Moving house has driven our puppy to insanity

Hello everyone,

I would just like to say thanks in advance for any advice given as we are struggling here, we want our pup to be happy and the whole situation is starting to bring us down.

We have a 10 week old Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Shevy. We moved house recently to a house share with a large bedroom and it seems he has taken very badly to the move. We picked him up at 8 weeks then moved after 10 days. For the 10 days in our old house he was very well behaved, he bit us occasionally for the first day but quickly learnt that it wasn't acceptable so he stopped. However since we moved he has turned into Satan's own spawn, ignoring our presence for the majority of the time and when he does interact with us he is biting hard. He has turned viscous with his chewing and just generally is not well behaved. It also seems that he has no recognition of his name anymore, which he always used to respond to.

Here are the reasons that I believe could be factors in his turn of behavior:

1. The trauma of the move of itself.

2. We kept him in a pen for the first 2 days as we had bags and boxes in our room from the move, but the pen was massive and there was always one of us in there with him to keep him company. We knew this wasn't ideal but it was necessary as there was too many puppy unfriendly items and it would have been impossible to puppy pad the entire room.

3. There are 2 other dogs in the house which are pretty well behaved and are always friendly to our pup.

4. It has been hot recently?

We know that positive reinforcement is by far the best way to train a dog but its hard to do it because the only time he is behaving is when he is asleep to be perfectly honest. We also understand that a dog's behavior is a reflection of its owners training which is baffling us as we give him so much love and it feels it is washing straight over him, and our tactics of training him haven't really changed since he was a well behaved pup.

It will be another 2 weeks before his injections have kicked in and we can take him outside, which is shame because I am sure it would do him a world of good.

Please could someone give us some advice as we our at our wits end.

Thank you

Hey shevyUK,

First of all, kuddos for pro positive reinforcement training!

How long are you in the new house now?

Is anyone of the family household (even a bit) stressed due to the move?

For a dog to behave well in 1 place, unfortunately, does not guarantee of same behaviour in another setting. This has to be trained over and over again in different settings for the behaviour to become ingrained and (almost) 100% trust-able in any kind of situation. For example, recall in the house may be 100% perfect but as soon as you set foot outside of the house he seems to have forgotten everything. All is not lost, luckily. Truth is, he didn't forget. He simply hadn't learned it in a different and more distracting environment.

Now, back to your Chevy. You may have to start from scratch again since this is a completely new environment for him. Also, he's still so young and youngsters at that age still have a lot to learn. It will come around but stick to your training.

Can you tell us more about your training methods?

I don't think it is to do with the house move, Shevy sounds like a normal 10 week old puppy to me, sometimes (often!) they can seem savage or mad, it's merely puppy play and learning.

Are you following Roger Mugfords 'The bite stops here' process, it really does work and it's important to teach him bite inhibition first rather than simply trying to stop him biting at all.

http://www.cockersonline.co.uk/discuss/index.php?topic=64170.0;wap2

I try and never tell baby puppies off, I try and follow the 'reward the good, ignore the bad and distract that which you can't ignore' procedure.

If he's ignoring your presence then you're not interesting enough, play with him lots, do little bits of training with him, doesn't matter what type it's just to get his brain working and teach him that you are fun to be with and he shouldn't be making his own entertainment up.

When I have a pup in the house the floor is always absolutely littered with things he can chew, it reduces the chances of him chewing something inappropriate. Apart from dog toys and chews I also gives pups empty cardboard boxes, coke bottles, anything really that is safe for them to play with (supervised of course).

Also take him out just now in your arms, sit on a bench with him and let him watch the world go by, obviously don't let him down or let strange dogs too near. Take a rawhide chew to distract him from biting you, you'll be amazed how much this tires him out just seeing new things

Have you owned/trained a dog before? Get yourself along to a good dog training club and seriously consider crate training your pup. Good luck!