
Looking for advice on some training regression
Our buddy is 4 years old and pretty healthy, but he’s suddenly started regressing on things he’s been solidly trained on since age 1 and before.
- the pulling. This was the hardest to train out of him for regular walks and took till about age 1. He is a big and kinda clumsy guy (135 lbs) and I think that contributes. Although as a puppy we had to deal with him yanking us into the street and that we trained out of him probably by around 9 months.
Back in the spring I had noticed he had started pulling on leash again. I do the morning walk (or dog park) and my husband does a late evening one. I have always been more of the disciplinarian on walks. There’s people and dogs around when I’m out with him and not so much for my husband. Plus husband was hit by a car as a kid and is easier to knock over as a result so I think he goes the path of least resistance.
Anyway, lately I’ve been dealing with some injuries in my legs and while I can walk I can’t walk as far. So our usually long disciplined walk though the neighborhood to the park where I lay off the discipline a little and we just wander while he sniffs, has been downgraded to me driving him to the park where we wander and sniff. Or I’ll practice a disciplined walk with him around the park a little bit it’s not the same. So he’s losing a lot of practice.
And then I took him with me to Petsmart and on the way out he yanked me so hard and suddenly towards the street -he had seen a little girl in the parking lot who said “hi” to him in the store- that I had to stomp down hard to brace and majorly aggravated one of my injuries, just to keep us out of the street. It was completely unexpected and I’m still shocked he did it.
- the poop: Since about 6 months he’s been peeing and pooping on the same gravel area in our yard. Just in the last month he’s decided he wants to do it all over the yard and the grass. Now I don’t need a perfect lawn, but it’s made clean up really hard and I’d like to be able to walk on my back yard without having to search for land mines first.
Any advice? Anyone go through this kind of regression before? We had a great trainer when he was a puppy but the trainer is now living on the other side of the country.
Dog tax included