Very aggresive dog need help

[ktizzle188]

Ok, I'll start from he beginning. I have a border collie mix, while my sister was still living at home she got him with out thinking it through about 2 and a half years ago. He was so nice when she brought him home. she would never exercise him, when i tried would get yelled at because its "her dog". so after year of having him he started turning real mean over time. Then my sister gets up and leaves him about a year ago. And know hes still mean. he never bitten but will bark like he's going to tear your head off. To give you an example of how aggressive he is. He would see someone walking on the street run push open the door and run out side and start barking at them. people wont come over the house because of the dog. he gets in these barking frenzies and wont stop. just recently i started using pennies in a can and its been snapping him out of it. if stranger move fast he'll bite. he is currently over weight by at least 15 pounds. i just started a couple weeks ago walking him about a mile each night. im trying to get the rest of my family members to stop feeding him but they don't realize its making him worse. i need tips to stop his aggression. also he will never come when you call him. thanks

[emmabeth]

Did your sister train him at all and if she did, how did she do this? Give us some examples if you can.

Stop using the pennies in the can - what this does is makes him stop because its scary, and training by using fear is a really bad plan. Especially with a frustrated and under exercised border collie type. It is a short cut to a sound phobia and other 'fall out'.

Firstly you need to understand the dog you have - hes a collie, hes hard-wired to stare, and react to movement and to react superfast. He is driven to find these moving things so that he can stare at them and then react to them. I know collies who will make something move so that they can then react to that movement!

Collies shouldnt be nippy - but a great many are, its one of the ways a working dog will control the movement of a sheep (which up close and personal are big, difficult and stroppy and if they test a dog.. the dog needs to be ready for that!) and its no real surprise that a frustrated misunderstood dog will do this especially if there is some underlying fear.

So...

Stop the pennies in the can, its not reducing his stress, its not actually stopping him doing the behaviour and its extremely likely to create worse problems in him.

Instead of this, prevent him from accessing the window and also the door he then dashes out of to bark at people - if thats not under your control do point out to the family member who is responsible that IF he bites someone legally you guys are liable for that, in fact if he dashes out and makes someone jump in fear and suprise they could probably sue you for that too. You (and by that i mean the legally responsible adults not specifically you) are aware of the problem, aware of the dangers and allow it to happen so you are liable.

Once he CANT practice his 'watching, waiting, drive them away' behavior, you must replace it with something that tires him out mentally that he CAN do. Do you have a secure back yard? If so try throwing tennis balls for him, and if he wont hand them back, try throwing two or three or four.... so hes got to watch and wait.. and react, to the tennis balls.
You may find you need to invent other games for him, this is just an idea. If you dont have a secure back yard you need to get yourself either a horse lunge line or a good 30ft of strong lightweight rope or even washingline, and a harness for him that is secure. Then you can have him on that and still play outside.

Inside the house, try clicker training. Get yourself a clicker and a pot of treats (tiny but really really tasty ones). Follow the instructions in the Clicker Training thread in the Articles section of the forum and once he understands that the click means a treat is coming, do this with him several times a day working on easy tricks to start with and building up to harder ones. Just do short 3 to 5 minute sessions using a kitchen timer or egg timer to keep to these times, but do as many sessions a day as you can (stick to one trick a session!).

These will do two jobs - work his brain and keep him mentally satisfied, and create a much stronger bond with you. What you will be doing with the clicker training is encouraging him to learn for himself, whereas the current method using the pennies in the can is just teaching him to avoid getting punished.

The walking is a good start so keep that up, as for the food find out if you can WHY people feed him extras. Take over his feeding and ask that if people want to give him left overs, they put them in a particular dish or container and YOU will add them to his meal at the end of the day. Let them see that you do, but reduce his normal food quite a lot when you do so (and carefully avoid really high fat, high salt etc things).

