18 month old shih-tzu growling and biting visitors

hello my name is nicola.
can anyone give me some advise. i have a lovely little shih-tzu charlie. he is 18 months old over the last few months we have had trouble with charlie growling and actully biting some of my friends who visit.we had him neuted around the same time as the problem started. he is very loving and gentle with the family who live in the house. it,s geting to the stage where i have to warn people not to touch him when were out for walks which is a shame. i have tried to disapline him by shouting no and putting him in the other room for about 30 minutes on his own. when we let him back into our room he does look pretty glum but he still goes for our visitors . this is our first dog so i think we might have spoilt him a bit. has anyone else got this problem.

I had this problem with my first Shih Tzu mainly because he had the run of the house he was a nightmare when we had visitors. He lived to be nearly 15 but mellowed in his old age. I now have Alfie who is 19 months and a totally different dog because I set some ground rules from the start. I would really recommend a crate, it is the best thing I have ever done, he loves it and if he gets too excited when anybody visits I pop him in there for a while until he calms down and then he comes out and is very sociable - his only problem is that he gets so excited to see people he wees !! He has never tried to bite anybody but I must admit he is not great on walks when he sees other dogs but that is probably because we live in a very quiet area and he doesn't see many. Charlie is still young enough to train but I really think that the crate is a good way to go from his point of view he feels safe there and he can still see what is going on. He wil eventually even want to go to his crate as it will be his own little space. I am sure there will be many more people on this site who will be much more experienced than I am on this subject and I hope little Charlie gets the message as I know how hard it is when your little bundle of joy turns into a monster when visitors call Good luck :teddyhug

Sandra has given you some good advice here and I too would recommend a crate. If Charlie did not show this behaviour before you had him neutered then I don't think that it is as a result of spoiling him. If I were you I would try and find a good dog training class in your area and take him along. A good trainer will work with both you and the dog and will also provide you with a way of training him to be handled by others.

A little trick you can use at home while you are sorting that out is to have an empty coke/pop can and put a few stones in it then seal the top with sellotape. If he goes towards your visitors then drop or throw the tin on the ground near him.; Don't use your voice in this action at all and fon't use his name ever to tell him off. His name should be kept for pleasurable purposes! I don't think putting him out for 30 minutes is going to be very successful - he won't know why and probably feels more resentful as a result - and 30 minutes exclusion is a huge time in dog (or even human) minds! Another thing you can do is to block his attempts to get at your visitors with your own body language (don't know if you have ever seen the Dog Whisperer??) but it does work - you stand up tall and move yourself between your visitors and your dog... stnad your ground and he should back away. If you haven't seen the Dog whisperer then you are probably better off with the tin

Let us know how you get on and I am sure you will be able to sort this out - though you need to nip it in the bud before he really gets the upper hand.