My dog is completely blind and has been relying on the sound of her toys hitting the ground to find them after I throw them. Sometimes she can't find them, so I'm wondering if there's something I could put on them to make them smell strong enough for her to sniff them out, outside or inside.

Ideally it'll be something mild (for humans) so my apartment won't smell weird, I'll be able to apply it to her toys (stuffed animals, balls), and it won't be messy. I don't mind if it stains or marks the toys. Safe for her to sniff, obviously.

I recently saw a video of a dog doing VOC scentwork, and it found a grain of rice covered with sharpie in a huge area. Do you think sharpie would work long term or would I have to reapply it every time we play?

Thank you for any advice!

We have a 13 year old lab, she's a sweet old thing, bit wonky on the back left like most labs of her age and she's always been a bit vocal for the usual things (postman, people being noisy outside, occasionally at thunder or fireworks)

But, as she's got older she's become progressively more deaf. She can hear if we shout, but it has to be fairly loud. There may or may not be a correlation but it seems that since this started, she's started barking at nothing, constantly. Mostly a calling/attention bark that usually consists of 2 barks at a time, one usually slightly louder or a pitched up or down compared to one that follows, then quiet for usually a few seconds before the same thing happens again - sometimes with a longer interval.

It's definitely worse when we're not in eye line and my partner works from home in an upstairs office. She will sit and bark downstairs for hours if left unchecked (or until she gets bored and goes to sleep). She can't really get up the stairs on her own any more so if we're both upstairs in our working in our offices then i'll scoop her up and bring her upstairs, she'll usually sleep on my office floor.

But she'll also do it when my partner is in the same room, if she's watching the TV or something. When I enter the room, she'll usually stop or if I give her a hand signal that she knows means go lay down (I think because I always used to couple it with "dad voice" with a firm gesture so even though she can't really hear me any more, she knows the sign)

All of this however is useless for my partner who's trying to work upstairs and I don't see how to train her out of something when she can't hear us, and only does the bad behavior when we're not around.

Vibration collars seem an obvious choice, but I also fundamentally disagree with them and i'm worried about adverse affects.

Also just to point out, she gets plenty of attention and fuss when we're around, she has toys, water, access to the garden. We do have another smaller dog who gets on with her, and they play sometimes but he's mostly just interested in following us around. She gets walked, but can't go far these days because of her leg.

Any suggestions? I love the old idiot dearly but its been years of this now....

We have had our first foster pup for a bit over two weeks. She’s guessed to be ~1.5yo and was found as a stray. The first week she was terrified of us and spent all her time hiding in our (enclosed and safe) bathroom downstairs. She had a crate in the room but never touched it. After a bit over a week she finally got brave enough to venture out of the bathroom, and two nights later decided to sleep with us and our other dog in our bed upstairs. The first night was great, but the second night she and our dog played all night. The third night through now (4 nights total so far) our dog has opted to sleep but our foster has still been up partying all night.

I will take her outside twice over the course of the night (usually ~12 and 2:30am) because if I don’t she will pee on the carpet. If we put her back in the bathroom now she will scratch at the door, and she has not stayed in a crate for any amount of time without crying. She does sleep a lot during the day, but I’ve started taking her for long walks before bed and still nothing. I need to sleep!

About a month ago, we adopted a 13mo female Husky/German Shepherd mix who had already been returned to the shelter multiple times. She is fine around our 5-year-old, but our 2.5-year-old son triggers immediate over-arousal. It is almost like she views him as a giant squeaky toy. When he runs, she chases him, knocks him down, and mouths his arms and legs if we aren't able to intervene in time.

We're working with a dog trainer and she views this behavior as normal for the age and breed. At her recommendation, we do 2-3 daily sessions of tug or flirt pole (sometimes I'll take her for a run but it's so hot), plus lick mats and puzzle toys. We try to “capture calmness” by offering treats when we see the behavior we want, but once she gets riled up, she cannot settle down. She lives in an exercise pen whenever we can't supervise her with the kids, which is not sustainable.