Also if you can work out how overweight he is, as if he was a person.... so that they can understand it more easily, you might get further with them! Figure it out as a percentage ... ask if they wouldb e happy if THEY were that percentage overweight (or if they ARE that same percentage overweight ask them if they wouldnt prefer to be slimmer!).

[ktizzle188]

ok thanks allot i'll get a clicker. i tried playing fetch he rather play keep away. I'll just get a load of tennis balls. my sister never trained him thats probably why he's the way he is. thanks

[emmabeth]

If he plays keep away with the ball (as opposed to avoiding coming to you because he expects to get yelled at or hit), use two balls that are identical and have him coming back to you so that you will throw the other ball. Use more balls if hes the type to attempt to keep one AND go out to pick up another.

You can once you have the hang of clicker training, easily clicker him to put the ball in your hand. Just remember to work backwards from the last element of the trick adding in the stages as you go.

So for 'fetch'... the last stage of this is putting the ball in your hand. Sit with him and give him the ball and then put your hand right by his mouth and be ready to click as he drops it (if you conditioned him well to the clicker he likely will drop it easily because he wants a treat!). Repeat this until he is purposely dropping teh ball to get the treat.

Then you want to refine that so hes getting clicked and treated only if the ball goes in your hand, not if he just lets it go randomly.

Next you want him to have to hold the ball for a little while ( a few seconds) before putting it in your hand - you give him the ball and dont offer your hand for a couple of seconds. If you did the previous stage well then he already knows that dropping the ball on the floor doesnt work its GOT to go in your hand, so he should hang on to it, but dont push him too far, just a few seconds longer is all you want.

Then you want him to move with the ball so hold your hand further away so hes got to take a step or two... then try him on picking it up and bringing it to you. I wouldnt throw it at this stage, hold him if he doesnt know 'wait' and place the ball down by your feet and then see if he picks it up to give it to you. If he does that a few times, then try it with the ball a few feet away from you.

Gradually build up like this in stages until you can throw the ball and have him bring it to you. When you take this trick outside, for the first few sessions just go back to handing him the ball and having him give it back to you and building it up again in the new location. He may not need this but its better to err on the side of caution than go out thinking you have trained a retrieve and finding that actually once outside its all too much and his mind is fried and he doesnt realy 'get it'. Dogs are very 'context specific' in their learning and so something they learn in the house may NOT mean the same thing to them outside (and you already know that to him, balls and balls being thrown, means 'play keep away'!).

Make each stage a new session, keep the sessions themselves short, and do not move on to the next stage until he has learned the previous one.

You dont need to add in the cue 'fetch' until he knows the ENTIRE routine completely, in fact the less talking you do in general with dogs, the better - they learn far more from our actions than our words and our words can really confuse the issue!

[ktizzle188]

thanks again. what should i do when he's in his attack mode when someone comes over. he also barks everytime someone enters the house even me.

[emmabeth]

When anyone comes over, put him in another room - safer than risking him biting someone.

When you walk in, and he barks at you, HOW does he bark at you, is it excited happy to see you or is it fearful 'go away'? Do you know the difference?

[ktizzle188]

i think its a go away bark. he barks like when he heres someone coming in. after their in like my family that lives here he stops. a few nights ago my cousin came over and she is really scared of him so i put him in the other room b4 she entered. then after about 15 mins of barking. i set up a gate so he could she everyone and after 10 mins he was winning a little. i let him out and he just ran over and sniffed her. sometime he'll be fine with someone new then randomly go in attack mode and bark at them like crazy.

[ktizzle188]

but putting him in a different room will he ever be able to change. because i dont think i can take another 10 years of this.

[Leigha]

Putting him in a room isn't so much about getting him to change as it is a safety precaution for your dog and guests--it's management, not modification.

[emmabeth]

Ok, you HAVE to manage the situation safely first and putting him in another room does that.

If he bites a visitor and you have to have him put down by the vet, its too late to say 'well we were training him.....'

