[noah67]

in Nov 2009 i got 9 week old border collie mix puppy. after an hour of chase i grabed a male. he is about 6 an 1/2 months old. i have loved on this puppy from day one. but im getting no effection in return. im his main care giver. he will not come to me even for food. i take him to work and other places we are in a obediance class i love this dog so very much and hes breaking my heart. he will set with him in the chair and show him some effection but im treated like a stranger. when people come to my house he runs away and wont come to me or them when i come home he runs from me. i want him to set with me on the couch i want him to be excited to great me when i come home i want him to sleep in the bed. he actually wags his tail and makes a noise when my husband comes home. but for me its the totall oposite. i feel so unloveable by this dog. . heart broken and about to give up and find him a new home.
any help please
sandy/noah67

[CorkyMax]

There was a thread done in here about 3 days ago that may give you things to think about---to see if this could be at least a little of what may be happening. Here is the link: Why are dogs scared of me??

http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/articles/speakingdog.htm

http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/articles/humandog.htm

[bpwriter47]

I have experienced this when I was younger in my family also. I have a twin sister and my parents got us a Silky Terrier when we were in high school.

And I'm the biggest animal lover in the family. There are 3 daughters and 1 son and then my mom and dad.

But no matter what I tried, the Silky never took to me, my brother, my mom and my older sister. He loved only being with my Dad or my twin even though I'm the one who started walking him etc.

I did finally have to accept it and later got other animals for myself as I grew older.

I just got 2 new puppies about 5 months ago. They are over 7 months old. One of them seemed to not be interested in attaching himself to anyone. I was getting confused and wondering why he wouldn't even look at us in the eyes (he was not scared or shy).

But about 6 weeks ago, he jumped up in my lap and then he started slowly warming up to me. Now, we are best buddies.

I don't know what to tell you really. I felt I might be sending off energy signals to this particular dog in being nervous he didn't want to play or be held.I think I was trying to push him into loving me.

So I decided to just relax and wait and see. I didn't try to approach him, I waited for him to come to me. I took care of his basic needs and training and I also had problems having him come to me if needed, but just decided to not get upset over it.

so perhaps not trying so hard and letting your energy relax and try seeing if after a few days of just not trying, he/she might come to you. Try just sitting on the floor without looking at him several times and see if eventually he will come to you. I know you want to hold him and love him, but perhaps he wants that on his own terms when he's relaxed and comfortable. Petting him while he's resting might help even if he's with someone else.

We had our Silky Terrier 17 yrs., he never warmed up to me. I'm not trying to upset you, but some dogs just take to certain individuals and are comfortable with that.

But more than likely, you might be trying too hard and that energy makes the dog nervous and doesn't want to be with you in a forced situation.

Just a suggestion. I'm sure others on here have experienced this.

[cigwyllt]

Maybe I am misinterpreting what you have said but it sounds like he has had a dreadful start in life

after an hour of chase i grabed a male.

He obviously was not well socialised or cared for.

To be honest your story should be a cautionary tale for anyone looking for a pup - if the puppies are not friendly, interested in you, wanting to play with you then get out of there and get a dog from a decent breeder.

I think you need to take a step back from your dog. You obviously love him and want the best for him so it may be hard but it is for the best.

Don't put any pressure on him to relate to you. Meet his needs for food and shelter, give him treats, throw a ball for him to chase if he likes to do that but don't pressure him to accept physical attention.

It may be that he is never going to be an affectionate, cuddle up on the sofa dog. I have had dogs in my home since I was a child and we currently have three dogs. We treat them all in the same way but the middle dog, a Patterdale terrier, is fiercely independent. She adores men/males -my father, my husband, our sons, our other male dog - but she treats me with disdain. I have had to accept that she will never be a cuddly dog like the other two. She is happy, she is great fun to be with, but she likes her own space. It's just her character.

If your pup has the same sort of character, combined with a poor start in life you really do have your work cut out.

Follow the tips in the thread referred to earlier, give him time and space to be himself. You might like to google "calming signals" "dog body language". It will help you to understand what he is saying, what he is thinking.

I can understand what you are saying about feeling so unloved. But think about it this way - you want the best for him. You can provide that. At the moment you are wanting him to be a different kind of dog. If you can love him unconditionally, as a dog who needs you even if he doesn't seem to want you, you can give him the best life and maybe even undo some of the damage that was done to him before you had him.

