How to correct gunshyness? - Page 1

Hello friends, I have a 2 year old female gsd who was always in the top of her class. She was almost the Siegerin in her class during her last Landesgruppen show but due to her unexpected gunshyness, she was disqualified. Can anyone help me correct her gunshyness? How do we go about it? Thank you in advance.

First you want the dog very hungry, skip a couple of meals if she doesn't have a high food drive. you will take her out to the training field, have the person with the gun stad about 100 feet away, when the gun goes off feed her treats from your hand..I use hot dogs. Only have the gun go off 3 or 4 times don't over do it..this could cause more stress and you have just set your dog back. Make sure that you paise and have fun with her...good girl, good girl. Do this until she shows no interest in the gun and only watches you and wants to play. Have the gun guy move up about 10 feet..start over...lots of praise/food good girl! good girl!! continue to move the gun closer and closer until he is about 10 feet away from the dog and she is still focused on the handler looking for the food. NOTE...it is also good to have different people hold the dog...don't always use the same person for the food and praise part..reason is if you are not going to handle her she needs to be relaxed with anybody handleing her, not just you. this is a big thing, because she will feel safe with you and the gun noise but might not if she is with someone else. NOTE,NOTE: Don't move to fast, go with the pase of the dog. you will cause more problems if you try and do all of this in a week..I have had some dogs take longer and some are good with a couple a days of this..so let her set the pase...if it takes 3 months then it takes 3 months but you will have a dog that willnot care about the gun. Good luck. Happy training. Heather

Heather's advice is excellent. If she is comfortable doing prey-oriented bitework, exchange a tug or sleeve bite later in the training... give her something she loves so she forgets the gun and realizes it won't get in the way of her fun ;)

Hello Heather & JochenVGW, Thank you very much for your advice. I am truly grateful to you. I just hope the training tips would turn out effective. Thanks again.

You cannot "correct" gunshyness. It is a temperament fault. The advice you have been given is to attempt to cover up this temperament problem. You can put a band aid on it, but the problem remains. The gunfire is required for a reason.

I have to agree with kulladogs. I have seen many people try to fix this problem with little to no success. It always seems to come back. It is definately a temperment issue.

Hello kulladogs & s vargas, Thank you for your personal opinion but there's no harm in trying. I believe my bitch just developed her gunshyness and I think it can be corrected eventually. She was not gunshy when she arrived from Germany. Thanks again.

1. How to Correct gunshyness?? Breed dogs with better character 2. How to hide the gunshyness of a dog The advice given might work, etc.

Wok, Het's practical advice should solve your problem. In general, I've always had a real problem with such conditioning: it obviously defeats the whole purpose of this test - i.e. weed out the overly sharp/soft. Start training every young pup so and you could obtain a pass for any animal - no matter how mentally unstable! I believe some obedience schools have it as a normal part of their curriculum: same problem - and hardly makes for a level playing field!

I only had to do this with a dog that I had gotten as an older dog and she had lived in the kennel outside for years.... this is conditioning...who knows why this dog has a fear issue to the loud noise, it could have been taught...maybe when she was being trained and he gun would go off and she looked at it she would get hit with the whip or punished so now it is a big issue for her. I have seen this kind of training and don't agree with it either. The only real way you would know if this is a bad temperment problem is to test the pups at 6 weeks of age and note which ones have the fear response and which ones don't. I do do this....and when I have a pup that does have a fear responce...we condition the pup to loud noises with the method above. I would only think is a serious problem if the dog still had a severe reaction after the conditioning...that is if it was done right. I have only had a couple do this, as I do agree that good breeding is huge. And if you have a litter of fear issue dogs, then you need to re-think your breeding practices. Heather