Also putting him in another room except for for specific 'visitor training sessions' means he gets a chance to de-stress.

From his point of view if you constantly allow him to bark at guests, or see people through the window and rush out and yell at them, hes constantly getting wound up and stressed and hes also learning to do these behaviours REALLY well (practice does make perfect!) and with the rushing out and barking behaviour hes learning that if he yells... these people go away. He does not realise they were going PAST and thus they would have gone away regardless of what he did. As far as he is concerned he sees... he runs out and shouts... they go away.... it works, job done.

So your first step to modify any behavioural problem is to manage it so things are safe and stop him from being able to practice these behaviours.

At the SAME time as you stop him being able to do these things and you make things safe, you teach him new things he can do that work, that give him something to think about and that replace in an appropriate manner, the things he likes to do (chasing, watching).

So for your dog - immediately stopping him being able to see out of that window and get out of the door, and also preventing him meeting guests outside of training set ups is what you must do. Instead of these things you do clicker training with him, play ball with him and you do training sessions that focus on how he is supposed to behave when meeting guests.

You can set up 'fake' guests, guests you you have told how to behave and who you KNOW will do as they are told and not get clever and try to touch him or talk to him.

To start with though you need to focus on him trusting and building a better bond with you (clicker training will help you do this, as will walking him).

Then you work on having him sit (on a leash for safety) nicely whilst you open the front door as if there was a guest there (but there isnt, not yet). Then you can teach him, once he has learned that the door ONLY opens when hes sat and the door gets closed if he moves a muscle, to sit quietly when someone knocks or rings (have that someone be a family member or close trusted friend he is familiar with, if there is a TINY chance he might bite, use a basket style muzzle).

If he is fearful of people then you must teach him that people are nice - have people walk by him (not up TO him and not too close) and have them drop food towards him (not offer or give him food from their hand, drop it... they need to NOT speak or reach out or make eye contact with him, these are all much later stages to teach him).

For every situation you want your dog to handle calmly and comfortably, you must teach him what you DO want him to do - I suspect so far you have or family members have, only focussed on what you do NOT want him to do, which leaves him not knowing what he ought to do.

If he barks at people coming in because hes scared of them you need to teach him that people are not scary and you will only do this by taking tiny little baby steps, with plenty of rewards for not reacting (not for 'doing something you ask' thats too much, just 'not reacting') - if he reacts you have pushed him too far/too fast and so you need to back off, increase the distance between him and the people, decrease what you are asking him to do... etc.

Its not a difficult theory really, your job is to show him what you want from him in a way he can understand, and set him up to succeed by making things really easy... and gradually building up the difficulty.

Its only like the same progression children make through school... you dont send a 5 year old to college, they go to infant school first where its all easy, its all a game and its really really difficult for them to get things very badly wrong because its broken down into tiny steps,

You have to do the same for your dog and just as you dont send a 5 year old child straight to college, you dont chuck your dog who doesnt know HOW he is supposed to behave yet, in at the deepend where a mistake could easily cost him his life! (That;d be like not just sending the 5 year old to college, but expecting him to take Dads car and drive himself there!).





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[Leigha]

Emmabeth, please don't think I was telling ktizzle not to put the dog in the room--I was just trying to say that by itself being in a different room wasn't going to "fix" the dog. That it was just for the dog and all visitors' safety that the dog MUST be put in another room. I wasn't even going to begin to pretend to know how to tell 'em how to fix it.

[emmabeth]

No worries, I agree with you Leigha!

[Leigha]

Okay--I tend to have "post regret" where I post something, re-read it later and decide that it didn't come across quite the way I'd intended, or that it sounded moronic. After I re-read that one it seemed to me like I was saying it wasn't going to work because it was ONLY management, not that yes it was necessary... I just need to stop re-reading.

[emmabeth]

Silly - it made perfect sense to me don't worry so much!

[jjphoenix]

where abouts are you, are you uk?