Dog socialisation questions

Can you be more specific on what he does around other dogs? When you say CRAZY - do you mean jumping at them, lunging, barking, growling, playing...?

I'll try to describe exactly what happens when his radar detects another dog. First, he tries by ANY mean to go to this dog- pulling, pretending he has something very urgentto sniff (and meanwhile the other dog gets closer). The pulling is insane, I do the tree trick and it simply doesn't work in such situation. Neither do stuff like "let's go", "look, let's play a game" or making a command in order to get a treat. Let's say that I combine all of those in order to get him in the direction I want and it doesn't work each time, sometimes I just have to pull him couple of times with all my weight.

If we are already too close to the other dog, he goes to it and after a normal sniffing to say hi, he starts jumping over the other dog. His ears are all straigt up, he's playful but also tries to dominate. Many times the other, often older dogs, don't like it and put him at his place but I think he doesn't "get it" as he continue jump with all his body over them. You must notice I am "off" here. I absolutely have no other control over the dog except the very big NOs and trying to get away from the other dog (mainly because theowner is getting scared and of course because the other dog gets very upset and starts to get serious). I feel I shouldn't pull him but I have no idea how to react. The dogs I had before, after saying "hi" just continued their route if I don't let them play.

It's not only embarassing but also it can be dagerous and I shouldn't impose my dog on the others. Also, even if people agree that the dogs jump around, Diamond get's SO excited, he will surely upset the other dog and the owner very soon.. Once I walked with him and the dog of my mother-in-law- a 4yo female which Diamond knows already well, and it was as described above but during the whole walk. [&:]

I am desperately looking for obedience courses in the country I live in, not only they will teach us both how to react but also he wil lget socialised with other dogs, but no result yet and I have to continue his training alone.

my olicy is that dogs on leash should never ever interact with other dogs--  I would recomend you immediately insitute this policy. If your dog thinks he may have a chance to sniff n meet n play with any dog he sees, his hard pulling behavior will be exponentially more difficult to fix. When your dog is on leash, he's walking with you and needs to learn to ignore all distractions, including other dogs. If you spot a dog in the distance, turn sharply in the other direction and call his name. Work constantly on instantly getting his attention when you call his name--- at home, on walks, everywhere. Call name, reward for looking at you.
If he's too powerful for you and is dragging you along, you may need some "tools" for the re-training phase. Prong collar maybe. Head halter. Might want to try them and see what works.
Also you should try to find some venue where he can safely off-leash socialize with safe dogs.

Thanks for the advices, I will try to instore this rule. Yes, he's very strong but I think I can manage him if I see the other dog early enough. When I was walking him while he was in the shelter, he had a very strict, methal collar and he didn't do such things. Now he's with a harness.

My only problem can be the fact that there's no such things as safe places for dogs around here [:@]. With my previous dog I searched all the time and no one seemed to know such a place. I will continue though, or will do my best to finally have one. It's quite incredible as in my birth country there were parts of parks which were "the dogs' places" but not here, many parks are even forbidden for dogs.

I had a similar issue & behavior with Scout.
 
First off, like mudpuppy mentioned, no on-leash interactions with other dogs for now. Mostly for your dogs & other dogs safety.
 
I would go to a park where dogs generally are, and start at a distance from them. Go as far away as you need so you are still capable of getting his attention with treats & games. Just sit there, giving treats when he notices the other dog. Make it all positive. Slowly decrease this distance. It worked well for our dog, slowly but surely. Maybe on-leash interactions will never be a good idea for your dog - which is fine. It's not as if it's much fun for the dogs anyway - they can't play or do anything on the leash!

maybe this will help...
 
sparky totally changed his socialization skills with other dogs as a small pup, when i introduced him to ONE particular dog, an older, sweet golden retreiver that enjoyed playing with him, and put up with his nonsense.
 
after that, i was able to take him to dog parks, with larger numbers of dogs.

sparky totally changed his socialization skills with other dogs as a small pup, when i introduced him to ONE particular dog, an older, sweet golden retreiver that enjoyed playing with him, and put up with his nonsense.

