I’ve never had the pleasure of owning a dog from puppyhood. I’ve always acquired a free “troublesome” dog.
I can tell you that you will get NOWHERE with those dogs if you are afraid to whack the crap out of it. The first step is to make them welcome and make them feel safe and feel like they belong in your home. They must OWN their own space. The second step is to let them know when you are happy with them. And the third step is to let them know when they should KNOCK THE *ING CRAP OFF THAT GOT THEM DISOWNED THE LAST *DAM THREE TIMES THEY WERE KICKED OUT!
There’s no such thing as compromising with a bad dog. They must fully understand it is MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY. no grey areas allowed.
My personal belief is that the troublesome dogs are often the smartest dogs on the planet. Their problem is they are TOO smart and their original owners were worthless morons. This is why I don’t like dogs that are naturally perfectly obedient without training. I think everyone knows exactly what I mean by that...stupid fat slow lazy dogs that have no ideas of their own whatsoever. A dog gets itself into trouble when it has ideas of it’s own. This is a sign of intelligence, imo.
My current dog is quite intelligent. Not exactly perfectly obedient. But I don’t spend lots and lots of time with her to destroy every little disobedient idea that pops into her head.
I like to challenge her mind sometimes. The first “puzzle” I gave her was to give her water in a tall skinny glass when she was really thirsty. She learned quickly that if she tipped over the cup, she would lose the water. She is now conditioned to take food and water from containers that easily tip over and she NEVER allows them to fall. In fact, she actually goes around standing up empty containers nowdays...in hopes that they will fill up with something I guess. Her bed typically has a ring of empty containers standing up in an arc around it...like the devil worshippers put up a ring of candles around a shrine of some kind. And she carefully steps over them so that they never fall over.
I wipe my mastiff’s face after he gets a drink of water, and he comes up to me for that. A friend has a mastiff that he has trained to wipe his own face. He put a towel in a bucket, and the dog sticks his face in, rubs it around, and comes out dry. He trained the dog by sticking a treat in the bottom, after every drink of water, when it was little puppy. Wish I’d thought of that.