[Lara's mom]

I've never experienced this with a dog. However, I have a 16 year old cat that has never really bonded to me. I rehomed her at one point and she was very happy with her new mom. Unfortunately, mom developed a serious allergy to the cat. Part of the agreement was that if she could no longer keep the cat, it had to be returned to me. So, that's what happened. By this time, the cat was fairly old and not a good prospect for another adoption. I attend to her needs but, basically leave her alone. The odd time she wants affection, she comes to me and I oblige her.

[Todd]

THE CANINE BEHAVIOR SERIES
By Kathy Diamond Davis
Author and Trainer

SOCIALIZATION;

Socializing Dogs to People
Ideally every puppy would receive a good foundation of experiences for the ability to cope with all kinds of people as an adult dog. Even if the genetics for temperament in your pup are not the best, or your pup has a bad experience when young, a good foundation of social experiences will give the best chance for a dog to have good social skills. If your puppy comes from two temperamentally-sound parents and is lucky enough to avoid any traumatic experiences with humans during formative months, you might never see problems from lack of good early socialization.

Bad experiences unfortunately happen without anyone being able to foresee or prevent them. What you can do, though, is give your dog plenty of positive experiences. That way when your dog has a bad experience with, for example, a man with a beard, several previous GOOD experiences with bearded men will have already taught your dog that a bearded man is not a bad guy!

Quality AND Quantity

Having lots of experiences with humans will not help your dog if those experiences are of poor quality. When “quantity” means a number of bad experiences, quantity is not a good thing. Your goal is to build in your dog a belief system that most encounters with humans will be safe. Your dog learns from experiences, and those experiences need to illustrate the message you wish to teach the dog.

A dog who has high-quality positive experiences with humans may still not be adequately socialized if there are not enough experiences. Let’s say you have your dog Joe out for a walk and a passing man frightens him. Perhaps the man crashes into Joe, drops something on him, or steps on his tail. Maybe it’s accidental, maybe the man is under the influence of some substance, but either way, Joe has a bad experience.

If when this happens to Joe he has previously encountered 50 men on outings, 40 of whom ignored him and 10 who gave him treats, what is Joe’s opinion of men likely to be? “Gee, men are usually okay, but that guy was strange!” Give Joe several good experiences with men soon after this experience and he’ll likely put it into the perspective of many good experiences and decide not to worry too much about men he meets.

If Joe has inherited a difficult temperament, he may require more good experiences and more time to offset his bad experience. The same is true if Joe has not had a large number of good experiences before this unfortunate one.

It’s even possible that Joe will never be able to handle exposure to men, or to whatever type of person he decides to worry about. All dogs are not equal when it comes to the socialization they need and how they will be able to handle the world, with or without good experiences. All you can do is your best.

Bear in mind, too, that some breeds were selectively bred to have temperaments you might find difficult in a companion dog. Be sure to research breeds ahead of adopting a dog to find one likely to fit your lifestyle.

To establish the good social experiences with humans that your dog needs, plan contacts with people. Dogs don’t tend to catch infections from humans, so there may be places you can take your puppy to meet humans before the veterinarian wants the pup around other dogs.

Keep outings short so the puppy won’t get tired, and when in doubt, carry the pup to avoid exposure to contaminated ground. Try to do a little every day. The time can increase as the puppy matures and has more stamina and a stronger immune system. Try to remain aware of the dog’s stress level at all times. Your goal is for every experience to end happily.

Don’t let the habit of jumping on people get started because changing this habit later can put your dog’s good attitude toward people at risk. It’s also much easier to prevent than to fix. Don’t let anyone pet the puppy or dog who is standing on hind legs.

You can gently hold the dog in four-on-the floor position (a chest harness in addition to the collar gives you a secure handhold that doesn’t pull against the dog’s throat), wait until the dog quits trying to jump, or even stand on the leash so it doesn’t give the dog room to jump. Don’t try standing on the leash of a big dog, though, or you can get pulled over!

If you happen to have the not-uncommon combination of a shy dog who also jumps on people, you can teach the dog to do “paws up” to your forearm, and hold the dog there for people to pet. The dog is under your control, so it can be a reasonable compromise while you work on training skills and social skills with a nervous young dog.

Another way to handle the jumping-up dog is to teach the dog to sit for petting and a treat, and this is a lovely behavior. If you start the non-jumping greetings early enough in a dog’s life, it becomes such a habit that the dog is trustworthy even when highly excited and when around frail people. This is a goal well worth the effort, no matter what the dog’s age.

Being able to take some initiative in greeting people gives confidence to many dogs, which is one reason they jump up. Once you’ve taught your dog not to jump up, it’s helpful to teach the dog a cue phrase for greeting people, such as “Say hi.” You can add a signal to this, pointing to the person you mean.

