Impulse control - any tips (for the dog that is, not me)

Prince is coming along apart from when he goes into a total tizzy because he`s over excited. This can be from finding a plastic bottle to spotting a dog he`s not sure of, to discovering the remains of a discarded chip.
He goes from friendly pup to mad as a box of frogs in a milisecond and turns into a deaf snapping whirling plonker.
Like today when we were passing a Junior school just as they were chucking out and he found a ball in the road and started hopping up and down with it, frothing at the mouth and spinning on his lead. sigh....
Any ideas on managing this?

How well conditioned are your 'leave' and 'give' commands?

These are the two I would be concentrating on so that they become as natural to him as putting a seatbelt on when we get in the car is to us.

http://www.deesdogs.com/documents/LoweringArousal.pdf

http://www.learningaboutdogs.com/aca...hippitdvd.html

Great thread - I've been doing a lot of this lately, mainly leaves and stays..

No idea how to help but I am having exactly the same problem with George. Actually the two of them look remarkably similar. If you do find an answer let me know

hehehehe
he sounds lovely
Sorry no help but I can just picture it

Work in progress.
Atm I have succeeded in a Give - but I don`t ask if he`s aroused because I know it`s not going to happen.
He is very toy-oriented, and ignores food rewards as a rule. Leave is fine provided I am assertive.
Because I use the toy to train we do a lot of work on these.

Interesting article.
I think he was kept shut up a lot and then had short bursts of charging madly about. I`m also convinced some prat has taught him to cross a road by hanging on to him then saying `go on then` because he still is convinced we cross all roads flat out. I`m sure I`m going to get run over because I`m often seen walking in circles in the middle of busy roads, praying the lights don`t change yet....
Early days yet - hopefully we`ll get there before he manages to kill me.

Wow, what a lovely looking dog Prince is - fab photo! My two pups (nearly 9 months) also have mad/crazy/manic moments when we are out lead-walking. It's almost as though a switch has been flicked and it's 'game-on'. One of my two is more sensitive to my commands and the only way I can stop them and calm them down to a normal sensible lead-walk is using the command 'watch-me'. As soon as one looks at me the game seems to be over and once calm has resumed, I ask for a 'heel' and then treat them (titbit). It usually works for me but they never stop surprising me!!!

Haha, Prince is gorgeous! I love your descriptions of his crazy moments

Our dog also goes wacko sometimes. We constantly work on 'drop it' and 'leave' in the house, with all sorts of things. Another thing we've found works really well is to just ignore his behaviour, and praise when he's stopped, calmed himself down and is ready to carry on.

When he got frustrated on the lead (say we were really mean and wouldn't let him go eat a pile of horse poop that was on the road, for instance ) he would start jumping up at us and grabbing hold of the lead and tugging it. We fixed this by swapping to a chain lead (which he hates biting so doesn't anymore) and when he rolls about or jumps up at us, we look away and completely ignore him. We've been doing this for about five months now, and he hardly acts up in that way anymore. When he does, it's gone from lasting for about 20 minutes to less than 2. Once he is calm we carry on our way and praise for walking nicely.

Also, just ignore when he picks things up off the street instead of making a big deal out of it and making it seem 'fun.' When we first adopted our dog he would pick everything up (crisp packets, bits of paper, takeaway cartons) and would get all excited and run around whilst we tried to get it off him! We were advised to ignore him and leave him with it, and although he does still pick a lot of things up, he doesn't get excited anymore and often drops them seconds later.

Don't know if any of that's helpful, but just wanted to let you know we too have a daft dog

Red