I recently got a 4 month old german shepherd male. I also have a cocker spaniel female and 2 inside cats. Every time my shepherd sees or hears my dog or cat he barks loudly and tries to get to them. I don’t know if its even possible to get him trained to be friendly with him since he is kinda of old and hasn’t had animal contact.
Why haven’t the GSD & Spaniel already been introduced?
I’m making the possibly-rash assumption that you have verbal control over the Spaniel, so it is the GSD that must be under physical control = on-leash. If in doubt, BOTH of them are on-leash, with 2 different handlers.
4 months is FAR from "old". But 12 through 16 weeks is the "need security" period in a dog’s life.
If you can’t train a 4 months young GSD there is not much you CAN train – herding dogs WANT to please their human.
If he hasn’t already had his 16 weeks booster vaccination, get it into him while waiting to be accepted into a training club as soon as possible from 2 weeks after that shot. Meantime, the training you do at home should be achieved by reinforcing (praise+reward) everything good that he accidentally does, and reprimanding (loud deep voice) for or distracting from everything undesirable that he accidentally does.
How much of a problem the cats are will depend on their reactions – if they run, and he’s physically able to chase them, he’ll consider it great fun. If they stay put & punish his nose he’ll soon realise that he is bottom of the hierarchy (but he might lose an eye in the process…)
Whenever his reaction is in doubt or likely to be undesirable, the pup is on-leash, so that you have physical control of him.
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
"In GSDs" as of 1967
I LOVE german shepherds but they do usually do that First interduce them let them sniff each other for about 20 minutes each day and keep watching them do that for about a week or until they are use to each other. And if that doesn’t work find a train and give that a try. and if that doesn’t work you can make it a guard dog.
References :
Why haven’t the GSD & Spaniel already been introduced?
I’m making the possibly-rash assumption that you have verbal control over the Spaniel, so it is the GSD that must be under physical control = on-leash. If in doubt, BOTH of them are on-leash, with 2 different handlers.
4 months is FAR from "old". But 12 through 16 weeks is the "need security" period in a dog’s life.
If you can’t train a 4 months young GSD there is not much you CAN train – herding dogs WANT to please their human.
If he hasn’t already had his 16 weeks booster vaccination, get it into him while waiting to be accepted into a training club as soon as possible from 2 weeks after that shot. Meantime, the training you do at home should be achieved by reinforcing (praise+reward) everything good that he accidentally does, and reprimanding (loud deep voice) for or distracting from everything undesirable that he accidentally does.
How much of a problem the cats are will depend on their reactions – if they run, and he’s physically able to chase them, he’ll consider it great fun. If they stay put & punish his nose he’ll soon realise that he is bottom of the hierarchy (but he might lose an eye in the process…)
Whenever his reaction is in doubt or likely to be undesirable, the pup is on-leash, so that you have physical control of him.
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
"In GSDs" as of 1967
References :