dog/afraid-of-your-dog
http://shibashake.com/dog/pack-leader-to-an-aggressive-dog
With my dog, I always take care of physical issues first. After the physical issues are resolved, then I can focus on retraining. I have a three legged Husky, and when there are physical issues, I keep her separated from my other dogs. In this way, she can rest, my other dogs do not bother her, and she can feel safe. I also use leashes, gates, basket muzzle, and other management equipment, as necessary, to keep everyone safe and calm.
For retraining my Shiba Inu, I consulted with several professional trainers to identify the source of his reactive behavior, and together, we developed an appropriate plan for rehabilitation.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/finding-professional-help
https://apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/
why would you rescue a dog who needed surgery and then be unwilling to provide it? If you are not going to provide for the dog you need to give it back to a rescue. I have no experience with shibas but ANY animal becomes cranky and will start acting out when they are in pain. It’s often the first sign something is wrong!!
i love all dogs and they do look like a huskey but people say that they don’t listen sometimes i took one for a walk today and we went into a fenced in park but they can still get out and we let it off leash and he would come back for me but not for his owners cause i did work with my moms friend at her dog training place and she is a dog trainer and she is good and i know how to train dogs and if you ever need to find a dog trainer search up animal crackers and look for danielle best and she does begginer classes and obedience classes and she is also on facebook and if you want if you find her phone number please call her and she also does private lessons. 🙂 🙂
I just finished reading your article (which was great btw)… but I have one MAJOR question, how hard is it to train a 3 year old Shiba that was used for breeding? I just rescued her from an adoption center. I get to take her home on Thursday August 6, 2015. I have been visiting her everyday for 2 weeks and playing with her. The workers at the adoption center said that she is very shy and scared but seems to have taken a liking to me. I was worried that this could’ve just been a selling point but I knew I had to save her. I have been researching shibas for a few years now and am very excited to rescue her and raise her. But I have been having problems finding anything about training a 3 year old shiba. Any advice?? Please help!
These two ASPCA articles may be helpful. One is about adopting a puppy mill dog and the other about dogs who are fearful of people.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/adopting-puppy-mill-dog
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/fear-people