How do you become joint Alpha?

My husband (a big softy, who is nowhere near as tough as me) seems to get alot more respect from Woody than I do.

He listens to him more and if he gets over excited he lunges at me and really goes for me (biting and jumping).

We share all the training, feeding, play and cuddles and we've tried to adopt the same tone, but he clearly seems to respond to my husband more. We're also both with him at the same time, all the time.

What should I do to try and even things out abit? Should I step up the trianing with me and him more, or work on my tone to make it deeper and more commanding?

you are clearly a much more exciting person than your hubby!!!!

My advice would be to throw the word alpha out the window & work on basic Obedience, & use your exciting motivating personality to yours & your dogs advantage!

I couldn't agree more with the above post!!! Good luck!

The nearest I get to Alpha is training with Steve Mann who owns Alpha dog training
make yourself the most exciting thing in your dogs life and enjoy

Jeanette

Yep, chuck all thoughts of Alpha and dominance out of the window. Puppies are bothered with being fed and kept safe, not finding out who is top dog. Concentrate with wokring towards a happy team with the puppy glad to do what both or you ask and you two being kind patient calm leaders.

Often, not always not trying to offend any men, men can steer toward using tone of voice and their attitude to get the dog to behave. If that is the case and a loud/stern tone of voice is used by one member of the family the puppy can respond to this (often through fear or a need to apease them) and therefore learn to ignore the more softly spoken members of the family.

Are you taking Pidge to training classes? If not then have a look at the APDT website and you can find one in your area who uses postive methods. It's always best to use a kind voice with your puppy and, through great rewards, convince them that doing what the humans in their family wants is great fun and really rewarding!

yup you are not a wolf and dogs are forever juvinile wolves so trying to be alpha isnt gonna work

but i agree that the male lower tone of voice can get better behaviour
i noticed my friends dogs bend over backwards for my bloke, then get bored
its cos he has the deep grumpy voice so the try hard do please them, but he still has the grumpy voice when he tells them they have been good
its like they think they can never please him

totaly make training fun and rewarding and i have found more sucess with lowering my tone for a command (except recal, thats always happy voice) then a high happy tone when they are good

I think it would do you good to have some one to one time with just you and the pup; a bit of training, a bit of play.

Without hearing your tone, its difficult to know whether you need to work on it, but imo the key thing about tone is that you do need to have a bit of a range. Woman's voices are generally better for praise/encouragement, but a lower tone is often needed when you need to be a bit more firm.

your body language plays a roll,i dont have to speak to my pack nor does my wife,they respect us both,but me more than her.and i agree with caritn...my pack knows were to go to get love when they know they have been bad...its the kids!!!!good info guys...phil

Thanks guys.

It's got alot better (perhaps because I'm not worried about it anymore).

There's definitely a mutual love and respect thing going on now! Phew!

Wembley listens to Chris, but when it comes to me, he seems to laugh in my face sometimes. I am always telling him to get off the sofa and he just grins! He used to bite me a lot, but not Chris and I am the one who isn't the big softie! He listens to my tone of voice a lot more now whereas Chris will stand up more and use his body language, so we both have different styles of training. We are taking him to his first class on Friday and we are both going to be doing it, him half and me half so that we can both work on our styles and he gets to know what he gets with both of us. Kepp doing what you are doing, your husband keeps doing what he is doing and in the end, you will have a dog that can take what both of you throw at him, even if it is different.