# Growling!!



## Cleo2013 (Jul 31, 2013)

Guys please help me regarding on my pup ,she always growla t me when im trying to dry her with a bath cloth.? Kindly help me with this thanks


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## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

Growling means "I don't like that!' or "That frightens me!" - assuming that it is not a play growl accompanied by wagging tails and laughing mouth. Is it the sensation of the bath, the rough towelling, or being restrained that bothers her, do you think?

I'd spend some time teaching her that towels are pleasant things, working on it while she is dry ready for the next bath. Have a handful of treats, give her one, touch her with the towel, another treat - repeat a few times, then put the towel and the treats away. Repeat several times a day, gradually working up to a gentle stroke with the towel, and when she is very happy with that, wrapping the towel around her. If you are gentle, use plenty of treats, and work at her pace without forcing her to accept more than she is ready for, you should find she comes to enjoy being dried. Round here we have Nice-Warm-Towels on the radiator by the door in winter, and the dogs vie to be first to be wrapped up warm and snuggled dry!


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

If my dog growled at me, I would instantly do whatever obedience they already knew, and treat for that, even if all they know is a simple sit, I would repeat that 10 times, thereby re-establishing that I am the leader, and it is their role to do what I say. Then back to the toweling and treat only if they did not growl.


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## cookieface (Jul 5, 2011)

This is a nice video that explains how to countercondition a dog for handling. The dog in the video is likely much worse than yours, but - good news - you're not working against such ingrained reactions.






As FJM said, it's likely that your pup is uncomfortable with some aspect of being bathed and dried: she's cold, wet, doesn't like being covered up, or something. She needs to learn to associate pleasant things with bath time.


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## ac04 (Aug 7, 2013)

Somewhat related, bizzare enough, my 3m old tpoo growled at my neighbors house today. Didn't see a rabbit or anything. It was like he was hating on their house lol. Distracted him and we happily moved on

Sent from Petguide.com Free App


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## Carrie-e (Oct 23, 2012)

My little mini pup Tia used to growl at the brush and try and bite it when I was grooming her. Now each day I sit down with her,stroke her and talk really gently to her and then start brushing her slowly,all the while kissing her little neck and saying "what a good girl,you are a clever girl! ". She seems to really like this and has stopped growling completely. She still tries to nibble the brush a bit but accepts the grooming a lot better. She will probably never like it particularly but she will have to tolerate I. I brush her every day without fail so it's part of her daily routine. Think they often growl if they are a bit scared,like fjm says they are saying I don't like it! Trouble is being poodles they have to get used to being brushed and bathed so slow and gentle is the way I think!


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## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

First, thank your dog for growling at you. 

But seriously, your dog made sure to warn you that she's uncomfortable rather than going straight to a bite. That's GOOD. So you want to heed her warning and change how she feels about being toweled off. 

Asking for obedience is okay but irrelevant to the towel issue. It doesn't address how she feels about it. Obviously, she has qualms about it. You're obviously the leader here, you have the opposable thumbs, car and money. You control all the resources in her life. But that doesn't change how her discomfort with being toweled off. She's entitled to have emotions regarding things, don't you agree? Dogs are sentient creatures after all.

As suggested, pair the toweling with something that she really likes. Probably food. Small bits of meat or whatever else she finds yummy and calm praise.

You want to re-introduce her to the toweling off in tiny steps so that she can keep up with you and not get overwhelmed. It can help to write down a list, breaking the process down into as many tiny steps as you possibly can. Then introduce these in order, slowly building as you go. Step one may be just looking at the towel at a distance and giving a treat. 

Dr. Yin's linked video is very good.


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

I agree with Fjm and Msminnamouse, Carrie...good posts!

I love Dr. Sophia Yin. Great that you posted that Cookieface.

That is what I did with my son's dog who was outrageously aggressive in connection with nail clipping. No vet would even do it without anesthetizing her. If she saw someone coming with clippers, she started freaking out. She had been mistreated as a pup. But I took it a lot slower. I spent about 4 or 5 days progressing a little bit further. But the same concept. I didn't have anyone there to help me so I just reinforced immediately after but very frequently. Fantastic treats in association with the procedure (starting with handling, then tapping the nails, scraping with the clippers, taking a token smidgen off etc) and lots of fuss made over her worked it's magic. And when just sitting there in between, nothing, no treats. She came around and now gets Dremeled...no problem with that transition. 

