Dog In Crate 12 Hours, Is This Cruel?

[Justmehere]

@lostforgottensoul - being a pet parent is a little like being a parent of kids - everyone has advice and opinions on how to do it. Asked for or not. Some of it worth taking, and the rest to simply discard. I have a service dog and so many people come up to tell me what to feed my dog. So random....

I love the great work you have done to take such good care of your pup. He's one lucky fellow. I'm so glad to read that it is going smoothly.

You mentioned you need a service dog but can't afford getting a second dog. What holds you back from looking into training the dog you have for Service Dog work? It seems like he has a great personality and with 20-30 commands learned, very trainable. Does he not have quite the right temperament? Many great dogs don't - but he might make a good owner trained service dog. Just a thought. Disregard if it doesn't fit for you and your dog.

Oh, and my goodness, your picture of him is ADORABLE!

 

[Deleted member 541]

@lostforgottensoul Laughed all the way through that rant and thought, OMG wait till lost responds. You did good, now give yourself a pat on the back and a cupcake for the pup. Just make sure it has no chocolate or you might be up on charges....... LOL!!!!!

 

[lostforgottensoul]

What holds you back from looking into training the dog you have for Service Dog work? It seems like he has a great personality and with 20-30 commands learned, very trainable. Does he not have quite the right temperament? Many great dogs don't - but he might make a good owner trained service dog. Just a thought. Disregard if it doesn't fit for you and your dog.

A few things. Not that he doesn't have the temperment, he is just overly excited when people come over and i swear he has ADD when excited or when outside. It takes me a while to get him to look back at me and not whatever he is excited over.

Obviously i can work with him on that but the other thing is he is a pitbull and though he's a wonderful sweet dog, there are MANY people that simply are uneducated and terrified of him simply because of that.

I walked him to the mailboxes and 5 people in unison raised up their children in the air and a lady screamed at me "get the vicious breed out of here". Ignorate people as he was wagging his tail wanted to be petted and if you watch the docemtry on Netflix Champions, one of Michael Vicks dogs is a therapy dog but i just fear that it waould cause issues around ignorant people like that.

Also, sites i read say that usually your own pets cant be registered as a service animal but i can look into it more.

Id love that as he does have a calm nature to him and just needs a bit more training to not get excited around people and im working on that now. Thanks for bringing that back to my mind!

ETA: He is well trained. He is just super friendly...overly friendly lol.

He is super smart and learned all commands inside of a week and hand signals inside another week. Most of them anyway. He is a FAST learner and just wants to please.

Lol, thanks @She Cat! Yeah, if you come at me about something, you need to be educated on the subject!

 

[desiderata310]

So a couple of things. You do not have to register a service dog (unless you live in my fair little corner of the world where they want you to get some sort of license for your SD but that's a city thing)
The add stuff? Being outside and responding to cues is different from responding to cues inside. Basically? You have to teach everything again, outside. It's not easy but possible.

If you can get him to pass CGC you're halfway there. Being friendly is a good thing.
Yes I know that it's hard to deal with the stigma that being a pitty plays but that can be overcome if that's the route you want to take.(and this from someone who was attached by a pit earlier this year and bit three times).

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Thanks @desiderata310! If i could bring him into places that would be SOOO much easier to go places. Fear keeps me home locked in darkness more than most anything else and pushing past that is seeing to be difficult. And he just overall calms me.

One of the free counselors i had was blind and had a german shepard service seeing eye dog and she helped me just to be there (inside a church). He kicked me out of sessions saying i wasnt ready for exposure therapy (whatever) but she was such a great help to me.

I'll look into the CGC. Thanks!

 

[DharmaGirl]

I trained my mastiff (around 150 lbs) to be a service dog. She is dark brindle. She also scares the crap out of people for no other reason than she is big. She is friendly and well trained.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Thanks @DharmaGirl! I'm going to try for the CGC. Is there any training for that? I ask because he is very hyper and excited around people. I am having an issue trying to train him to calm down around people and to listen to me when he is in that excited state. He is well trained and knows around 30 commands and hand signals for most of them but he seems to loose the abilty to listen when he is excited. Like dog ADHD or ADD or something.

He knows the command "settle" but it takes a bit for him to settle down. I cant have that in public you know? So i need to take him to some sort of training and/or out in public more.

 

[Deleted member 541]

@lostforgottensoul I believe that dogs that have not been socialized with other dogs and people, tend to be hyper upon being introduced to people and dogs. I know some elderly people that got a laberdoodle 6 yrs ago. She's never been socialized around dogs, so she doesn't know how she's supposed to be with them, so she hides. When she sees other people, because she's never been around anyone, other than her owners, me and the postman, she goes absolutely nuts. I mean NUTS!!!! She is out of control for about 10 minutes. Just so excited that she could turn herself inside out. She's a sweetheart otherwise.

Another dog I know, that's never been socialized is nuts around dogs and people. Takes awhile for her to calm down too.

I think just working with your pup with people around will eventually get her over that initial excitement.....

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Yeah, I agree @She Cat. The only dog he is around is my parent's chihuahua which he protects which isn't good cause the chihuahua starts shit with all other dogs and in comes my dog to protect him...though he loves other dogs any other time. I make sure they don't go out together anymore as I dont want him to start to become animal agressive even a little bit.

I need to take him to the dog park and out maybe to the pet store...just out around people. He is perfect in the pet store but maybe that's because he is out of his territory? In the pet store he is calm and sweet. So i know he has it in him to be calm. Just in certian situations...mostly at home.

 

[Deleted member 541]

Start hanging out at the pet store...... the more he's out and around people, the less he will be nutty when he goes other places.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Great idea @She Cat! Thanks!

 

[scout86]

I took my puppy to a fairly inexpensive dog obedience class early this summer. The goal, more or less, was to get the dogs to where they could pass their Canine Good Citizen test. It's not real complicated. I had 2 reasons for signing up for the class. One was to get Chip out around strange dogs and people. The other was to make sure I'd set aside the time to work with him.

Here's a link to what the test includes. http://www.akc.org/dog-owners/training/canine-good-citizen/training-testing/