Tag Teaming Boxers

[boxermama]

Hello. I'm hoping someone out there might have some helpful tips for us.

My husband and I have 2 boxers. We adopted them together as pups (they are siblings) and they are now almost 3 years old. All of our friends have dogs, so we've socialized them with several dogs and people from the beginning. We also frequented dog parks weekly, and joined a social boxer meetup group where we met at dog parks with other boxer owners to have play dates and discuss the breed. We never were great at walking them daily, but we used to walk them several times a week. Everything was great for a while - they graduated from basic and intermediate obedience too.

Over a year ago, Emmy, our female, was attacked at a dog park. We continued to take her to help her get over her new fear, but she stopped interacting with other dogs she didn't know. As time went on, she began to bully other dogs who showed any interest in her. We hired a dog trainer to help us, and things improved - she was able to ignore other dogs when we redirected her attention to us, but it wasn't completely solved.

As more time went on, Toby her brother began taking on some of the bullying, and backs her up. So now any time Emmy gets into a scuffle, Toby jumps in and it escalates. As a result of this, we stopped taking them to dog parks. We did sign them up for doggy daycare so we have a place to board them when necessary, and they say our dogs are not aggressive, but they do not back down and will tag team. So doggy daycare will not let my dogs interact with other dogs together - they separate them. And when our dogs are separated, there is no problem.

Now to our walking - we no longer take them on walks around the neighborhood because now every time they see a dog, they go CRAZY. We used to take them to the vet inside Petsmart, and we stopped doing that because they got into several scuffles with dogs who's owners let them approach every dog in the store. (I call them scuffles because it sounds worse than it is, and they've never caused another dog an injury.) Inside Petsmart our dogs would act like they wanted to greet a dog, but then once they do, they pounce on the dog and the scuffle breaks out. They seem to greet dogs off leash considerably better, but when we're out on a walk, off leash isn't an option. My husband doesn't enjoy walking them anymore because of the grief they're causing us, and if we're going to run into another dog on the walk, it's a bit much for me to keep control over 2 75lb dogs by myself; therefore, I walk them significantly less. I now walk them sparingly at night when we are less likely to run into any other animals.

I'm nervous now because we're moving into a new neighborhood next month, and we've seen several dogs hanging out in their front yards without a leash, so I know if I walk my dogs and a neighbor dog approaches, it's going to be bad. I really need help getting them over this, but I cannot afford to hire an animal behaviorist (my vet recommended that to us after a scuffle in the vet, so embarrassing!) I understand the issues they have now are a compilation of all the issues I mentioned above - I just need some helpful tips I can try incorporating immediately to curb the problem. Denver is super dog friendly, so it's unlikely for me to be on a walk and not have another dog walker approach us to strike up a conversation. I want my dogs to be healthy and happy and be able to have friendly encounters.

Please help!

[***Melissa***]

Try to walk them daily - it will make a huge difference.

Emmy is now fearful of other dogs. Taking her to a dog park / doggy day care (or any other place with many dogs) won't help. You need to work on her by finding her threshold, and rewarding when she is not reacting (even if it means only watching ONE dog 3 blocks away). Move closer as she gets more comfortable, but the moment she reacts you know that that is too much and move back. Note that this is probably take weeks, there is no easy solution. Also, not reacting may mean "shutting down" which is also not good. So look at her body language.

It is best to keep your dogs seperated from other dogs at doggy day care - if not, it will get worse, the fighting will get worse, and another (or your) dog will be killed in a fight. So I'm really glad to hear they keep them seperate from the other dogs

Going crazy when they see dogs means that they are re-active. There's tons of info on the forum about reactive dogs, please do a search on that. Especially read through jacksdad's posts on how he worked with his reactive dog - there's really good info in there.

Some dogs don't act the same on lead as off lead. When off lead a dog always have the option to "fight or flight" if necessary. When on lead, a dog don't have that options, he is much more restricted. Don't allow other dogs to great them when they are on lead (get between your dog and the other dog, yell at the owner to call their dog even if you have to say that your dog will bite his, do whatever you have to to make sure another dog don't great your dogs). You will also find info on this in jacksdad's post if I'm not mistaken.

There's a lot of people on this forum who walk their dogs late at night or in the wee hours on the morning - for the same reason as you It will get better as you work on their re-activity. You will probably have to work on each dog individually, and later together.

Untill your problems are sorted - can you drive your dogs some place else for their walks? (there are also a couple of us on here who drive our dogs to other places for their walks, for the same reason).

Unfortunatelly there are no quick & easy way Some people may use harsh methods, and sometimes they work, but then you will have other behavioural problems popping up everywhere.

For now - don't think in terms of "friendly encounters", just work on your dogs, let them set the pace.

[emmabeth]

In addition to Melissas v sensible advice.

Walk them seperately. Focus right now on having them walk nicely on the leash focussing on you - follow our loose leash walking thread in the articles section of the forum and practice this with both dogs every single day, several times a day preferbly - you only need to be doing five or ten minute sessions and you can do some of them in the yard as well as out on the street.

Whenever you see another dog or anything else they may react to, about turn go th eother way, hide behind a parked car or whatever it takes to avoid a reaction from your dog before it starts. Use food to distract, but do understand if you have got too close, your dog will be too stressed to even realise the food is there.

Create that habit of walking on a loose leash, focussing on you and avoiding scary stuff now, before you move as it will give you a head start - also work on self control exercises with food and with toys (again look in the articles section for the vid 'its yer choice'), and clicker training each dog seperately as it does sound like they are quite a bit more bonded to one another than they are to you.

[boxermama]

Thank you both for your responses. I knew walking them more would be the answer, but it sometimes helps to hear it from someone else - it also helps to hear that we should separate them since we've done all of their training together. I will definitely start walking them separately tonight and hope to make some progress before we move - I'll also dig out our old clickers from obendience training.

Thanks! I'll post updates on progress as I have them.

[***Melissa***]

Good luck
Please keep us updated on how they are doing