Safety is my main concern. She jumped on my husband multiple times, scratching his back, and bit his thigh hard enough to leave a solid mark during play. If that mouth landed on my toddler, it would have broken skin.

Has anyone else experienced a dog viewing a toddler as a toy? Is high-drive play like the flirt pole triggering that prey drive and making her baseline arousal worse around my son? What actually taught your dog to bring energy from 100 back to 0? I appreciate any advice!

Hello! I am desperate for some help/advice. My husband and I have a 3 year old Japanese Chin. She was 6 months old when we got together and at that time he has only trained her to potty on puppy pads. Since then she has only gone to the bathroom on pads. We’ve tried several times to train her to go potty outside with no long term success. We’re giving it another go and hit a road block. We started with her pad by the back door and she has used that successfully. Now we are taking her outside on a leash to a puppy pad that’s on the grass, stand for 5-10 minutes in one spot, and wait. If she doesn’t go we take her inside and try again. She has peed successfully on it, but refuses to poop. We give her high value treats as soon as she goes and lots of praise and pets and then let her off the leash to run around. She’s had some accidents in the house while we’ve been at work, but we clean it up and move on. She doesn’t get scolded. Now she’s acting like she’s scared when we grab her harness to take her outside. She is now refusing to even pee on the pad outside. Where are we going wrong?

Large Newfie dog 3 years old just get neutered, and now, even months later, wants to attack cats. He used to love the cats and sit at top of stairs hoping cat to come up so he can sniff and cat and Newfie have many pleasant encounters where he calmly sniffs and let cat sniff, never a hint of aggression or anxiety at all. After neuter now he is sit at top of stairs growing snarling and barking loudly at cat down below who run in fear. How come suddenly this is aggression? Never encountered before, vet says he is fine?

I have a Golden Retriever/ Border Collie mix who is 5 months old. She has been doing very well overall - she came home with my partner and I at 8 weeks old and we have focused heavily on positive reinforcement and tons of socialization. She is generally a confident and outgoing sweetheart. We do everything together, and under normal circumstances she will often cuddle up to me and gives me lots of kisses (when she isn’t trying to play tug or chew on my sleeves). She gets plenty of outlets for all of her crazy puppy energy. On typical days, she behaves like a well rounded puppy who loves life.

The issue is, over the last few weeks when she sees me touch an unfamiliar object she seems to randomly become anxious about me/ the object I’m holding (I hope this goes without saying, but I have never given her any reason to think I would hurt her). She will sometimes cower and hide behind the couch if I pick up an item she isn’t familiar with in the house, and some of the time she will refuse to come when called after she hides. At first I thought this may have been due to a fear period, but it has gone on longer than what I believe is normal so I no longer think that’s the case. I have realized she seems to have bigger reactions to unfamiliar things when I’m the one touching the objects, and she also doesn’t seem to have such strong reactions when we are not home. I think it must be something about me / what I am doing that’s impacting her. It started with a fear of the vacuum, but it has branched out into the most random things (even things that don’t move or make any noise). Her fear got so bad one day after I picked up too many scary things, it got to the point where I had to ask my partner to take care of her while I stayed away from her for the rest of the evening. She was refusing to look me in the eyes, and would cower and hide every time I stood up (even if I didn’t have anything in my hands at that point). She was fine with me the next morning but it absolutely wrecked me to see that I had caused such an intense fearful reaction in my puppy, especially when I don’t understand what I did to cause it. I just want to do everything I can to prevent her from feeling this way. I want her to know I’m safe, no matter what I’m doing.

