Every walk is a battle...

[jacksdad]

Work on his bond with you

Working having a strong bond and really letting your dog know you will take care of them pays off big time. saved my dog 2 twice from pitbulls, today being the second (and worst) time not an hour ago.

In learning how to deal with my dogs leash re activeness (aka looking aggressive while on leash), I keep reading/hearing show your dog you will take care of things. And I keep thinking to my self, how? what is it you do to communicate this to your dog. I now know. You do this by dealing with what is scaring them for them by not leaving them to figure out how to deal with it. You give them new options. At first it avoidance type stuff, U turns, crossing over to the other side of the street, hiding behind cars, removing them quickly from situations they aren't ready for, putting your self between them and their trigger (aka what causes them to be "aggressive"). It builds from there.

At first these things seen like avoidance and not addressing the issue head on, but it's not. It builds a foundation that allows you to move forward and help your dog. All the things you do with your dog, the clicker training, the obedience training, the funny trick training, the loose leash, the avoidance of other dogs will all pay off in a cumulative affect. I believe 100% it is because of these things that I am typing this rather then sitting in a vets office right now.

If you don't have another dog your dog doesn't react to work with right now, don't worry. building/improving/making strong the bond between you and your dog right now is much more important.

[at_my_wits_end]

Thanks again for all the advice. We'll give clicker training another go, and I have gotten a Sporn harness to see how that works.

One question though - there have been a few references to my pup being nervous or fearful around other dogs. I am a little confused as to why this would cause him to get so crazy to get to the other dogs on our walks and then display such dominant behavior when he gets close enough to do so. If we weren't holding him back, he'd rush them!

Thanks!

[Nettle]

He's working on a principle of I'll get you before you get me. That is fear-based. If you aren't scared you aren't reactive.

Think if you are out walking on your own, and every now and then, someone in a hoodie comes rolling up to you sneering and swearing. You can't run because you are attached to a Martian by a piece of string. All you can do is yell and dive to the end of your string because that Martian isn't helping at all. if the string broke, you'd have to follow through, wouldn't you?

[Mattie]

One question though - there have been a few references to my pup being nervous or fearful around other dogs. I am a little confused as to why this would cause him to get so crazy to get to the other dogs on our walks and then display such dominant behavior when he gets close enough to do so. If we weren't holding him back, he'd rush them!

Thanks!

My little girl now at the Bridge, Gracie was like this when I first got her, it has nothing to do with being dominant but everything to do with being very frightened and scared. Gracie wanted to kill my other dogs when she first arrived and Joe had a scar on his back leg where she bit him.

Your dog can be turned round, I turned Gracie round and she became wonderful with other dogs but it takes quite some time and a lot of patience. My biggest problem was other dog owners, they seemed to think that as their dog was friendly they were safe.

[Fundog]

My little Dottie Monster has a similar issue, though she does not manifest in exactly the same manner: When she sees other dogs, she at first acts all excited, like she wants to meet them, but then when she gets close enough to exchange greetings, she will suddenly become nervous and growl and snap at the other dogs. So I have to take her away quickly, or just keep my body between Dottie and the other dogs. The last time I took the girls to the dog park, Dottie just stayed right at heel with me the whole time while I threw toys for Annie and the other dogs. If another dog got too close to Dottie, I body-blocked to limit access. If I moved/changed locations, Dottie stayed right at heel and came with me. This gave her the opportunity to observe the other dogs, witness how they interacted with each other (and watching "big sister" Annie shows her a positive example), and even be able to take in their various scents by proximity. But most importantly, it allowed Dottie to relax, knowing I would not let any dogs do anything she was not comfortable with. I kept the visit brief, and left when Dottie was still appearing to enjoy being there, and not stressed, although when I asked her if she was ready to go, she did a little pirouette for me to indicate yes (it was really cute how she did that). On our way out, I let the girls say hello to some children in the playground. It was a happy experience, and one I hope to repeat very soon.

Granted, your dog may not be quite ready to go as far as Dottie has-- these things take time, but this gives you an example of what kind of things to be aware of and watch out for, and how to prevent an unfortunate incident.

[at_my_wits_end]

To all,

Thank you so much for your advice. If I can summarize what I have learned from these posts it's that:

1. I need to find some way to communicate to my dog that I will protect him, and that he doesn't always need to be "on alert" when we're out walking.

2. I need to teach him that I will protect him from the other dogs, and thus he has no need to "get them first".

I guess the mounting behavior threw me off, because I had always heard that doing so was a dominant behavior. However, after having read your posts, it seems it's rather a "feather fluffing" exercise.

Two more questions though...

1. Any thoughts on how or why he went from being so sweet and playing well with other dogs to this? He was never attacked at the dog park - rather, he was usually the one who instigated the rough play! The flying out the front door incident happened before the first fight at day care.

2. How can I tell the difference between him being "reactive" vs. his prey drive motivating his behavior? He has an intense prey drive, and his motto seems to be "if it moves, I must chase it" - falling leaves, cyclists, runners, etc. Thank goodness, not cars.

Thanks again,
At My Wits End

[Mattie]

I found that when I try and work out why a dog behaves in such a way I waste valuable time correcting it, first I put good management in so my dogs doesn't get the chance to do what I don't want, in this case his behaviour to other dogs. Keep yourself between your dog and any other dog, you are much taller than he is and can see a dog coming well before so can take action early.