When the dog makes the approach, the dog will tend to feel more comfortable. The same is true when a dog offers a paw to shake hands. Dogs love structure, knowing what is going to happen next, and shaking hands can satisfy this desire.

Variables

Dogs notice all sorts of differences in people. With good socialization, dogs learn to ignore the differences that are not important, such as beards, hats, skin color, and the like. If you react in such a way that your dog thinks there is reason to fear that type of person, though, you can inadvertently create fear, suspicion or defensiveness in your dog toward other people. That becomes inconvenient, and sometimes downright dangerous. So strive to treat people the same no matter what their differences when you are socializing your dog!

In socializing your dog, you want to create positive experiences with every variation on the human condition you possibly can. Here are some differences to use:

1. Accustom your dog to people of as many different appearances as possible. This includes people who are tall, short, narrow, wide, bearded, short-haired, long-haired, and with skin all the colors of the rainbow. Whatever differences you and your dog come across, your goal is to teach the dog that these things are not important.

2. Get your dog used to people who smell different ways. Being in my 20th year as a therapy dog handler, I’ve come to believe that dogs are not as put off by scents as people are. If you don’t like the way someone smells, you may notice it makes no difference to your dog. What you don’t want to do is react in such a way that your dog will be afraid of that scent.

3. Let your dog get used to people moving in all sorts of ways. That means walking, running, limping, riding a bicycle, skating, skipping, and anything else you can think of or find. Keep in mind the dog’s comfort and safety so your dog will have good experiences with these movements, not bad ones.

4. Accustom your dog to all sorts of sounds associated with people. That includes whispering, talking, laughing, coughing, singing, yelling, playing music electronically or with an instrument and all the other variations you can arrange.

5. Give your dog the experience of people appearing suddenly. This is startling to some dogs, so start at a distance and be prepared to distract the dog with an eye contact exercise (see Eye Contact.)

6. Expose your dog to people wearing a wide variety of clothing.

7. Get your dog used to people carrying all kinds of objects. A safe distance from a construction site is a convenient place to work on this.

8. When you can actively work with your dog when someone comes to your home, this is a great opportunity to get your dog used to people in a potentially delicate situation. If you’re not able to actively control the dog, though, put the dog into an area away from being able to see the visitors. You don’t want any bad habits or beliefs to get started.

[Todd]

CONT...

Remedies

An eye contact or focused attention exercise is a good way to handle your dog around people the dog might find stressful. When in doubt, start with having the dog focus on you, and release the dog’s attention for brief moments at a time to see how the dog reacts to the person.

If the dog reacts badly to someone, increase your distance from the person and continue to work with the dog’s attention on you. In the early stages of focused attention it’s usually best to use treats to keep the dog’s eyes on yours. This has the added advantage of giving you a reading on the dog’s stress level. If the dog normally will eat a particular treat but will not eat it in that situation, that’s reason to think the situation may be too stressful.

Don’t let people corner your dog. A dog on a leash may feel cornered even with a lot of space around because the dog can’t get away. If someone is pushy about petting your dog and won’t listen to your instructions, walk on, keeping your dog’s focus on you. Yes, it’s a bit snobbish, but it’s good for the dog! It tells your dog that YOU will deal with the humans, and that you are a leader worthy of following.

Acting out aggression or fear tends to fix both the behavior habit and the feeling more strongly. If your dog reacts in this manner to a situation, you need to stop putting the dog in the situation. Change the situation to one the dog can handle, and work gradually up to the level your dog needs to be able to cope with.

For example, let’s say your dog is afraid of men encountered on walks. You need to take your dog out to eliminate, so you’ll need to work the dog around men. How can you approach this training?

First, if the dog is aggressive toward men, get the help of an expert in person to work on the problem. Aggression is not a do-it-yourself project. Ask your veterinarian to recommend a behavior specialist in your area. Aggression and shyness are two sides of the same coin, so be alert for a fearful dog to show signs of aggression. If that happens, don’t delay getting help.

In the case of a dog showing mild fear without aggression, it helps to “sideswipe” people—not by hitting them as you go by! But instead of walking up to someone and stopping and putting your dog in the position of having to deal with them, just walk by the person, keeping your dog’s eyes on your eyes. At first have the distance between your dog and the person fairly large—whatever it takes for the dog to feel relaxed, maybe 20 feet. The dog may also feel relaxed when your body is between the dog and the other person.