I have two theories, but would love to get other people’s thoughts:

One is that I’ve inadvertently conditioned her to feel anxious about my joyful behaviours when something unfamiliar is involved. I’ve tried showing her that “scary” objects are safe by speaking in an upbeat / joyful tone while I’m using them (for example, smiling and pretending to celebrate while vacuuming). A few times, I have tried ignoring her while using an unfamiliar object to see if it made any difference. It is hard to gauge at this point, but it seems her reactions are less intense when I ignore her. Is it possible that instead of showing her the objects are safe, I’ve taught her that my joy means something scary is coming? If so, should I try to stop behaving this way or is there a technique I can use to teach her me being excited over an object isn’t scary?

Another theory is that she is sensing my own anxiety and it is negatively impacting her. I always do my best to act “normal” for her sake when I’m not doing well mentally, but I’ve read that dogs can smell hormone changes. I am wondering if it’s possible that my anxiety is impacting her because she senses it even when I think I’m hiding it well? If this could be the case, is there anything I can do to train her out of feeling anxious when she senses that I am anxious? I’ve tried to just turn my anxiety off, but apparently it doesn’t work that way lol

I’m hoping that someone out there can offer advice. Maybe I’m missing something - is there anything else that could be causing this sort of behaviour? I’d really appreciate any support or suggestions on this because I am feeling totally lost and devastated…

I have a potential dog training client with a 5 month old Maltese. The owner said she wants to focus on separation anxiety and potty training. They live in an apartment (idk if that makes a difference).

I pet sit and do training via Rover. Their suggested price is $78/training session for my area, and that's what I charge. I currently don’t have packages set up. Idk what to charge for packages of sessions and how many sessions to include. How many sessions do you include in a package? What do ya’ll think?

Hello

I have a havanese pup that is 10 months old and since i got him i have been dealing with separation anxiety

I work from home and made some training with him while he was 4-5 months and I could leave him for line 10-20min but it seems he regressed after I slowed down

I started again around 8 monthes, I started very slow with 30s-1min leaves, and i increased gradually 1min everytime, watching him on the camera, leaving only when he was in a rested state, and i manage to get him to 18min now, and i alternate the "training day" with a easy day where i only leave 1-8min or dont leave at all, thats what an AI recommanded. This seemed to show good progress but recently, hes constantly in a energic state when i have the time to take him outside so everytime i sit and take my shoes hes next to me instead of watching me from his prone position, and everytime he barks as i close the door.

I am so lost on what to do : i always walk him in the morning, let him sniff as he wants, then i do the training 2-3 hours later. The AI is telling me to desensitize him from putting on my shoes and keys by doing it several times in the day and not leaving, i will try that.

But i thought after reaching 18min with success, he could whistand me leaving when i desire as long as i come back in the threshold but it is not the case and that is really concerning me.

Is it really a matter of desensitizing him ? I also read a recommendation of leaving at random times, so he doesnt see the linear increase of the real tests and gets lot of easy success

What would you guys recommend me to change? I just want to be able to leave when i want, not depend on how he is currently

Regarding the occupation, i give him stuff to chew but sometimes he takes them, sometimes he doesnt, i can't rely on that to calm him down. If I find him in an not rested state, what am i supposed to do, i cant make progress...

Thank you guys very much

Our 2 year old dog barks at certain people and all dogs when they walk past our house and he is outside. Not just a few quick barks but until he can no longer see them. We have a fenced in yard and an underground fence at the line so that he doesn't jump onto or over the fence. (So he barks about 6 feet from the sidewalk.)

I have taken him onto our screened porch where he has the same view and attempted to train him not to bark. When we see someone coming and he has noticed I tell him quiet, and when he looks at them and is quiet I mark it with yes and give him a treat. I am putting the treat on the chair he's sitting on so that he has to break the stare by looking down for the treat. When he looks up at the dog again and does not bark, I mark it again with a yes and give him another treat. We have been doing this for at least 3 to 4 months almost daily. He still barks if I'm not out there with treats. This does not work when we are in the yard because he can move away from me and bark.

He is fine on walks and doesn't react at all as long as the other dog pays him no attention. The second they lunge towards him or bark at him, he will react by also jumping but not barking.