I teach all my dogs to "Watch me" find this very useful in many situations especially when I have a reactive dog.

Your dog will have an area where he won't react, go inside that area and he reacts, you need to keep him out of this area so he sees other dogs without reacting to them, you can then work with him to teach him that other dogs are not monsters. If he is inside this area he goes into fight mode because he can't run away, when this happens his brain closes down apart from the fight or flight mode, this is why dogs ignore their owners, they are not doing this deliberately but they are not hearing them. Once your dog is reacting there is nothing you can do apart from get him away from the situation. Nothing is going to work and as this is self rewarding, he reacts the dog goes away, he doesn't realise the dog is going away anyway, he thinks he has chased the dog away so next time he has had a success and believes he can do it again but each time he does this the behaviour gets worse.

Are you sure his chasing is prey drive? Most dogs go into chase drive, not many have a true prey drive.

One of the worse things we can do to a dog is to label their behaviour, our prespective of the behaviour changes because of what we have read/others say and can block our thinking to turn the behaviour round. Take dog aggression, how many times do we read that this is the dog being dominant, pulling on the lead, the dog is dominant etc etc etc, in fact dog aggression is fear, the dog is frightened of other dogs, pulling on the lead dogs natural speed is much faster than ours and they are in a hurry, also when we ask them to walk at our pace they have to be taught to walk slower or they will be off balance. Think about how off balance we get if we try to walk very slow, I look like I am drunk.

[jacksdad]

To all,

Thank you so much for your advice. If I can summarize what I have learned from these posts it's that:

1. I need to find some way to communicate to my dog that I will protect him, and that he doesn't always need to be "on alert" when we're out walking.

2. I need to teach him that I will protect him from the other dogs, and thus he has no need to "get them first".

Yes, but protecting your dog is really far less dramatic than it sounds. Generally speaking the “protection” takes the form of making a choice for your dog it cannot currently make for its self. Much like parents have to for their kids. Right now your dog knows one option for dealing with what scares him. You are protecting him by making a different choice for him. Rather than bark/lunge/attack, we are going to turn and go the other way. Or maybe it’s ducking behind a parked car, or maybe it’s simply having you between the scary thing and your dog.

Then while you’re doing that, you are teaching still other options for your dog to choose from. Rather than freak out, sit and watch me, not the scary thing. Oh and while you’re watching me and not reacting you get yummy treats. Or walk past scary thing while looking at me and not freaking out, oh and you get yummy treats for doing this too.
Eventually your dog learns that SCARY thing isn’t so scary and actually kind of cool because he gets treats. You protect him from scary thing because you don’t let him have to deal with it himself.

I wish matti would post her complete version, but here is a short explanation of what most "aggression" is about. I use "" because most of us do not have dogs that want to attack and hurt things just for kicks. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5442

Here is kind a high level of how my last 3 months looked when I started to focus on my dogs on leash “aggression”. At his peak he was so out of control I was worried he would start hurting himself when he would freak out. He would lunge and flail so badly he would leave the ground while still attached to his leash. Or if he wasn’t flailing he was pulling so hard he was practically on his belly trying to crawl to the other dog. He would make some of the most horrid sounds too in addition to his very aggressive sounding barking. Needless to say, he hasn’t worn a leash attached to a collar in quite some time. Switched to a harness and haven’t looked back.

January
Realized a problem, started reading and asking questions. Stopped letting my dog try to calmly greet other dogs while on leash. I had been operating under the idea that I was helping by trying to socialize my dog to other dogs. It was clearly not working and just like the “book” said, I was making things worse.

February
Doubled my efforts to avoid dogs on walks. Worked on U turns, sit, watch me. At the beginning of February it was strictly about avoidance, and getting out of “Dodge City” if we did have a dog/dog on leash encounter. By end of February I was starting to ask my dog to sit after we would run into another dog and had gotten some distance. It was freak out, get distance, ask for sit, ask for watch me, “lets go” and continue to head the other direction.

March
Continued to build on February successes. Started asking Jack to sit when a human would walk by. Since he was starting to react to humans too, this was good low level distraction practice as well starting to nip a problem in the bud. I also drastically cut back on visits to the dog park and went to different places just me and Jack and low chance of another dog. Then last Tuesday we had a very successful string of Dog/Dog encounters where a lot of the different pieces came together for 3 very close dog/dog encounters all without freaking out. he still has the odd minor freak, still more then I wish, but we are getting there.

Just take it step at a time. Start with the loose leash and avoid dogs for a couple weeks. See how your dog does. And be sure to come back and ask questions if you need.

[Mattie]

Jacksdad, that was written who had Staffies for a status cymbal, they wanted a powerful, very muscled dog to go with their immage. They had very little ldea of how train a dog and many were dog aggressive because of lack of socialisation and training. They were also into CM, done alpha rolls etc then couldn't understand why their dogs were getting worse not better. I hate to say this but quite a lot were on the slow side mentally. I had to write something that they could understand without any problems, that is the result. I deliberately didn't put in how to deal with aggression because every dog is different and most people can't see the reason why their dog is aggressive and could use the wrong method which could make the problem worse.

99.9% of aggression is fear, to turn these dogs round we really need to know what they are frightened of. Take that fear away by teaching the dog they have nothing to fear and the dog has no reason to be aggressive as you are now finding out with Jack and is why he has improved so much. You have put a lot of hard work into teaching Jack that other dogs are not scary monsters and now benefiting from hour hard work.