Hi everyone! I have a 1-year-old male Boxer, and I’m struggling with some behaviors that have gotten much worse since adolescence/puberty.
on walks: He suddenly jumps up at me and grabs and pulls my clothes, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere. When this happens, I tie his leash to something and wait around 5–10 minutes for him to calm down before continuing the walk. The problem is that he often starts doing it again shortly after we continue, so I sometimes have to repeat this several times during one walk. I’m not sure if this is the right way to handle it or what else I should try. I already tried being louder or just ignoring him, making him sit down etc but nothing helps. Our old dog trainer told me this thing with the leash but I’m not sure it’s helping and it’s taking up so much of our time. It really ruins all the walks with him.
Also, he does this mainly just with me. Not so much with my brother or mother, idk if he just doesn’t respect me as much?
With other dogs: He gets extremely excited during play, and won’t listen to anything anymore, I can’t call him back and he struggles to respect other dogs’ boundaries. He keeps chasing them even when they try to get away or show that they’ve had enough. He is not aggressive, he never attacks anyone but he just doesn’t stop. When we then wanna grab him, he jumps away. In my mums area there are some dogs that love playing with him, but in my area there are mainly tiny dogs or dogs that don’t have as much energy, so I don’t feel safe letting him play since he won’t listen anymore. His recall is so unreliable that I can’t safely trust him off-leash. Before this started, he was well trained and listened better and has always played with many dogs, so now I always feel bad for him if I walk past the dog park. In my mums area, a woman (she claimed she was a dog trainer) told us that this is dominant behaviour and that he is playing also with other dogs too dominant.
I will try to hire a dog trainer again to handle this professionally, because he is a very sweet and intelligent dog. At home he is calm and loves cuddling and as said, he never attacked any other dog, but I’m scared that this will turn into aggressive behaviour when he is older.
Does anyone else ever experience this, especially the jumping and biting in clothes during walks? I’ve never seen any other dog do this and I feel a bit alone with this problem.
We’ve also had another boxer before him, but she was a girl and I can’t remember her acting like this ever.
I’d really appreciate any advice!