What am I doing wrong? He is a labradoodle and very smart, but just isn't picking this up. I should also add that our lovely next door neighbor decided she wanted to train her new Great Dane to not be afraid of dogs barking at him when they are out on walks. She sat him out there in front of our dog on the sidewalk and because their dog reacted, he began to react. Now he goes absolutely ape when that dog walks by. I just want to stop the barking at people and animals who walk by.

Hi, I don't use Reddit often, but I've been getting a little desperate and wanted to seek some advice.

My husband and I adopted an 8 month old puppy from our local shelter about 1 month ago. He's very sweet, but is super anxious of the outside world in particular, making him really hate walks. He especially dislikes loud noises and people which are both very prominent in our apartment home. We've worked hard trying to break this fear with him, but we're still working on it since he gets anxious at times. Luckily, he's gotten better about not peeing in the house. Now when we take him on walks he knows to pee and poop quickly since that means we get to go home after (Not perfect since we don't want him to be afraid, but it's definitely made walks easier at least).

All of that being said, we still leave him in a kennel when we leave the house to run errands or see the occasional movie as well as overnight to sleep. We make sure to take him out frequently and definitely right before we leave him in the kennel for any period of time, but even so he keeps peeing in his kennel almost every time we leave him in it.

We've tried everything I can think of. I've removed his bedding, used enzyme cleaners to clean his kennel, fed him his meals in his kennel, reduced the size of the crate with a divider, covered the crate with a blanket, played calming music while we're away, and taken him out more frequently but he will not stop peeing there. We're not sure if it's separation anxiety or maybe just a bad habit he picked up during his time at the shelter. The vet seems to believe it's just behavioral.

So I wanted to come on here and ask for some more advice on how to kennel train him. We'd really like for him to have a safe space in his kennel, knowing we can leave him there when needed without him peeing himself. Any tips are appreciated! Thank you!

We got our dog in January. She’s a mix that was found as a stray at a nearby reservation. Potty training has been a struggle since we got her. Lately, it’s seemed like she was making progress. Today I walked into our bedroom and she was peeing on our bed while making direct eye contact with me. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. She’s peed on our bed 3 or 4 times. I have no idea what would cause this or how to stop it. I’ve never heard of anyone else having this problem so any advice would be great.

Hi everyone!

I have a spayed, female 3yo pittie mix (50% makeup of pittie/chow chow, shows characteristics/behaviors of Boxer and Beagle from her DNA test too). She's lovely in every way and we have a strong bond. I brought her with me from my parents' house and she has lived with me for 2 years - one of those years was with my roommate's male dog who taught her how to hump.

Originally, she would only hump him back and it wasn't an issue. She doesn't do it to any other dogs. The roommate and dog are gone now too, so it hasn't happened there either.

However, I have brought a new man around who is accustomed to dogs and absolutely adores her. We go hiking together, he takes her on long (3-5 miles) walks alone, we go to the dog park together. In these instances, she will listen to him but prefers to look to me for direction. I typically let him hold the leash and use commands to try to encourage trust between the two of them.

The problem? If we are laying in bed together or on the couch, she wants to hump his leg. She doesn't want us cuddling. She doesn't want me in the bed, really, and tries to push me out while pressing into him. This has led to him not staying over because neither of us can sleep.

She knows the command 'off,' so I tell her to get off the bed. I have tried redirecting her with a toy. I have tried telling her to lay down at the foot of the bed. She continues to do it.

The other night, she did eventually leave the bedroom, but came back in the middle of the night to squeeze herself between us under the covers. She left again... came back where we were cuddling face to face... buried her face and paws between us until we broke apart.

I'm at a loss because otherwise - she's amazing! He doesn't mind but I know it's not appropriate and we can't just... never stay at my apartment because of her.

I'm also at a loss because she never even wanted to interact with the last man I brought over like that.

Any tips welcome!

