Aggressive / Reactive German Shepherd Puppy Sonny

Ben reached out to me for help with his young German Shepherd puppy Sonny. He sent me a video and I thought he and Sonny would benefit from some clearer communication / training. This lesson is part 1, there are a few more sessions coming up, so bear that in mind when you watch this.

In this session I get a good understanding about Sonny, but other behaviors start to show up in the next sessions that help me get to the bottom of this issue. I’ve gotta say that Ben is really good at handling Sonny and learns really quickly. I was impressed with his dedication to solving this problem for Sonny. He is aware that he got a lot more dog than he should have. But he’s committed and that shows with the training. You’ll see in future videos (which I’ll get up as soon as I can) there’s a lot to follow and understand.

In this session I focus on getting Sonny to understand that he must listen. I don’t like to bribe dogs that are showing this kind of behavior because it cna make them worse. Give them an option between reward and consequence, make it clear and most every animal will choose reward.

This is the entire session, and although it is one of my longest lessons here, it’s worth it to watch the dynamic changes throughout the training and that should clarify the need to be consistent until the dog understands.

I’ve gotten so much good feedback from members and subscribers on YouTube about these lessons and that make me happy. I much prefer to train dogs like Siggy and Goofy and Duane, but all dogs deserve a chance and because it’s not popular to show this side of solving behavioral problems, you don’t really ever get to see it. I want to be clear, this is not necessary for every dog, but for every dog that needs it, there’s no other option.

Keywords for this lesson: puppy training, aggression, reactive dog, corrections, long line, dog attack, dominant dog, leash reactive, dog aggression