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Chance Likes To Maul Children.


Guest carriej

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Guest carriej

Hi folks,

 

So newly discovered issue...

 

Chance is a nutball (but we love him) and he has MASSIVE SUPER OMG EXCITEMENT when people come around. Like the

 

OMG I'M GOING TO JUMP AND GO NUTS AND DO THE WHOLE BODY WIGGLE BECAUSE I LOVE PEOPLE type excitement.

 

Jumping and going wild. Of course he doesn't get this excited over people he knows like my husband, myself, our neighbors or our friends who have been in a few times (he gets pretty excited, but he doesn't try to maul them to death). With new people he gets right down low to the ground and wiggles all around, massive happy tail and SPRINGS as tall as he can get. Being the owner of only previously "reserved" greys (where I had to put treats in the mailbox so they would like other people) this has me totally perplexed.

 

Tonight, Chance met children for probably the first time in his life. I "experimented" with our nephews (who are 3 and 8) and wow... He really had it in for the littlest guy! He went so nuts. I think he would have mauled and loved him to death if given the opportunity. My sister in law has a large dog so she's all like "Oh it's ok let him go"...

 

Kid was flat on his rear in .5 seconds. I thought Chance was going to eat him! Like I was honestly scared for like half a second. I managed to haul him off and crate him. The child is used to big dogs so he was just sort of like "WHOA CRAZY DOGGIE" and is not going to be scarred for life (thank god).

 

I am good at making scared dogs happy, and shy dogs come out of their shells but I have never had to tame a whacky grey LOL...

 

Any help would be appreciated. Adults isn't too big of a deal because he usually listens to them and they're bigger and they can just be like "NO" and he calms down. However this doesn't work with children as they are little and apparently worth 5000x more happiness than us big people.

 

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

 

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Some greyhounds including mine do seem to find children especially delightful, because they're on the same level as them I guess. I really wouldn't give him another chance to practice this behaviour though, you certainly don't want it to become a habit!

 

My Doc is also a big boy and loves all visitors. When he first came here he would try to jump up at them - we stopped that by putting on his lead when the doorbell rang, and keeping it on while people came in, and until he'd calmed down. Or if you have a dog-gate you could keep Chance behind that initially. You need to get visitors to cooperate too - nice and calm, no squeals of excitement, and if he does try to jump up get them to cross their arms and turn their backs on him.

 

I would also work on redirecting excitement into a more appropriate activity - Doc discovered his own, and now greets visitors by grabbing his teddy bear and galloping around with it in his mouth, which I encourage as we all think it is cute! Other people teach their dog to go to its bed when visitors first arrive...

Clare with Tiger (Snapper Gar, b. 18/05/2015), and remembering Ken (Boomtown Ken, 01/05/2011-21/02/2020) and Doc (Barefoot Doctor, 20/08/2001-15/04/2015).

"It is also to be noted of every species, that the handsomest of each move best ... and beasts of the most elegant form, always excel in speed; of this, the horse and greyhound are beautiful examples."----Wiliam Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, 1753.

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Good advice from DocsDoctor. If you know you're going to see children, wear him out with plenty of exercise first! And perhaps with the help of your nephews, you can work on a "gently" command (keeping four on the floor, walking slowly).

Star aka Starz Ovation (Ronco x Oneco Maggie*, litter #48538), Coco aka Low Key (Kiowa Mon Manny x Party Hardy, litter # 59881), and mom in Illinois
We miss Reko Batman (Trouper Zeke x Marque Louisiana), 11/15/95-6/29/06, Rocco the thistledown whippet, 04/29/93-10/14/08, Reko Zema (Mo Kick x Reko Princess), 8/16/98-4/18/10, the most beautiful girl in the whole USA, my good egg Joseph aka Won by a Nose (Oneco Cufflink x Buy Back), 09/22/2003-03/01/2013, and our gentle sweet Gidget (Digitizer, Dodgem by Design x Sobe Mulberry), 1/29/2006-11/22/2014, gone much too soon. Never forgetting CJC's Buckshot, 1/2/07-10/25/10.

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Guest carriej

Oh he was on the leash when this all took place. He was relatively composed until he got within touching distance of the little dude.

 

I was telling him "NO NO.. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" but he is a hardheaded guy. He listens well when it's not that interesting; but I guess he just couldn't resist. I put him in the crate and he let out a big snort as though "Well you're not very fun".

 

However, this morning I allowed him to meet my niece (who is 8) while he was crated. She sat on the floor and he laid in his cage and it was pretty calm. However; he didn't even look at the 8 year old nephew last night - it was all about that little toddler lol.

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Instead of saying "No, no no no!", work on training him to do something specific to a command. If I randomly saw you doing something that I didn't like and just told you "no" (assuming that you know that "no" means you're doing something I don't want you to and that you should stop), what would you choose to stop? If you were really excited and doing lots of things (pulling on the leash, wagging your tail, bouncing up in the front, doing play bows, tossing your head, etc.) which part of that activity do you not want him to do? It's a kind of advanced concept. Does "no" in that situation mean stop doing absolutely everything? Stop moving, stand still, freeze? [ETA: maybe training a "freeze" command would work if this is what you want him to do.]

 

Work on getting him to learn things to do, instead of relying on the very generic "no" and you may have more luck. Train a lie down, train a "get a toy" or train a sit or gentle approach or something else you can capture or get on command with big or "boring" people and then work on generalizing to the children.

