Accepting another dog - Page 2

I totally agree with Vixen.  You need to establish more control over your dogs, by working with each separately. 

Two, 5 to 10 minute serious concentrated training sessions daily will work wonders with the dogs.  Be consistent.  There is teaching and training.  Teaching, is when they are learning something new.  Training is when you are working on and improving and reinforcing what they know.  When you are teaching a command, increase your frequency of rewards... but do not make the mistake of rewarding when the response is not what you want.  (i.e. a crooked sit in the heel position  .. sure he sat, but crooked... are you going to reward and teach him that this is the correct position?)

A great trainer, Chico Stanford, said in a seminar, "What you do not correct, you are teaching."  What he means is that each time you allow inappropriate behavior, you will find that same inappropriate behavior repeated, and progressively harder to correct.  For example, your dogs have been allowed to respond for a while now to greeting other dogs inappropriately.  You will have to work harder and be very patient, and most of all consistent, if you want to teach new behavior.

You cannot work / train them both together.  Work each one SEPARATELY, with the other somewhere out of sight and sound.  Establish a firm down.  They should learn that DOWN means "down till I give a release command, or some other command".  When each has fully understood what DOWN means, then test it.  While in a down, put a favorite toy, or a cookie, or a treat a few feet away.  A few feet away, so that if the dog moves, he will not get a reward - you picked up the reward"  When they will stay down, till you give the release word, to get the reward, then twy having both dogs in a down, with a cookie or reward about 6 feet in front of them and see if they will stay till you give the release word.  Once you have a reliable down, THEN you can go to test out with other dogs... but not until you have control.

When with another dog, you should be able to say down, and down means DOWN... nothing else.

Good luck... you can do it if you are consistent

Vixen and SandraWeiland; totally agree

Sandra,  I really liked what you said, but have a question.  You wrote "do not make the mistake of rewarding when the response is not what you want.  (i.e. a crooked sit in the heel position  .. sure he sat, but crooked... are you going to reward and teach him that this is the correct position?)"  I have also read that some advocate a progressive training like "shaping" which is to reward the dog for any response in the right direction toward the desired behavior so that learning is incremental.  I think that would say the incorrect sit would be rewarded the first time as a step toward the eventual correct position.  Maybe I'm confused!
I do like the concept of focusing on your own dog's behavior(which you can control) over "socialization," which also depends on everyone else's dogs' reaction towards yours, which you can't control. 
  
 

I used a clicker for Jyota, who tends to be dog agressive.

Every time she glanced at me, instead of the other dog, I reinforced it and now she's much better. She will turn to me instead of being over exhuberant when she sees another dog. She tents to be agressve, but she is better controlled now.

IMO, do not let your dogs play with other dogs, you never know when a fight may break out!

Good luck.