A training question for dog owners

[Steve]

Thanks to all for the replies.

First to clarify; I was refering to the remote controlled shock collars in my original post, used to re-inforce a command. Personally, I am not really that fond of them, but a couple of people that I know were suggesting them. I personally prefer to reward positive behavior while training. Granted, it takes more work, but I think it has better results in the end.

One of the reasons we brought Riley into our family was for the security he could provide for my family when I might not be there. As was mentioned above, what I do not want to happen is for him to be confused when to protect and when not to protect. He is actually pretty astute when it comes to people. Most people he is fine with, but there are a few people that he will purposfully step in between my wife or daughter when we are walking him. There are also a couple of people that walk through our nieghborhood in the evenings/night and he definately lets them know he is watching them.

He responds well to voice commands, but of course these need to be continually worked on. The one he most needs work on seems to be "leave it" when it comes to dogs that walk by the fence. Looking back, we probably did not do a very good job of socializing him at an early age. That is our mistake not his, and I have a hard time penalizing him for our mistake. Now I need to work on socializing him without having him tear up other dogs. I don't know that he would, but it sure sounds like it.

Also, thanks for reminding me about the clicker. I thought about that this morning and dug it out.

Again, thanks for the imput!

BTW Larry, I will try to get in touch with Liegh later this week or this weekend. Thanks.