 

(That said, I am glad that you have someone happy to meet new people. Our Monty is excited from a distance but then turns into spook central when he gets within about 2 feet.)

Edited by Fruitycake
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Guest morgannicole

Instead of saying "No, no no no!", work on training him to do something specific to a command. If I randomly saw you doing something that I didn't like and just told you "no" (assuming that you know that "no" means you're doing something I don't want you to and that you should stop), what would you choose to stop? If you were really excited and doing lots of things (pulling on the leash, wagging your tail, bouncing up in the front, doing play bows, tossing your head, etc.) which part of that activity do you not want him to do? It's a kind of advanced concept. Does "no" in that situation mean stop doing absolutely everything? Stop moving, stand still, freeze? [ETA: maybe training a "freeze" command would work if this is what you want him to do.]

 

Work on getting him to learn things to do, instead of relying on the very generic "no" and you may have more luck. Train a lie down, train a "get a toy" or train a sit or gentle approach or something else you can capture or get on command with big or "boring" people and then work on generalizing to the children.

 

(That said, I am glad that you have someone happy to meet new people. Our Monty is excited from a distance but then turns into spook central when he gets within about 2 feet.)

 

I think that is a great idea, getting them to learn to go do other things instead of just the no command.

 

Our boy Riot is very similar, gets extremely excited when people come over and is just off the wall crazy (our other two are so calm). So we have been doing some training with him as well to learn to listen a little better, he can be very stubborn when he wants to, but for the most part is an amazing dog. Not all people want to be loved to death by Riot. It is kind of opposite with kids though. He LOOOOVES kids. And it is almost like he understands they are smaller, he will literally walk (not run, like with adults) up to the child and just statue there for pets. He is such a sweet boy.

 

Good luck with your situation! I know all three of our hounds are really treat motivated so teaching them is a breeze.

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Guest carriej

Chance is definitely a "big puppy"! Those ideas sound like good ones.

 

I am so out of my element. Here I was, expecting another spooky hound (as that's all I have had) and I was totally ready and eager to start to show that people are awesome. I had no idea what I was in for LOL

 

This is the other end of the spectrum than what I'm used to dealing with for sure. It surprised me so much because he isn't like that with us but I guess we are boring! LOL

 

The treats/food is a whole other story. He needs to learn he is not aloud to just grab food. We have been working on EASY and it's working out pretty well (might also work for kids, the easy command?) but he needs to reminded.

 

Another thing; I am struggling with having him wait for his food until I give the OK. I just want to be able to set the food down and have him wait until I OK him. We have gotten as far as he will wait until I set the bowl down; but I can't seem to get him to wait for even half a second longer.

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We have our dogs both trained to the "wait" to eat command, and it did take Monty a while to get it. It might be easiest to tell him to "wait" and block access after you've put it on the floor (put yourself between him and the food, either full body block at first if need be or just block access with a hand, or have someone else there holding his leash so he cannot get to it). Wait until he stops trying to get to the food and even the slightest settling back from it or stop focusing on it and then give the release command and let him go to it. We use a hand wave in front of his face when we've put in extra special nummy stuff with his food, to reinforce the wait command at those times that it is so extra hard to wait to eat. We eventually got to the point where we would hold a couple of kibble back and give him some as treats by hand when he'd look at us instead of the food, before actually releasing him to get the bowl full. Now he (and Allie) will look longingly at the food, but then both focus on us and wait for our release to dive in.

 

There's a pretty good video about this kind of approach, called "it's yer choice" by Susan Garrett, a dog trainer who uses rewards-based training in Canada, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipT5k1gaXhc and Susan Garrett has a blog where she does some discussion on her training approaches, too.

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I don't really have advice for you - but my Diana LOVES children too - especially little ones. (none at my house, so they're a special treat!) She's never knocked any over, though. She gets really really wiggly, and slobbers all over their faces, but she's careful not to knock them over, or jump on them. I don't know why - since she LOVES to jump up on big people (we've mostly broken that).

 

Some greys just aren't very "grey-ish stereotype" in some things. It's weird to get used to - and pretty neat too. I was certain that my Diana was a lab puppy with stripes for many years.

 

I'm sure you'll figure all the new stuff out. Just remember that really liking kids is the "good" side of the problem to have!

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my advise having an exuberant loving male....TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING! felix was and can still be crazy but all of the obedience work and therapy dog training has made him into a model love of a hound. he still mauls his foster mom who had him for the first 7 weeks of his life(he was an orphan and was bottle fed). it was not easy molding him into a well mannered canine citizen, but it can be done and believe it or not....IT'S FUN!


http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GHRR/photos/albums/666315848/lightbox/115062765?orderBy=ordinal&sortOrder=asc

 

we don't have any little kids at home, but this is what he does on a meet and greet

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GHRR/photos/albums/666315848/lightbox/1336308951?orderBy=ordinal&sortOrder=asc

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Guest carriej

Thanks guys!

 

He seems like he is already improving... Not as if I can take any credit for it though. I think he now realizes that people are going to come and go and that it's OK. lol

 

He listens quite well when I tell him to go to his bed. I've been trying to teach him to grab a toy when people come in, and it's working.. it's kind of scary though LOL

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