If the person is willing to help, you can walk by several times, getting closer. For the first session, that may be all you want to do. You might do just that for several sessions.

As the dog shows progress, you could make your passes closer, and slow down as you pass the person. Eventually you could stop near the person and keep your dog’s attention while perhaps talking to the person.

If the dog gets more comfortable, you might have the person just lightly scratch the dog with one hand reaching from the side behind one ear—not reaching over the head. You might also have the person give the dog a treat. Another possibility is to have the person drop a treat for the dog, if you’re willing to let your dog pick up food from the ground (that’s a training decision).

If your dog is not showing comfort with being petted by people, you could make the choice to just teach your dog to ignore everyone else when out with you. This might seem extreme, but when you think about it, it’s not so different from what some humans have to do in order to endure constant closeness to people living in neighborhoods and apartments.

In tight quarters, people give each other some “space” by simply not engaging every time they pass. Some dogs need more space than others, and if you can’t give the dog physical space at that moment, you can create emotional space. With practice and teaching your dog that you can be trusted to keep things safe, this kind of space can work for many dogs.

Children and Puppies

The combination of a preschool-age child and a puppy at a critical stage of socialization requires special handling. A typical result is a dog who is never good with kids because of things that happened during critical early weeks and months of the pup’s life.

If you have a young child and want to add a dog to the family, your best bet is a dog already positively socialized to young kids. If you have a young child and a puppy, be aware that a puppy may not show the effects of the child’s behavior until the pup is several months of age.

Be careful how any child is allowed to behave around any dog, and never leave a child under school age alone with any dog for even one second (See Children Need to Learn About Dogsand Choosing a Dog for Children).

Good contact with dogs in the early years can have lifelong benefits for children, so it’s worth a lot of effort to provide this contact for your child and the children of your acquaintance. Just make sure there is enough skilled adult supervision on every encounter. The ideal is one skilled adult handling the dog while another handles the child.

Companionship

What a sociable dog can do for humans is beyond scientific measurement and beyond words. It is worth a great deal of effort to socialize your dog well with humans. It’s also a lot of fun.

Dogs are the ultimate ice-breakers between people. Handling a dog skillfully around other people is challenging and fascinating. You’ll be rewarded by having your dog provide even more benefits in your life, as well as in the lives of other people.

[Todd]

CONT...

BONDING;

Bonding with Your Dog

People often insist that the new dog they adopt must come to them in puppyhood in order to bond with the family. The confusion over this idea comes from a study, often borne out by real-life experience, that puppies who do not have any human handling at all during a critical socialization period will grow up with poor socialization skills or sometimes no ability to bond with a human.

What people don't understand, though, is that the human in the puppy's early life does not have to be you. It's the ABILITY to bond that is formed through this early experience. Dogs routinely form new bonds with humans at all stages of life.

For example, a dog who will work as assistant to a disabled person or as partner to a police handler will typically first form a bond with a breeder, then with a puppy-raiser, then with a skilled trainer, and finally with the disabled person or the police handler. Dogs are in their fourth home when they form some of the closest human-dog bonds possible. Clearly bonding does NOT require that you adopt a dog as a puppy.

In fact, adopting a dog as a puppy and expecting a bond to form automatically is a big mistake. Creating a good bond, or relationship, with your dog requires that you consistently take the right actions. It's work-but it's a labor of love.

One-on-One

Bonding happens in times that you and your dog focus on each other. A relationship is between two individuals. Each person in the family will have a relationship (good or bad) with the dog, and if you have more than one dog you'll have a relationship with each dog as an individual. It is essential to spend daily time one-on-one with each dog you have.

Some of this time needs to be spent away from the house. If you have multiple dogs, take them on individual outings whenever possible instead of always taking them out as a group. If they always go out together, training will not be as good and bad habits and fears can rub off from one dog to the other. Most of all, you'll be missing important bonding opportunities.

Management

Certain things you do and don't do in the day-to-day management of your dog make a great deal of difference to bonding. Instead of reacting when something goes wrong in your dog's behavior, it's much more effective to manage the dog so the right behavior occurs in the first place. One example is getting your dog to the potty area frequently so that the dog is able to hold it until the next chance. If you wait until the dog has an accident and then try to train the dog by reacting to the accident, you're doing it the hard way!

People who reliably meet their dogs' needs develop dogs who trust them. The dogs have steadier nerves because they're free from worry about not getting fed today, being left outdoors during a scary thunderstorm, or waiting too many hours in a crate.