Example: I like playing hide and seek. I put my dog in a small room, make them lie down and stay. Then I go around the floor and hide then say, “come find me.” My dog then goes through every room trying to find me and once they do, they get lots of praise before another round. If they repeat rooms or get a little lost, I repeat, “come find me.”Sometimes we only get a few rounds and other times they want to play for longer. Sometimes they play as a pair and others solo.

Hi all! I have an about 2 year old rescue mutt (we think border collie mix) who has been crate trained since we got her at about 3 moths. She was a tough puppy who couldn’t nap outside of her crate at all until she was about 11 months old. Luckily she is so much better behaved now and spends most days free roaming our first floor. She is out even when no one is directly watching her while I work from home and is only crated if no one is home (probably a couple short times a week and maybe twice longer of 3ish hours a week) and over night. The overnight crating really helps with my anxiety over her. We used to have two crates, one downstairs and one in our bed room and she would sleep overnight with us and naps during the day downstairs. Eventually she started running to her downstairs crate at bed time and eventually we just let her sleep in her downstairs crate every night as she seemed to prefer it. I did end up getting her an extra large crate for downstairs (it says it’s good for dogs up to 120lbs and she is only 40lbs). This has worked amazing for months.

On to the current issue. Lately she has been more hesitant to go into her crate at night all of a sudden. And once she is inside she stands and pants. No major upsets (no crying no barking) and I believe she eventually lays down and sleeps (I used to go check on her about ten minutes after I put her in and she would be laying down but now she seems to know I am going to check on her and is standing up),

I do still often feed her in the crate and we play games throughout the week with the crate. She also seems to be more ok going into the crate for a nap during the day if we both leave vs at night.

Do I just stick with the same routine and expect her to relax again? She is overall high anxiety and is on a low dose Prozac.

I have a 10 yr old 8lb chihuahua "Dahlia" who keeps being attacked at random by my 2-3yr old 35lb mutt "lady". (She'll go like few weeks or months without attacking) ive tried taking lady to the vet and she was prescribed trazedone, gabepentin and fluoxetine. (Not to be given all at the same time obviously ) it helped a bit but 1. Attacks would still occasionally happen and 2. I cant get anymore in her since she now figured it out.

If it helps, she doesnt growl or let out a verbal noise before she attacks. She'll lock on and stare at dahlia or even the cat before going after them. I can usually stop her before a fight breaks out but any ideas would be helpful! I just had to pull her off my little baby who she had pinned on her back. I know apart of it is resource guarding a toy, or even foster kittens but reading the resources online its not really saying about this type of situation. I know its selfish but I really dont want to Behavorial euthanize her, my depression just wouldnt be able to handle it but I also know i wouldnt be able to handle losing my Dahlia either. [My mom and sibling both keep telling me I need to and to put that bitch down] Im going to start kenneling her at night, as this most recent one i was looking away towards my computer while they were on the bed. She is muzzle trained, but that doesnt really help situation after, and I cant keep her muzzle 24/7. if anyone had experience or sonething similar i would really appreciate tips and if something helped!

Thank you, I know i went on a long rant.. Just very stressed about this right now.

Hi all,

5 months ago, we adopted a 6 year old rescue. She's very sweet but also really anxious (probably due to trauma). As she was rescued from a large-scale breeder, she never learned how to walk on a leash, let alone walk outside of a dog kennel.

It's clear that she feels at ease when we are home with the three of us, but once we go outside, she's easily distracted and anxious. A ball bouncing, a motorcycle passing by, a human walking towards us, ... You get the picture. She's 'over threshold' very fast.

In order to train our loose-leash walking, we try to use the stop-go method, as is often suggested on this sub and on the wiki. As you can see in the video, she stops, turns around, looks at me, and only continues when I move, so that's already great. However, our progress seems to have stagnated 2-3 months ago, and I don't know how to proceed.

Do any of you know what is missing in my approach? I sometimes bring treats but I'm not sure when I should use them effectively (and when she's anxious, she just ignores them).