Other obedience tricks are great for general good behavior. Besides the skills themselves, the whole thing has lots of good residual effects that influence a lot of facets of behavior. But when there's a particularly difficult or specific issue like this...defense aggression or other kinds of aggression, they really need very controlled, sequential counter conditioning exercises.


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

Tiny Poodles said:


> If my dog growled at me, I would instantly do whatever obedience they already knew, and treat for that, even if all they know is a simple sit, I would repeat that 10 times, thereby re-establishing that I am the leader, and it is their role to do what I say. Then back to the toweling and treat only if they did not growl.


I respectfully disagree Tiny. Love ya, love your posts...so many of them. But this is out dated and proven to be irrelevant to domestic dogs. This who's da boss thing needs to be put to rest. It's all based on old and flawed studies of wolf behavior. And it's not even relevant to wolf behavior much less domestic dogs. Even the people who ran the studies admit that they were wrong. Being a leader is fine and natural...like parenting. But the reason they learn things is because of operant and classical conditioning....learning behavior, not hierarchy or rank status.


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## Joelly (May 8, 2012)

Always give the puppy a treat before bath, during and after. Do the same for toweling off, you can cover your hand with the towel and hand the treat to her that way so she associates towel with treat. Also, treat before/during/after a brush.

I don't know why I even give you an advise as you have lots of great ones already but just thought I give out a thought. Good luck!


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## Ciscley (Jul 16, 2013)

Joelly, me personally, I don't mind reading everyone's different take on situations. I think you never know how the wording that one person says will resonate better with someone and "click" versus the same advice from a different post. And sometimes it just takes a volume of the same advice to sink in to us as people that, ok, that really is what I need to try. There isn't some other magic bullet out there for someone to think of.


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

Poodlebeguiled said:


> I respectfully disagree Tiny. Love ya, love your posts...so many of them. But this is out dated and proven to be irrelevant to domestic dogs. This who's da boss thing needs to be put to rest. It's all based on old and flawed studies of wolf behavior. And it's not even relevant to wolf behavior much less domestic dogs. Even the people who ran the studies admit that they were wrong. Being a leader is fine and natural...like parenting. But the reason they learn things is because of operant and classical conditioning....learning behavior, not hierarchy or rank status.


Hum, I'm not about to debate schools of dog training (and CERTAINLY NOT a Caesarite), because I don't have a philosophy or belief system about dog training - I just do what I feel is right for a given dog in a given situation - and maybe I wouldn't do what I said above, I am not sure because I had to IMAGINE what I would do in that situation, as no dog that I have raised has ever growled at me . But then again, that does seem to indicate that my instincts are pretty on target....


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

msminnamouse said:


> First, thank your dog for growling at you.
> 
> But seriously, your dog made sure to warn you that she's uncomfortable rather than going straight to a bite. That's GOOD. So you want to heed her warning and change how she feels about being toweled off.
> 
> ...


Agreed, asking for obedience would be about growling at the owner. Now if my dog was growling at the towel, I wouldn't have any problem with that and would absolutely do the treat thing to get her more comfortable with it.
But growling AT me, would be my dog trying to control my behavior by threatening to bite me, and my reply to that would be uh-uh, you don't control my behavior, I control yours!


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## Joelly (May 8, 2012)

Ciscley, I couldn't agree more with you. In matters of advise, it seems that quantity is better than quality.


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## Joelly (May 8, 2012)

@OP,

Wow! I think I misunderstand the whole thing, I thought the dog was growling at the towel. But if the dog growling at you, that's a big no no. In Charlie's case, I will firmly said No! then turn my back around for like 2 min till he comes down and then try to towel him again, repeat the No! and turn your back thingy if he starts to growl at you again.

Charlie and/or Edison have never growl at me but Charlie once growl at my husband and he crate him for doing that. About 2 minutes then let him out to play play in. He hasn't growl at my husband since. This breed is so smart then if they did something bad, they'd know it.

Please note that the crate is not used for punishment but rather a place for a time out which to cut a misbehave pup from the things he loves the most, which is of course his pack (us).


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

Joelly said:


> @OP,
> 
> Wow! I think I misunderstand the whole thing, I thought the dog was growling at the towel. But if the dog growling at you, that's a big no no. In Charlie's case, I will firmly said No! then turn my back around for like 2 min till he comes down and then try to towel him again, repeat the No! and turn your back thingy if he starts to growl at you again.
> 
> ...


Maybe I am the one who misunderstood!


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