HELP! Dogsitting - Dog Bit my Neighbour UNPROVOKED

[Noobs]

I feel like everyone might have been thinking about you at the same time because I'm glad to get this update and had been thinking about you as well. Thanks for letting us know how it's going!

[Pawzk9]

I went back home, told my partner what happened and we went out into our backyard to find the dog to castigate her. She tried to run away from us, as we approached before we said anything and acted very fearful. We pursued her and cornered her after a couple of laps, approaching from different directions. We firmly told her she was a bad dog and she was never to bite anyone ever and smacked her on her haunches a couple of times. Enough for her to know we meant business, but certainly not hard enough to cause any physical damage. She peed herself a couple of times. The entire castigating episode lasted ... oh well under a minute, maybe only 30 seconds. We tied her up to the clothesline with her leash (it was late afternoon, early evening) as she's a bit of a Houdini when it comes to getting out without you noticing and I couldn't risk her getting out after THAT! I went next door and dressed the wound on our neighbour's leg, and chatted with him and his wife for a couple of hours (doing a lot of apologising as well) and much later that night realised that I couldn't leave the dog tied up overnight as it was going to be very hot the next day, so I let her off the leash about midnight when we went to bed. She was very agitated (excited to see me, happy, jumping up on my leg, though I told her firmly to sit (she did after a few "sit"s ) and she ran around like a mad thing for a few minutes.
This morning when I went outside, as I opened the back door, she was there and started growling at me! (She's lived in this house for a year now and never done that). She seemed quite serious so I growled back at her and started advancing and pointing towards the corner of the backyard. She growled at me again and I said sharply "don't you growl at me" and "OUTSIDE" pointing away from the house.

I am very upset by this behaviour and don't feel comfortable about having a dog live here that displays this kind of behaviour. I am not afraid of her for myself, I can be assertive. The most she would ever get in at me would be one bite before I made it very clear that biting me was a VERY bad idea, but I am concerned about our neighbours and small children in the area.

Punishment frequently leads to aggression. Especially in an overwhelmed and fearful dog. She needs to learn better behavior through positive and informative methods. And until she does, she needs to be managed in a way that she can't hurt people. Castigating a dog after an episode tells her nothing except that you are potentially "dangerous." Dogs don't speak englsh and don't understand things in the same way we do.

[Pawzk9]

Sorry, did not notice how old this thread was.