Dogs

YouTube is full of trainers, many of them are horrible, but some are actually good and they'll answer questions, or schedule web consults.

Find a good one, and ask them.

My suspicion is that any behavioral training that doesn't involve you, and everyone else in your household, will be all for naught.

Effective training might require some boarding for the trainer to get a handle on the issue, and then then working with his immediate handlers on how to solve the human part of his behavior equation.

Get multiple opinions from different trainers, see if they overlap, and then move forward.

Here's one example of a good trainer with a YT channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6vdCX3-G6oDGajvQFreLLA

He also runs boarding, training, and web consults.

But, please don't just take my word on his credibility. I'm just someone who's watched some of his videos, and liked what I saw, that's it's. I'm not a dog training expert, or a shill, so take my opinion for whatever you feel it's worth, or don't.

Not really answering the question but have you ruled out medical issues? You could be describing our dog and it turned out he's got pretty bad hip dysplasia on both sides. Because both are bad he doesn't limp at all and the outward signs are really subtle but he's now on a bunch of pain killers and has gotten much better. He's also booked in for a hip replacement next month.

My gf is a trainer who does board and trains and it’s quite effective but only if everyone at home with the dog follows instructions and the rules suggested for the dog.

A dog will be great with us but will regress very quickly if the family doesn’t stick to the structure provided. And the new structure and rules are especially important once the dog is back home because when they go back home, they think they can go back to their old behaviors.

And finally, if it’s a purely positive training, then it absolutely will not work for cases like this.

A lot of purely positive are against “balance” training where we use tools like eCollars and prong collars and will correct the dog. They claim it’s abusive and conflate eCollars with shock collars (two very different things and you absolutely should be against shock collars). But on the flip side, they’re okay with putting down dogs like this.

I could go on forever, but you really want a balanced trainer who is willing to use tools, but not one of those super macho trainers who borderline abuse dogs.

eCollars, prong collars, kennel training and proper balanced training save dog (and possibly human) lives.

Around 4 years ago we got a “problem” dog that’s worse than yours from a shelter and he’s been fine with the tools and the structure we put in place and he’s living a great life.

So tldr: find the right trainer, follow the rules and you should be fine. But if you slip up with the structure and get loose with the rules, the dog can start regressing.

I put my doodle in a local board and train for 3 weeks a little over a year ago for his separation anxiety. When he came back, his separation anxiety was totally solved. I think the value is really in having someone who can dedicate all of their time to focusing on the behaviour you want to train. Like maybe I could have trained my dog's separation anxiety myself, but I'm neither a professional dog trainer, nor somebody who can dedicate more than an hour or two every day to dog training.

If you're worried about your dog feeling like you've abandoned him, maybe ask the trainer if you can visit a couple of times? Or, what I did was give the trainer I hired one of my t-shirts that I had worn for a day, so it smelled like me, and asked her to keep the shirt near my dog's bed.

We were in the same boat, but tried “boot camp” and they said they couldn’t help her. Points for honesty I guess.

We’ve also had a rescue about three years. In some ways she’s very well trained, or she’s smart and cooperative. However she’d been a year at the shelter and been abandoned before that, so definitely not socialized. She has a scar on her snout that looks suspicious, and she reacted strongly against men. Basically I sat on the floor for two weeks tossing her treats before she would approach. Now she’s the most loving and protective dog to our family, she lets the cleaner in with a warning, is generally ok with people, and loves our neighbors. She is much improved.

However we were never able to stop her from pulling when on leash, never stop her from being dog reactive, and people better not surprise her.

The biggest thing she needs is that socialization, but reacts so strongly that no one is willing to risk their pet (nor I the liability). I hope it’s posturing since the couple times an off leash dog approached, it didn’t lead to anything, but she’s awfully aggressive with it