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E-mail received at dog fun on 12/03/01.

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Hello, I have just seen your site and I think it is great and I would recomend it to doberman owners any where. The problem with my Doberman it that she doesn´t always take every command. So far I have taught her to sit,lie down and give me her paw. I would like to teach her to tackle people and jump but those are the non- basic instructions that I can't get her to do. When she goes to tackle (known as take down) she runs at them and barks at them. When you try to teach her to jump over just a peice of paper on the ground she either treads on it or walks round it or shreads it. Can you give some advice to help the dog understand. Oh and through out the instructions that I have been giving her I have demonstrated.

Hope you can help from luke

Jade's reply.

Dear Luke,
Thank you for your e-mail. With regard to teaching your Doberman to tackle people, the one thing that I would say is don't do it on your own. If you are not 100% sure about how to train your dog in this way, you should not attempt it alone! That is the best advice that I can give you. Take your Doberman to a local training class, they will be able to assess your dogs temperament and ability also what you want from your dog. For example do you want a full working dog or just a family guard (you will already have the guard given time), these are two totally different propositions, they will then hopefully point you in the right direction.

You should only take advice on this face to face as the implications of getting this sort of training wrong are far to serious. As you have probably read on my site, when teaching a dog to sit lots of people start by saying "sit down" as you know this is actually Two commands and as a result dogs often get confused and don't know whether to sit or to lie down. What if a dog became confused about who was a threat and who was not? My point is that even well meaning advice could be very dangerous for both you and your dog, your progress will need to be monitored every step of the way.

Here is a link that you might find interesting. http://www.totalmultimedia.com/schutzhund/ I am sorry that I can't be any more help than this.

All the best, Jade the Doberman

As with the rest of Dog Fun we are only offering advice, we have learned a lot through our own experience and would like to further that knowledge with your help. If you have any good tips or advice that would help dog owners drop us a line to jade@dogfun.co.uk and we will display your advice and give you credit for your help!