Until the dog is past puberty and you know the dog's temperament is mild, it's optimum for bonding to have the dog sleep in your bedroom but not on your bed. Later the dog may prove suited to sleeping on the bed, but it's best to leave that for later, and the same goes for letting the dog share the sofa with humans.

Until you're sure the dog will chew only dog toys and otherwise use good house manners, don't leave your dog loose unsupervised in your house. Some dogs are comfortable resting in a crate when you can't be home, while others will do well confined in an area of the house. This is important management for bonding because it avoids so many situations of people coming home to find things torn up by the dog and losing control of their temper. Besides protecting your dog from your anger, sensible confinement protects the dog from chewing something dangerous.

Bonding Mistakes

Three errors sometimes made in training and managing are:

1. Tricking the dog into making a mistake and then punishing the dog. Practice success, not failure. Set the dog up to get it right so you can praise and reward. Doing this enough times creates a confident dog who habitually does the right things. It also creates a dog who values your praise and approval, when you have repeatedly paired that praise with tangible rewards such as a food.

2. Confrontational corrections. People want to see a dog "look sorry." To accomplish this, it's common to stretch out a correction, which is distressing to dogs and can result in aggressive reactions. Humans don't realize how significantly this handling can interfere with the dog's ability to learn. A good correction with a dog is so quick that it's over before the dog has time to get upset, and ends with the dog doing the correct action and being praised and rewarded for it. In other words, a good correction ends with the dog and the handler both behaving correctly!

3. Punishment that inflicts pain or fear. Nothing is gained by treating a dog in this manner, and much is lost. Certainly it doesn't create a dog who trusts you and can face the world confidently.

Routines that Build Powerful Bonds

Three things you can build into your dog's schedule have enormous power to bond the two of you together:

1. Take your dog on regular, one-dog outings. A dog views a person who does this as a leader. It's also a perfect time to work on training and socialization.

2. Train with your dog daily for several months. Some of this training needs to be done away from the house, such as on walks or in training class. Certain exercises are particularly good for building your bond with your dog:

Gentle stay training, including a month of leadership exercises as explained in the book "Dog Training for Dummies," by Jack and Wendy Volhard.
Come-when-called, for great rewards that you vary so that the dog knows it's always worthwhile to come to you.
Walk on a loose leash
Eye contact, attention exercise
Retrieving, taught with a gentle method, a simple play retrieve if the dog is not training for competitive dog sports
3. Daily grooming. Comb out all tangles from your dog's coat daily if the fur is long, or give the dog a full-body rubdown if the fur is short. It is impossible to overstate the benefits of this few minutes a day of conditioning your dog to human handling and to your touch in particular.

A True Family Member

When you create and maintain a good bond with your dog, you make the dog a real member of your family. This is the role in which dogs probably enrich, lengthen and even save more lives than in any other job dogs do for humans. It's great for you, and great for your dog.

*The key here is also patients. Just be patient and work with these tips and tips others give you. No need to give the poor dog up. He may not have been socialized at all before you got him so it's going to take some work on your part but trust me It'll pay off!

Good luck!

[Yogi]

Unfortunately, cygwyllt I think covered this right on the nail head. At 9 weeks the pup is extremely impressionable. It continues to link its first memory of being chased by a stranger to you, and it was obviously frightened. Pups do not forget as some may think. At 9 weeks, if it was not eager to come or attempt to come, it was not ready to leave. Pups that are ready, will generally want to interact with others than the breeder. In your husband, the pup has no bad memory of anyone chasing or frightening it.

[Todd]

Originally Posted by Yogi

Unfortunately, cygwyllt I think covered this right on the nail head. At 9 weeks the pup is extremely impressionable. It continues to link its first memory of being chased by a stranger to you, and it was obviously frightened. Pups do not forget as some may think. At 9 weeks, if it was not eager to come or attempt to come, it was not ready to leave. Pups that are ready, will generally want to interact with others than the breeder. In your husband, the pup has no bad memory of anyone chasing or frightening it.

Exactly. it's just going to take a lot more effort on your part to try and get the dog to trust humans again.

[Glassman96]

Dogs act differently towards people the same way people act towards people. When people get a dog, it's important to find one that takes to you from the start. We have three dogs and they always hang out with me. Two of them will greet my wife when she comes home, but one of them does not want anything to do with her and this has gone on for fourteen years. This dog is pretty independent. You can't make an animal love you. Either they do or they don't. I don't think you will be able to change this dog's attitude. If you do decide to give the dog up, make sure that the dog has an interest in the new owner, or they will be doing the same thing.