Hello all, I have a 12 week old (this Tuesday) husky. She is a normal puppy and we love her. There's just one thing that's been upsetting and we don't know what to do. Anytime she wants to REALLY do something, like go in a room, chew on something and we have to stop her, she snarls and snaps. She especially does it to my mom. I've been working on "trading" when she has something I want her to drop. It works normally. In some situations where she has to be stopped immediately, it's not as easy. For example, she tried to go up the stairs to this room she's not allowed in tonight. My mom tried to stop her and touched her collar. She turned on her, snarled and snapped. I don't know what to do. I don't want an aggressive puppy. Shes otherwise an amazing and smart dog!

If she really is snapping aggressively that is not normal for a 3 month old puppy, just so you know. Aggression is not normal and not to be taken lightly.

Are you certain this is aggressive biting or snapping and not mouthing? Can you describe the incident with more detail?

I have to agree with Jeff, puppies at this age rarely display true aggression. A video so we can see what you're seeing would be an immense help.

I have an Alaskan, Avalanche, who's really mouthy when it's play time. If I grab his tail in play it's a guarantee he's going to reach around and grab my hand. Neither the tail pulling nor the hand grabbing are enough to cause any pain, it's just play now. When I first got him, I'd grab a paw, snout, ear, tail and he'd grab me to tell me that he didn't like that - sometimes a little harder than I'd have liked but never enough to draw blood. It sounds to me as if you're pup is telling you that he doesn't like the way you're correcting him.

Something I've done in the past that seems to work, is to leave a "training leash" (a short leash, something like 2 - 3- feet) on the pup all the time. When your pup starts up stairs, simply step on the leash, give a verbal correction "ah-ah" and wait for her to come back to you. Don't get excited or upset, puppies are always pushing their limits and excitement on your part is only going to arouse more excitement on the puppies part.

I have never in my life seen a puppy truly snarl. Are you sure it's not just husky talk? I agree that a video would be very useful in helping to assess the situation.

So sorry for the late reply. I had my trainer come and look. She said it was resource guarding and a little "I want to do what I want!" and we have now been working on it. She has been much better!! Thank you so much for the input.

lkv90 - hopefully you see this. We have been encountering a similar issue. When she knows that its time to get in her crate, or we want her to do something that she doesn't want to do, she'll run under a chair. If we go to pet her or to pull her out, she'll do the same thing. Lately I've been pulling her out and reprimanding her with a stern No and finger to the nose. Can you give me an idea of what your doing that is helping your pup cope with "I do what I want" mentality

So basically you are giving her more reason to fear you, hide from you, and not trust you?

what is your intention exactly yelling at, getting angry, pulling her out, then physically reprimanding her? What lesson are you trying to teach her other than that her fear of you is justified?

I don't know of any other way to tell her No without doing something that to me seems as though I'm praising the behavior. If she runs under there and I ignore her, then in my mind it seems as though I'm teaching her that it is okay to run under there when she doesn't want to do something. If she runs under there and I sit out in front of it and get her to come out with a treat, in my mind that makes me think that I'm giving her a treat for that behavior.

You aren't training your mind though, you're training a 12 week old puppy mind, or more precisely, her emotional connection to you.

Maybe I'm not fully understanding the whole my internal emotions or feelings towards her behavior can influence her behavior. Personally, I don't think our dog is trusting of us as much as we would like her to due to us crating her during the day. But maybe its just a husky puppy independence thing.

Any suggestions on ways or behaviors to spread to her to help her realize that going under the chair is fine, but going under there to then become scared of us petting her while shes under there is not?

Well I'm assuming you regularly use similar strategies like anger, yelling, physical reprimands....other times in other situations? It's never just one incident.

My suggestion is take a serious time out for yourself and think about how your puppy sees you or feels about you. Think about the long term effect of this pattern.

You're doing this stuff and thinking about prong collars for a puppy. It sounds like you are extremely frustrated and angry.

My suggestion is work on that.

Not angry, more frustrated due to a lack of understanding why she does some of the things she does. Don't get me wrong, she is very smart and does a lot of things well, it's just a few things that we are worried about, and want to nip in the butt before it develops into a long term habit. I don't think my inquiry into prong collars is out of frustration or anger, more towards the idea of wanting to help the dog walk orderly and more comfortably rather than pulling. Your telling me that while obedience training your dog you don't yell No? What do you do when you the dog tries to jump up on a couch that you don't want it to? I am assuming you firmly say/yell Down, or No? What is my reaction supposed to be when the puppy runs under the chair and if we go to pet her, gives us a growl?

