Sorry I am not a breeder so I do not have experience in this area.

This is a tough one. I think it depends a lot on the reason for the behavior and also on the temperament of the dog.

Sephy had some separation anxiety when he was young, so it helped to slowly desensitize him to alone time. He is also anxious about changes in routine. For example, if members of the family are late coming home, he will be sitting by the window waiting for them, and may get a bit stressed. I try to keep his routine as consistent as possible.

On the other hand, sometimes his whining is just his way of complaining. For example, when he is in the backyard and wants to come in, he will knock once on the door. Usually I open the door for him a short while after. However, if that does not happen, he may start to whine. He is more apt to do this with others, because I can just tune out his whining, which makes it not very effective.

I make sure never to let Sephy in while he is whining. He has to quiet down for a little while first before I let him in. Sometimes, this can take a long while because he is very stubborn and he can go on and on and on.

Therefore, what seems to work well for Sephy is to *not* make it into a challenge. Instead, I try to manage things so that he never gets into his “stubborn whining state”. When we are out working in the front yard, we would take him out with us and either hold his lead or tether him to somewhere safe. I am there to make sure he behaves – so no whining and no crazy behavior. If he does any of that, he loses outside privileges. Usually he is calm and will just fall asleep. After doing this a few times, he kindda lost interest in coming out. He learned that it wasn’t all that exciting after all, and he was not missing out on some super secret fun game. 😀

Another thing that I thought of doing, but never tried, is to use one of those baby monitor things so that I can talk to him from outside, and use it together with a pre-trained Quiet command. In this way, I can give him direction and he can hear my voice. I imagine something like that would probably only work in a mild anxiety type situation.

Big hugs to your Shiba girl! She sounds super adorable.

thank you Happy holidays to your pack as well =)

LOL!

That is too funny. Sibe Shania does exactly the same thing! I always rush to the camera and make sure to take some cereal head pictures. 😀

Happy Holidays and big hugs to Eddie!

In terms of training, she will definitely get better with age. When my Shiba was young he had the attention span of a gnat, but now he is actually a lot better. He has stopped trying to put everything in his mouth, he no longer does crazy zoomies inside the house, and he will even listen to me most of the time 🙂

The backpack thing is so funny! That is very classic Shiba. When you think you finally have them under control, they will do something unexpected to throw you off 🙂 As you say – Gotta love Shibas!

We have been extremely diligent about socializing Mitsu from 8 wks which has proven fairly successful. She now is tolerated and dare I say it, accepted at doggy day camp. Training though has nearly been impossible. Or maybe I should say training in the traditional sense. I have given up on getting her to sit for any period of time and asking her not to bolt out of the cracked, front door…impossible. But she has stopped chewing on things, is acting better around guests and does provide me some assurance of home protection when my wife is alone.

I took her on a 15 mile hike in the mountains with my brother this past Saturday. She led the way on the trail and was super excited to be out in the woods. I was really proud of how well she did and was thinking, wow, she is almost like a normal dog. I tied her to my 50 lb backback to go into the ranger station for a couple of minutes to get a soda. No longer than one minute went by before someone came inside to ask whose dog was running down the trail with a backpack in tow. Gotta love Shibas.