Dealing With Aggression In Dogs

HUGE topic and ALOT to cover, I hope I address everything I want to without getting side tracked or blabbing too much about stuff.

When you narrow it down, most aggression cases are fear based.

• Resource Guarding - afraid that their high value object will be taken away from them.
• Territorial - afraid they will lose their territory/space that is high value to them.
• Human Aggression - they perceive the person(s) as a threat to themselves, usually dog warnings go unnoticed by us humans and then get a secondary warning (bite).

How to avoid aggression problems? There are many ways #1 being don't correct/punish your dog! This sounds very bad from a owners perspective, as I'm sure you want to let the dog know that the kind of behaviour he or she just exhibited was unacceptable.BUT, did you think of WHY you dog even needed to show that behaviour?

Example :

Past client of mine has a dog that is extremely dog-dog aggressive, cannot even SEE a dog in a distance without lunging and pulling you down the road to attack the dog. After speaking with the client, the man continues to tell me that it started out of nowhere and has been progressively getting worse for the past year. I keep trying to get some sort of answer out of him, I was looking for the dog's trigger or the event that started the dog's thought process on this track. Finally, the man's son speaks up and tells me that the dog was attacked out of nowhere by a neighbors dog just over a year ago, BINGO! So now I knew WHY he reacts aggressively towards dogs. I also find out that when the dog was just growling they would smack it over the snout to tell him not to do that, so now this dog has lost his 1st warning to other dogs (growl) that he is scared, what is the secondary warning.....a bite. 

The owners also have yelled and screamed and leash corrected the dog numerous of times when the dog got in a dog fight (as they were told their dog is dominant and needed to be shown who's the boss), so now this poor dog has learned that when he's near dogs BAD BAD things happen, so OF COURSE he's aggressive, he doesn't know what else to do. His mind is telling him, Dogs = bad, well he see's a dog and he wants them to go away so he charges at them and fights.

So now we have a dog that has learned aggression with fear aggression, also this dog was under exercised (100 lb dog out for 10 min walks at 11pm at night, no other exercise throughout the day). 

So this dog as you can see was showing aggression due to a number of things: No exercise, corrections near/around dogs, lack of obedience and most importantly what started it, a traumatic event for the dog. Not to mention the stress that this dog was carrying, wow.

So HOW do you FIX an aggressive dog? 

(do not attempt this without professional help as you can endanger other dogs and/or people)

Change the dog's thought process, much like cognitive behavioural therapy in humans. You need to expose the dog to the stimulus/trigger in a gradual period of time, always making sure the dog is having a POSITIVE experience during therapy. If you push that dog over his or her threshold you are taking steps back with training. If the dog is constantly barking or growling, he or she is LEARNING from this.
By no means am I saying, "get out there and throw your dog by a bunch of strange dogs" this would be just utter chaos and stressful for both you and your dog.
Find a behavioiurist or trainer in your area. Make sure if you're working with a trainer that they have,

1. Experience working with aggression cases
2. Use ONLY positive reinforcement (no shock collars, choke chains, reprimand, intimidation ect) ASK!
3. Is comfortable working with your dog (some trainers won't work with certain breeds)  

Ask questions about what goes on during a rehabilitation  and keep asking them! A good trainer will ALWAYS answer your questions without a price.

With professional help you can overcome your dog's problems in less then 1/2 the time trying to do it yourself.

** Be careful about searching for information on forums and chats, a lot of those people are just dog owners looking for answers themselves and are not qualified to give you a solution over the internet. **

Aggression CANNOT be fixed over the internet or phone!

A great DVD to help understand Aggression is Behaviour Adjustment Training by Grisha Stewart
You can find this at Dog Wise Website : http://www.dogwise.com/

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