Help!

[Jean]

Hello! We live in NZ and have a 4 month old Dutch Shepherd / Belgium Shepherd cross. Appearance wise there is no sign of the Belgium Shepherd in her and she is growing tall very quickly and already at 17kgs. We have had two bitches (Rotti and part Rotti) before. Rottis are very strong willed but this little girl is proving a real challenge for us. Layla is loving and loves company and as my husband works mainly from home, the most she is on her own in a day is about 3 hours. She is getting a 30-40min walk a day at present. As she is only a puppy and we heard you shouldnt walk them too much at a young age - is this enough? As a fully grown adult how much excercise will she need?
We are having a few problems:
1. Toilet training. We take her outside often. She will go outside to toilet and then come inside, squat and pee again right in front of us!
2. She is very erratic in her behaviour. Yesterday I walked her for 40 minutes. Firstly she started off pulling desperately on the lead. After about 10 minutes she calmed down and walked beautifully at my heel for 15 mins, then flicked back to being really desperate to pull away from me and the rest of the walk was a nightmare.
3. Also erratic is other behaviours for eg in our car. Some days she will happily get in and sit in the back without a squeak. Other days she will squeal that horrendous high-pitched squeal and quiver and quake all the way there and all the way back!
4. She barks in the night at noises and then takes ages to settle down, seeming to almost sob to herself.
5. She is quite happy outside chewing on a bone during the day and our vet says once she is speyed she will settle down - what do you think?
Any advice will be very much appreciated. Also can anyone recommend a good book on training this breed? MANY thanks ! Jean and Wayne from Waiheke Island, NZ.

[TexasMedy]

Hello and welcome! I'm new to the forum with a 5 month female who is also very big girl and ball of energy. There are many expert Dutch Shpeherd people on this forum so you will get a lot of help. I did do a lot of research before getting my girl and knew that this is a working breed (very active) and that they must work or have a job. training for obeidience, tracking, flyball, fench ring, shutzhund, agility or just heavy duty obedience would be examples of good "jobs". I bought Ivan Balabanov DVD's and some individual online lessons. now I take weeekly lessons from a trainer who has trained military and police K9 for 25+ years, plus he has a young Dutch Shepherd. Ivan's lessons lead into Shutzhund but there is a lot of great basic obedience and several puppy lessons avail online. ivanbalabanov.com is the website. All the issues you describe seem fairly normal for a 4 month baby. They are all vary a bit on personality....My girl went through a lot of the same but at 5 months she has worked through much of it. I've had some of these same issues with other breeds. Dutch Shepherd and Malinois are incredibly intelligent and wll get bored with too much free time. Hope you find help on this site. I think you will.

[leih merigian]

Hi Jean,

Your post is somewhat overwhelming, since you're basically asking, "how do I raise a high-drive, working lines puppy?" People write whole books on pieces of that topic .

First, a 40 minute walk is not going to do it for your pup, especially when she gets older. She needs a lot of mental stimulation, as well as physical exercise that's appropriate for her age and physical development. Have you taught her to fetch yet? Fetching is a great way to give them a good bout of exercise without requiring you to overextend yourself. (Always stop before she's had enough; you want her to always be eager to play with you, and you don't want to over do it with her. Also, take up interactive toys that you use with her and only get them out when you're going to be interacting with her.)

With the car riding issues; you have to train that, too. Pretty much, you have to train/explain everything to them; they come to you as babies, not knowing anything. How you introduce them to things that will be in their lives is important. So, if she has car riding issues, then back up and start with just having her be happy to get into and out of the vehicle (treats). Get in, back up the driveway, drive back up it again. Then, around the block, etc. Also, a crate is your best friend at this age. You should have one for the vehicle and just leave it there for her to ride in.

There are lot of good books out there (and videos, too), but one I like to recommend for people new to training is Purely Positive Training by Sheila Booth. Just about anything my Pat Miller is going to be good for you, too, and again, there are a ton of good books out there.

You are really going to need some kind of sport or activity that you do with her, too, so start thinking about what you'd enjoy doing with her (there are tons of options), and look for opportunites to do that around where you live.

Browse thru the archives here; there are a lot of posts that would benefit you.

Good luck!

[Jean]

Thanks so much for your feedback. After lots of patience and love, Layla has turned into a gorgeous girl. She is getting better in the car by the day - now that she knows she is going to the BEACH or the PARK!
She has also stopped being so naughty with her toileting (thank god!). In fact she has come a very long way in a short time

[leih merigian]

Good job! Great news!