on the whinning.
you must first address why is (I'll call all dogs he) he is whinning.
Is it excitement?
Is it nervousness? (nervous excitement?)
Is it confusion? (im supposed to do something hear, what do you want me to do boss?)
Mine had 2 diffrent whines. one was for excitement, the other was for confusion. (usually they were associated together, ill get to why in a min)
We put our 2 labs though touch training (we are certified to go into hospitals, nursing homes, schools etc). the training for that was 4 months of weekly 2 hr long sessions. Durring part of the session we were usually sitting in a chair with our dog next to us. the dog was expected to sit/lay next to us for however long we sat there and "be calm" (this was usually while the instructor was explaining a lession and then we individually did it... waiting for the others to do it)
Zeus LOVED the training, he was always excited to go to class. So shortly after we stat down he would whine. In trying to correct it, he would get confused as he didnt know what he was supposed todo. (dude im already sitting next to you not moving what else do you want me to do!)
ITs hard to explain the timming of a correction and verbal command when the whine would occur. some times only a verbal was given, other times just a leash correction was given. (see the dog wisper's vids on youtube for a lesson on leash correction)
Between the 2 you can set up a varring degree of "correction-ness". something like
-light tug
-verbal
-tug
-tug-verbal
-strong tug-strong verbal
after the first couple of commands you need to evaulate what the reaction of the dog is. for instance, when teaching to sit, dispite how hard you snatch the leash or speak at it, if the dog just doesnt understand you its generally not going to do anything but freeze. so after a verbal and a reg-tug. move to put your hand on his rear and give the command again while pushing down.
Whinning is difficult because unlike the above example, there is no easy "to show" correct behavor. barking is easyer as you can hold the snout. An issue i had was at first i was correcting for it like i would barking some sort of touch on the snout. whether i held it, "love tap", finger placement etc. Ultimately this ment i was touching the dog a lot, and sense he wasnt barking he didnt understand. (again see whine for confusion)
Ultimatly we worked on creating a "no" command JUST for whinning.
quick side note on "no" you should really work specific behavors with specific comands, SOOOO many people use "no" for almost any behavor they dont like.
-jump up on someone "no"
-barking "no"
-on the couch "no"
-chewing on the slipper "no"
you can imagine the list. the problem hear is the dog doesnt know what to do. no dont jump up? no stop barking? no get off the couch?
in our world it goes like this
-jump up -down
-barking -quite
-on furniture/lap -off
-chewing on something not good -leaveit
(and back to whinning) -hush
as i had introduced a new command JUST for whinning i could now start reinforcing it. correct when bad, reward when good. so if the dog stops whinning give a treat. when introducing a new command virtually all dogs will respond faster to a food reinforcement. (worried about calorie intake on your overweight dog or the price of a billion treats) pop some microwave popcorn. a single kernal =treat, week old stale popcorn still is like a gift from god to a dog. (at least to mine)
most of us in the touch class were working off a treat reinforcement going into the class. but the issue with that is they generally dont want you feeding the dog while on visits (general rule of thumb the dog should never eat anything, either from you or a guest, when on a visit) so we would work on moveing to another kind of reinforcement. verbal, touch, etc.
for retrievers (training to retrieve) this reinforcement is usually a toy they get to play with (perhaps you've seen on tv the drug sniffing dogs when doing "training" when ever they get a find they get to carry there favorite toy for a bit.
wow marathon post... hope that helped some
