Dogs Training Blog

I have a good friend who is like a second mother to me. She rescued a border collie mix as a puppy. Now she’s 2 yrs old and 35 lbs. My friend can not afford any training for her. (if it was a medical emergency she would get help to pay it, but she can’t afford training)We walk the dogs together almost every day at an off leash dog trail. I enjoy her company. There are 2 problems with her dog however.The first is her dog randomly decides to charge other people or dogs. She looks like she will bite and she has bit 2 people before (not on this trail, in the home) breaking the skin. I warned my friend that it just takes 2 bites reported for her dog to be put down. I’ve told her over and over she needs to be more firm with her dog. But she won’t. She apologizes profusely to the person her dog charges and barks at. But she does everything wrong. When her dog charges a person, she YELLS the dogs name. Then when the dog comes back to her, she gives her a treat. I tell her don’t do this, it’s rewarding bad behavior but she says she has to because she came.So I started trying to disciplin her dog. When she goes after a person or dog, I say “NO” and tell her to lay down, but usually she just barks at me. What should I do?The second problem is her dog is too rough with my small dog. She makes her cower and my friend keeps saying “she just wants her to play” which is true I think because it’s not aggressive but it’s dominant behavior. She play bites my dog though and won’t let my dog get up. I don’t like it and I try to get her dog to stop but her dog won’t. My friend isn’t mean to let it happen, she honestly just is not assertive. her own kids are older than me and they have never did anything to help their mom. She drives them everywhere, pays for everything (these kids are all in college and 1 is out), picks up their ipod at the store for them, etc. Idon’t think she’s capable of disciplining her dog.Her dog is not exactly fear aggressive, I don’t believe. I think she’s just under stimulated, that’s why I talked my friend into coming to this trail with me because all this dog used to get for stimulation was standing still in a dog park every day.But now I don’t know what to do about her dog. i do not want her dog to bite someone even though she is small. and i need a way to control her dog’s behavior with mine, but i don’t know how to. what should i do? I really value my friendship with this woman and don’t want to stop all our walks. we do go at times when the trail isn’t crowded. thank youfor suggestions.wow that was long. i’m sorry. hopefully someone will read:(heh usually yahoo limits my questions when i get too long..guess they changed to more characters allowed for a q i think..so what should i do when her dog charges people?I didn’t realize i shouldn’t be discipling her dog, thanks for making me aware of that, makes sense.maybe instead of leashing them the whole time, when her dog does something bad i’ll ask her to leash her for a few minutes? this way they could still run.

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