I have a very smart 4 month old goldendoodle who loves getting into everything. She has no interest in her toys or chews. I’m at my wits end. She won’t respond to any correction or redirection. I puppy proofed tf out of my house but she still finds shit to get into. Idek where she gets some of the stuff she finds.
I can’t give her super flavorful bones because my beagle tries to fight her over them. That’s the only thing that has held her attention recently, but my beagle is a dick when it comes to bones.
I brought home like a dozen new toys yesterday but she doesn’t want them. She also doesn’t really care for treats when training. She’d just rather be called a good girl and get head pats.
My beagle isn’t nearly as smart as her, so it didn’t take much to stimulate him. Now he just wants to nap all the time lol.
E-collars can be used but only as part of a specific training regimen, and only on lowest setting the dog responds to. They shouldn’t just be left on all the time and used whenever the dog is doing something bad. Positive reinforcement works way better than negative reinforcement, but sometimes a bit of negative is needed along with the positive.
The only negative stuff I do is tell my dogs no in a stern voice. My beagle has bad anxiety and was clearly abused in the past, so I don’t want him to regress to the state he was in when I got him. That wouldn’t be good for me or the rest of my critters.
That’s totally reasonable. Negative reinforcement is almost never necessary. I was just pointing out that it can be helpful if used sparingly. Just be aware though, attention is reinforcement, so if you are ignoring your dog when it wants attention, then it acts out and damages something, then you come over to scold it, your dog has learned that acting out will get your attention.
As a dog trainer I worked with previously put it: “the opposite of ‘reward’ is not ‘punishment’, it is ‘no reward’”