 
Our trainer recommended something similar to this. I believe it's called an "uncle dog" or "nanny dog". Because it is like that fun uncle everyone has (I guess), who has good manners but doesn't mind a little rough play from the kids. The idea is that the uncle dog teaches your dog the things that he should have picked up in his puppyhood - doggy manners, proper greetings, communication cues, etc.

I think it get's clearer now, I will do my best to combine both approaches, first as far of other dogs as needed to still manage to capture his attention, then slowly getting closer and then the "nanny dog" (what a cute term [] ). And meantime continue searching for obedience courses where he will be obliged to learn do "a job" in the middle of many other dogs. I even have already an idea for the nanny dog.

And for the rest of the question? Socialising with people. We had, due to lack of experience with a dog like this, a bad experience just after we took him from the shelter. It's an error that we shouldn't have made. We went to the local supermarket and wanted to enter, buy him a harness but more importantly, get him used watch any kinds of people passing by. He got scared and pulled back so hard, he got off his collar [X(] OMG, he run like nuts around the huge parking and we were trying to call him and get him back. Needless to say it was scary as it's a dangerous place. Finally my husband had the great reaction to say to him to sit, as this was the only command he knew two weeks ago. Anyways, he's scared from some men. And for the moment I only go with him to the local service station, it's small and doesn't have that much people. We stay before the doors and he's in a sit postition watching the people. He's doing pretty fine, except for men with plastic, noisy bags.

What do you think the next step should be? For now at least, it's impossible for him to get off the harness, so no danger on this side. In fact, I would like to know what to do when I notice he's scared from someone?

When he's scared of a person or object, it is important not to "coddle" him - you know, "oh you poor little puppy, it's OK, lovey-wuvvy, etc". []
 
Think about kids.... when a kid scrapes his knee, if you run over and say "oh my goodness, you'll be ok, you poor little thing, ohhhhhh", the kid will probably burst into tears. If you run over, take a look at it, and make a humorous comment, they will probably laugh and get back up. Use humor with your dog - act silly and laugh around the 'scary men', and maybe she will see there's nothing to worry about. Don't force anything - don't let her get cornered by anything she's scared of. Give her time and space to realize there's nothing to be scared of.

can you convince some "scary men" to toss treats to the dog from a distance? don't want them to get too close at first.

Thanks for the advices to all of you, so very kind [] I will follow them and will continue educate Diamond in the domains I know how to do. But be sure I will pop up soon with new questions [] The nice thing is that people here are quite friendly if asked politely, so there won't be a problem to throw treats when needed.

Thanks and good day/night to everyone. If someone has more ideas, don't hesitate.

A small update. So, we've just noticed that the more the dog gets used to us, the more wary/prudent he becomes towards other people. When I was walking with him while he was in the shelter and we were waiting for the adoption, he didn't show ANY sign of wariness towards any other person. Now, it's getting more and more.

Is it related to the fact that he's a GSD mix (I hope i don't talk total non-sense but I've heard they are dogs like this, very _my family is the only one_) or we do something very wrong? I don't want him to be at any cost friendly to everyone but at least without wary. I fear that this wary can become one day, in a special situation- agression.

If you can't find obedience classes, there's a good book by Peggy Tillman, called "Clicking With Your Dog".  It gives step by step lessons.   I believe you can get it at dogwise.com, clickertraining.com, or amazon.com.  If you have no clicker, you can use "yes" in place of it, but the clicker is not emotional, so always transmits the same meaning to the dog - "you did it right, you will be rewarded".
To see this type of training in action, go here: www.clickertrainusa.com and watch the videos.
Hope that helps. []

Fantastic, thank you. I saw two of the videos already and it's like a dream [] This afetrnoon I finally managed to find an obedience course here. I hope it will be ok. We're going this Sunday. I will buy though books that people recommend- it's never easy to know which one is good between the huge amount of books, vids and articles.