[BigZeus]

Hello people. It's nice to see there's a forum out here dedicated to these wonderful dogs. In short, I'm a 26 yr old who is a proud owner of my very first dog Zeus. He is a pure bred, with papers German Rott. 9 months old now, and 110 lbs of solid puppy and sweet heart :D

Since I've never personally owned a dog, albeit always wanted one I've always been put under the impression by others that sometimes physical discipline was necessary in teaching your dog right & wrong. So, as Zeus was growing (I got him @ 9 weeks), I often used spanking as a type of discipline for him not listening to the "come" command while we were outside and/or messing in the house. Usually I would only spank when he'd take off, or ignore my repeated commands to come back to me. I ALWAYS gave him positive attention when he listened, but sometimes he would just completely ignore me. A couple of his spankings were REALLY bad, as I somewhat took my anger out on him for things he did wrong.

Now, I feel so f'ing terrible about it :( . I never really knew that there's so many other ways to train a dog for both positive and negative behavior besides beating the hell out of them when they did wrong. Now Zeus will cower (sp?) down to me if he knows he did something wrong and I approach him. I do NOT spank him anymore, I just love on him and tell him what he did was wrong usually by pointing and saying "No" in a normal voice. I stopped the spanking at 5 months old because of this, and have tried to use positive reinforcement.

What should I do about this? My Zeus is a sweetheart and very gentle beast who loves me and my 3 yr old son to death. I don't want him to fear me, or do I to some extent? I also do not want him to feel like he has to cower down to me when he does something wrong. I feel as though I'm terrifying him by him acting this way and I would never want that.

Any help/advice/input is appreciated. Looking forward to future postings & readings on this board. Thanks guys!!

-Josh