Stopped listening to us

Hi everyone,

As the title suggests hank has 100% stopped listening to both me AND the OH, it’s always just been I had to ask him a few times and then he would do as I said but with the OH it was instantly but now he isn’t listening to either of us at all until the point we are getting really stressed and we don’t want to get mad but as you can imagine it is frustrating.

Does anyone know why he has all of a sudden just stopped? And do we need to go back to basic with him?

His bowel movements haven’t been right for a few week I don’t know if it’s linked but that’s the only thing different and a change in food it’s all happened around the same time.

aww those staffies and their selective hearing ,yes i would go back to basic training with him,when he's done as he's told try a treat or 2 and lots of praise,why have you changed his food,may be its not agreeing with him,hence the change in his bowel movements,did you change it over gradually?

He was on puppy raw mix and we have changed to dog raw mix when he turned 1 in January , we mixed it together with the puppy to get him used to it and he much prefers what he’s on now as the puppy mix was a chicken and beef mince and he sometimes wouldn’t eat it but now he’s just on beef and wolfs it down so we think he isn’t fond of raw chicken which I’m glad about now as I’ve read some bad things about it.

Naughty Hank !
Could it be lots of changes that have just all come together at the same time which means that he’s a bit lost in his own body ?
Change of food and maturing hormones due to age and springtime hormones (if I remember correctly, he’s still entire, right ?)
I’d be guessing that he’s going through his teenage period so back to basics can’t do any harm, all the contrary

I'd be more inclined to go with the growing up and testing theory than food, but do keep an eye, especially if there is a concern he's not feeling quite right.

Definitely go back to basics. Inject as much fun into training as you can, try and avoid asking him for things you think he won't do - the objective is to get good results, not teach him he can ignore you - and treat & praise, too much is better than not enough at this point in time. I'd also think about teaching him some fun tricks to do something different to the normal. Make it interesting, adding in food hiding games and stuff like that, and make it easy.

Dogs do go through these phases when they're growing up. It can be very frustrating but it should get back on track.

Thanks guys, started him already with the commands and treats and praise like we did when he was a Dot and seems to be working, the only thing that he’s not responding to as quickly as others is letting go of something he shouldn’t have. So that’s an area we need to pay more attention too. But we know he’s a clever lad so just got to start again

Paris1990 wrote:we know he’s a clever lad so just got to start again

That might just be the heart of the problem, he’s TOO clever !
Good to hear he’s not really forgotten his basic work.