You are correct, I do not yell No.  I don't yell anything at my dog.  I primarily communicate with him non-verbally with body language and my energy.  

What I do in that situation is cut him off with a quick, emotionless correction at the attempt to jump up on the inappropriate object (bed, human, counter, table) and if he does it anyway, I either direct him off or down with my hand, guide him using a non-physical hand gesture, or if he is on leash I guide him off or down with the leash and then praise him.

If I ever say No, which is extremely rare, it is more of a Nope and I say it gently, calmly, and with lots of body energy and non-verbal communication.  

You should never try to pet a dog hiding from you under a chair.  That is dangerous and detrimental.  She is hiding from you for a reason, that reason being she is either afraid of you or something or she is nervous about you or something.  That's it.  She is overwhelmed with input and if you go to pet her you are 1) creating more input to further overwhelm her, 2) putting your self in danger because you are provoking her to bite you, and 3) attempting to win her over and coax her out with love and affection---which does not work.  

You should ignore her.  She is overwhelmed with input and she needs time to process and stew.  Do something fun or interesting or appealing or prey like or irresistible and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait longer.  

Draw her to you.  Do not force yourself on her.  Do not continue to overwhelm her.  

She is a puppy with a very fragile emotional and physical capacity right now and you are planting the seeds for a nervous, insecure, unpredictable dog.

Thanks for the input and clarification. I appreciate it and will continue to train myself along with the dog.

You're welcome.

Good luck. Keep us posted.

I have a similar problem .., Ive posted in the scrapbook but also posting here, let me know if thats against the forum rules ( double posting to get more answers) and i won't do it again.

He's been with us for 10 days now and he's getting more energetic. He's extremely stubborn and just doesn't listen. Maybe he's too small to understand at the moment. I have a couple of problems tho.

One is that he's tries to eat everything, like bird poo and vegetable skin and whatever he can find, we try to keep all that away but during meal times and before all kind of things fall on the floor. Its impossible to keep him out of the kitchen, the only way to do it is to keep him in his crate and doing that will result in him crying for half n hour and I'm not sure he understands thats why he was put in the crate in the first place. When i try to take bird poo out of his mouth he snaps and bites aggressively and when i slap him slightly he does so even more, he's not being submissive to physical punishment , on the contrary he becomes even more aggressive so I've stopped doing that since i tried to pet him once and he snapped at the hand aggressively because he must remember what that hand did, i then calmed him down with the same hand and pacified him and gave positive verbal reaffirmation and he was okay then and let me touch him with that hand, Ive decided since that no more hitting as I don't want him to revolt everytime I touch him. He also bites other people when they take away stuff he really wants, or take him away from an area he wants to be at.

What can I do to let him know that its not okay to eat stuff like that? Im not sure his attention span or intelligence has developed to the point where he can correlate punishment like the crate to his undesirable acts.

I have taught him to sit and he understands that command now although he may or may not listen according to the mood.

The second problem is that I took him to a park downstairs which is very well maintained and put a leash to his collar, the collar i put on him as soon as i got him so he's used to that but he hates the leash, he just won't move. He detests it so I got him upstairs and in the night I put the leash around him and a carpet close by and reduced the leash radius so that he doesn't have too much movement room. I wanted him to be submissive to the leash and understand that its okay. The thing he hates about the leash is that it prevents him from going where he wants to go and instead takes him into a undesirable direction and he hates that so he just parks himself and doesn't move and tries to free himself. Ive attached a few pictures. Im not pulling him too hard in those pictures, just to a point where the leash is taunt.

Now I went to a good pet store in the morning and they said that he's too small to understand anything at this point, he doesn't even understand his name and we should not try to walk him/ train him or restrict him from doing anything undesirable for anything else because his brain is too small to process any information and understand it, they say that we should wait till he's 2-3months old before we can start training him.

I understand that and I'm all for being patient but how do i curb things like eating bird poo and biting people. I can let go of the leash for a month but what if he doesn't take to it even then, should i be looking to leash him and take him for little walks on the rooftop in the hope that he's okay with it in 2-3 weeks or even a month or do i wait for more time and risk him being even more stubborn at that time. The leash is very crucial according to me and him being obedient too because considering he's a husky he's going to need a lot of exercise and he can't be trusted to be safe without a leash in parks because this is India and the number of street dogs and other unsafe things are around in plenty.