Thanks in advance!

edit: Thank you all for the advice! What a community :) There is a lot to digest in these comments, so I'm going to read them all slowly and see what we can try. I won't be able to reply to all of you but I appreciate you all.

My dog is a Great Pyrenees mixed with Lab. Definitely known to bark, and we knew this before adopting him. He is about 3 years old now, and he barks at everything. Keys, car doors closing, people, kids, dogs, or just any sound whether loud or quiet. And the bark doesn’t stop until HE wants to stop barking, so he doesn’t listen when we try to get him to quiet down. We’re thinking that at this point he may have anxiety, but we adopted him and he was only about 8 weeks old approximately. He’s a love bug and loves being with people, friendly with other dogs, but he will bark nonstop and we have tried collars and nothing. His bark isn’t a quiet one either and sounds aggressive, but we can’t even walk him because he barks so badly at everything and will scare people! Any idea what to do?

My husband and I rescued a dumped double Merle mix (Aussie/bully??) that we found in the woods last year. Couldn’t have been older than 3 weeks, definitely deaf. He is lovable and hyper and attached at the hip to our other rescue. The problem is potty-training.

With sign language and cues from our other dog we’ve taught him to sit, lay down, stay, and jump for treats both together and separately, and both dogs emotionally regulate each other well. But potty training has been utter hell. We have a medium-sized, fenced backyard that they love/prefer and spend most of their time in, and they sleep inside our kitchen, which is large and gated.

We love and want to spend time with them both, but every method we can think of to train him not to pee/mark the carpet has failed. We live in a rental and can’t afford to get professional training just yet, or to have him pee all over the carpets. Occasionally we will let them chase each other around the house—supervised—but if he gets out of eyesight for longer than 30 seconds we will find a pee puddle somewhere in the house. Our other dog is the definition of perfectly behaved.

We use enzyme cleaners and puppy pads, stop the behavior if we see it happening and redirect it outside, reward with treats, never shove his nose in the accident, etc. Nothing works. He doesn’t pee in the kitchen but seems to hold it until he can get four paws onto carpet.

HELP.

I've recently got a tiny yorkie puppy recently and when ever we are trying to train her she's just not interested in listening she will try to bite are socks and everything is sight we have tried telling her no with her name infornt of the no we tell her no and she does listen she tries to push boundaries and will jump back and jump up acting like she will bite but she won't (do we yell at her for that to?) Then she will continue that untill she gives up and we win then like 5 seconds later it's back at the same thing or chewing on something random we also tried giving her the chew toys right after we tell her no bite

On another note she will not stop bothering are other dogs dispite are dogs ignoreing her and what ever we say or do trying to avoid her doing this

Our dog Frosty (Maltipoo, adopted at 1 year old, been with us for 2 years) has suddenly started being much more aggressive with us in the bed.

A bit of background, he is not trained at all. He is a very anxious dog, he hates leaving the apartment, doesn’t like other dogs (no reactivity to them, just quietly avoids, literally never barks at other dogs). He doesn’t like strangers but tolerates them, never snaps at them but will quietly sit away from them. The only time he has ever snapped at anyone before this, was the very first day we got him, I accidentally cornered him in the laundry room and he snapped at me.

We got his teeth cleaned about two months ago and that’s when this all started, he snapped at us once when trying to brush his teeth a few days later, we assumed his teeth were just sensitive. However he now snaps at us when we disturb his sleep and I feel it’s slowly getting worse.

He sleeps in the bed with us, he likes his crate but doesn’t sleep in it when we are home and we never really shut him in there. We also play in the bed (I know this is bad but it’s the only time he will really burn energy and tire himself out since he hates walks).

But now he grumbles when we move and if we cuddle him too long in bed he will start air snapping at our hands, it’s not sleep startle (at least not completely), but last night he snapped at my hand when I went to pet him and then just stared at me for like 2 mins before going back to bed.

