whitemtnsgirl
New Member
Hi Everyone,
I am hoping someone here can help me figure out my dilemma! It's a long story but I will try to simplify it the best way I can! If not please try to bare with me. I believe all of this information will be helpful for responses.
Back Story:
A year ago this July I was given an adorable Husky, Jamie, from my relatives. My cousin had secretly adopted him into her 11th story college apartment not realizing the amount of care and dedication it would take to maintain him. When her parents found out, they were less than pleased and told her it wasn't fair to keep him cooped up all day and suggested giving him to me as I live up in the woods of NH with a big yard and plenty of time to devote to him. She agreed, reluctantly.
When he finally came up to live with myself and my boyfriend we were told he was a pure bred Siberian Husky, completely trained and that he was only 6 months old.
When he arrived it was evident he was extremely under-weight and after the first 48 hours we realized he was EXTREMELY food/water agressive. It took us a good 2 months of sitting on the floor, hand feeding him out of his dish at each meal time to stop the agressive behavior. Now anyone could literally stick their hand in the dish while he's eating.
He also had numerous accidents in the house at first, he never signaled that he had to "Go Potty" which leads me to believe he wasn't actually potty trained to begin with. It took only a few days to teach him to let us know when he needed to "Go Potty" and hasn't had an accident in the house for the past 8 months.
Over time we have slowly pieced together that Jamie was a "crate dog" for the first several months of his life. My cousin had classes and a job and trusted her roommates to at least give him the bare minimum care when she was not home and clearly that didn't happen.
However, that after the first 6 months of having him and getting the basics down, his weight up we noticed that he was exceeding the AKC size standard for a male Siberian Husky by ALOT! When I pointed this out, my cousin revealed to us that he was "not exactly purebred" that he was part Doberman as well! And THEN, in the same conversation she informed us of his birthday, which put him 2 MONTHS OLDER than what she originally told us! His breed matters not to us, we still love Jamie no matter what he is, but his actual age and lack of basic training was what concerned me the most.
**Also please note that Jamie knows the basic commands such as a sit, stay, lay down, paw, easy, kisses and high-five.**
Now that you have the back story, here is our dilemma -
Jamie's behavior is much less than favorable. We are well aware that Huskies & Dobermans are high-energy, easily bored breeds and need ALOT of stimulation and exercise to expend their energy.
Jamie goes for 2 long walks per day, he has plenty of toys, bones and near constant attention. He is constantly bouncing off the walls no matter how much exercise he gets. I have not once, in almost a year, seen this dog lay down and take a nap or just relax. He is out of his crate almost all day except at bed time. Unfortunately, we have tried on multiple occasions to leave him out of the crate over night. We will give him two weeks at a time, each time the end result is the same. He purposely (yes, we tested this) will wait till he thinks we are asleep and then he will hop off the bed and go on a rampage throughout the house, getting into and destroying whatever he can!
Yes we have "puppy proofed". However, I shouldn't have to remove the curtains or blinds or worry that he's going to hop up on the bureau and start eating the corner of the TV!!!! Yes, he chewed the TV!
That is just the tip of the iceberg. Despite "puppy proofing" our home and consistently making an effort to make sure there is nothing he can get into, he will ALWAYS find SOMETHING to get into or destroy!
No food items can be left on the counter unless you are right there and even then if you take your eyes off it for 2.7 seconds he will still try to steal it. He will even go as far to steal food right out of your hands while you're eating. At our meal times we spent months telling him "no begging" and shooing him away, when that had no result we then tried blocking him out of the room where we eat with a baby gate only to have him throw temper tantrums and start knawing on the doorframe, wall, gate, you name it! Now, he has to be in his crate during our meal times.
When we have company over, its the same people every time, so he does "know" them. He will literally bounce off them, the walls and the ceilings. He will NOT calm down the entire time and unfortunately at times we have to resort to putting him in his crate because he just won't listen or calm down and he is getting wayyyyy too big to be doing that and he is so big he could end up accidentally hurting someone.
We have tried multiple training methods and nothing seems to work. And I have successfully trained the dogs I've had throughout my life and not once have I ever encountered such difficulty training a dog. I am becoming beyond frustrated as clearly Jamie is trainable and it is VERY clear he DOES understand/know when he has done something wrong. But it truly seems like he just doesn't give a sh*t! Please excuse the language but it's the only way I can describe it. Jamie has acquired the nickname "10 Second Tom" (no we don't call him that directly) because of it lol Literally you can discipline him, no we don't hit him, just time out, but 10 seconds later he does it all over again! Usually at that point he will put himself in time out because he KNOWS he was being bad!
I just don't get it.
We are doing everything we possibly can! His Vet's only suggestion has been just exercise him more, which is also frustrating because there are only so many hours in a day. Between the walks and playing with him all day long it still doesn't change it. We added a 3rd walk in and longer distances for a couple months with ZERO results. We even switched his food to a lower protien content as we were told that can high protein content can affect a young dogs energy levels. Also ZERO result.
We do use treats as a training tool. However, that only works until he figures out how to manipulate the situation just to get treats.
I feel like a horrible dog-mom for complaining so much about him but I'm at my wit's end!
Thank you in advance if you read this post in it's entirety. I know it's very long but I'm hoping with all the information SOMEONE/ANYONE out there will have an idea of what to do!