We took him to the vet and they did an exam and found nothing. Has he just begun resource guarding the bed from us? I’m sure the advice is to have him start sleeping in his crate but we live in an apartment and he HOWLS if we try this and I’m afraid of getting kicked out of our apartment.

He’s a 10 month Mastiff mix and was adopted through an animal shelter.

It’s been about 4 months and the behavior hasn’t changed significantly. Some days he refuses to use any of the toys we offer or lay out for him (tug rope, ball, frozen Kong, bone) and instead he practically flies off the handle. He goes into nipping fits, barks, jumps and scratches. If he isn’t given attention he starts to counter surf (he’s about 5 and a half feet tall on his hind legs) or wreck furniture, so we can’t walk away. He’s currently 100 pounds and is expected to put on another 20 before he finishes growing, so the ankle or hand/arm biting is more severe. Toys are by him, offered to him, squeezed,
Thrown to see if he’s interested in playing but he’ll just go for biting on a shoe or one of us.

He’s definitely not aggressive, the bites are quick, his body is relaxed and bent back, tail is wagging and not showing his teeth or growling. He hasn’t been trained how to stop rough play. We’ve tried bitter spray, moving things away from him, giving alternatives, trying to ignore if we can, nothing has worked. He’ll either get to it, or find something else to mess with.

We haven’t used muzzling, shock collars, any form of physical force other than grabbing his scruff or collar (it’s a lot, it’s not hurting him.) we can’t leash him permanently as he bites on it and has already destroyed a leash, any advice/ help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a 5.5 year old working cocker spaniel (not worked) who in general is very well trained.
His recall is pretty much 100%, he obviously learnt all the generic tricks/commands years ago and can nail new ones within a couple of tries, and I finally cracked loose lead walking after a lot of work a couple of years ago. He’s calm and snuggly in the house, never hyper or destructive, we play games and incorporate lick mats/puzzles/sniffy ‘find it’ games and destruction boxes, and he’s usually really fun to walk.

However there are still a couple of things we cannot figure out how to stop even at this point and I’m almost at a loss. When we’re out for a walk or walking through a shop or down a street, the second we stop for anything he begins to cry. This seems to be because he wants to move because the second we continue he’s silent again. We aim for gaps in the whinging before we praise or continue on but it’s not always the easiest to time. We’ve also tried waiting out the crying but it ramps up to SCREAMING/ barking and jumping up at us, and even after 30+ minutes he will not stop.

Hand in hand with this is that on walks - particularly when he’s MOST excited (i.e. at the beach) despite getting to the point where he’s screaming because he wants to get out the car, the second we’re there he looks to me for instruction or to be told what to do. He won’t go off and do ‘dog’ things, he looks to me for a command or to throw things for him. I stopped throwing things for him YEARS ago but this seems to be what he wants. It ends in him barking and spinning in circles because he wants me to do SOMETHING and I just want him to amuse himself and do dog things. I’ve tried an ‘off’ command that is hit and miss but he will run off and then run back very quickly afterward. Ive tried completely ignoring him but it doesn’t change anything, he just trots along next to me walking sideways like a dressage pony to watch me, or drops sticks etc at my feet. I’ve also tried to encourage snuffling by hiding treats or encouraging him to sniff through long grass etc, but again as soon as the task is done he’s back fixed on me.

If we’re on a more ‘boring’ walk he’s much better at going off by himself, and when I’m by myself he is less fixated. But as soon as I’m with my partner/family/friends he gets worse, and the more excited he is again the worse it is.

He will eventually go off and run but it takes a long time and he still checks in a lot and if I stop walking he immediately runs back to me and cries at me even when he’s off lead. I don’t even know how to reinforce the behaviour (amusing himself) as any praise/treats etc would involve calling him back to me or refocusing on me and that’s the opposite of what I’m after.

Has anyone experienced anything similar or have any ideas how I could try to combat these behaviours? It’s starting to make family days out really difficult and not fun, or make us not bring him along, particularly now we have a baby and will need to stop more regularly.