I am hoping someone here can help me figure out my dilemma! It's a long story but I will try to simplify it the best way I can! If not please try to bare with me. I believe all of this information will be helpful for responses.
Back Story:
A year ago this July I was given an adorable Husky, Jamie, from my relatives. My cousin had secretly adopted him into her 11th story college apartment not realizing the amount of care and dedication it would take to maintain him. When her parents found out, they were less than pleased and told her it wasn't fair to keep him cooped up all day and suggested giving him to me as I live up in the woods of NH with a big yard and plenty of time to devote to him. She agreed, reluctantly.
When he finally came up to live with myself and my boyfriend we were told he was a pure bred Siberian Husky, completely trained and that he was only 6 months old.
When he arrived it was evident he was extremely under-weight and after the first 48 hours we realized he was EXTREMELY food/water agressive. It took us a good 2 months of sitting on the floor, hand feeding him out of his dish at each meal time to stop the agressive behavior. Now anyone could literally stick their hand in the dish while he's eating.
He also had numerous accidents in the house at first, he never signaled that he had to "Go Potty" which leads me to believe he wasn't actually potty trained to begin with. It took only a few days to teach him to let us know when he needed to "Go Potty" and hasn't had an accident in the house for the past 8 months.
Over time we have slowly pieced together that Jamie was a "crate dog" for the first several months of his life. My cousin had classes and a job and trusted her roommates to at least give him the bare minimum care when she was not home and clearly that didn't happen.
However, that after the first 6 months of having him and getting the basics down, his weight up we noticed that he was exceeding the AKC size standard for a male Siberian Husky by ALOT! When I pointed this out, my cousin revealed to us that he was "not exactly purebred" that he was part Doberman as well! And THEN, in the same conversation she informed us of his birthday, which put him 2 MONTHS OLDER than what she originally told us! His breed matters not to us, we still love Jamie no matter what he is, but his actual age and lack of basic training was what concerned me the most.
**Also please note that Jamie knows the basic commands such as a sit, stay, lay down, paw, easy, kisses and high-five.**
Now that you have the back story, here is our dilemma -
Jamie's behavior is much less than favorable. We are well aware that Huskies & Dobermans are high-energy, easily bored breeds and need ALOT of stimulation and exercise to expend their energy.
Jamie goes for 2 long walks per day, he has plenty of toys, bones and near constant attention. He is constantly bouncing off the walls no matter how much exercise he gets. I have not once, in almost a year, seen this dog lay down and take a nap or just relax. He is out of his crate almost all day except at bed time. Unfortunately, we have tried on multiple occasions to leave him out of the crate over night. We will give him two weeks at a time, each time the end result is the same. He purposely (yes, we tested this) will wait till he thinks we are asleep and then he will hop off the bed and go on a rampage throughout the house, getting into and destroying whatever he can!
Yes we have "puppy proofed". However, I shouldn't have to remove the curtains or blinds or worry that he's going to hop up on the bureau and start eating the corner of the TV!!!! Yes, he chewed the TV!
That is just the tip of the iceberg. Despite "puppy proofing" our home and consistently making an effort to make sure there is nothing he can get into, he will ALWAYS find SOMETHING to get into or destroy!
No food items can be left on the counter unless you are right there and even then if you take your eyes off it for 2.7 seconds he will still try to steal it. He will even go as far to steal food right out of your hands while you're eating. At our meal times we spent months telling him "no begging" and shooing him away, when that had no result we then tried blocking him out of the room where we eat with a baby gate only to have him throw temper tantrums and start knawing on the doorframe, wall, gate, you name it! Now, he has to be in his crate during our meal times.
When we have company over, its the same people every time, so he does "know" them. He will literally bounce off them, the walls and the ceilings. He will NOT calm down the entire time and unfortunately at times we have to resort to putting him in his crate because he just won't listen or calm down and he is getting wayyyyy too big to be doing that and he is so big he could end up accidentally hurting someone.
We have tried multiple training methods and nothing seems to work. And I have successfully trained the dogs I've had throughout my life and not once have I ever encountered such difficulty training a dog. I am becoming beyond frustrated as clearly Jamie is trainable and it is VERY clear he DOES understand/know when he has done something wrong. But it truly seems like he just doesn't give a sh*t! Please excuse the language but it's the only way I can describe it. Jamie has acquired the nickname "10 Second Tom" (no we don't call him that directly) because of it lol Literally you can discipline him, no we don't hit him, just time out, but 10 seconds later he does it all over again! Usually at that point he will put himself in time out because he KNOWS he was being bad!
I just don't get it.
We are doing everything we possibly can! His Vet's only suggestion has been just exercise him more, which is also frustrating because there are only so many hours in a day. Between the walks and playing with him all day long it still doesn't change it. We added a 3rd walk in and longer distances for a couple months with ZERO results. We even switched his food to a lower protien content as we were told that can high protein content can affect a young dogs energy levels. Also ZERO result.
We do use treats as a training tool. However, that only works until he figures out how to manipulate the situation just to get treats.
I feel like a horrible dog-mom for complaining so much about him but I'm at my wit's end!
Thank you in advance if you read this post in it's entirety. I know it's very long but I'm hoping with all the information SOMEONE/ANYONE out there will have an idea of what to do!