1. Long Line Recall - See notes and videos on this.

Transcription

1 Aggression Dog to Dog The most common cause for Dog to Dog aggression is getting attacked by another dog at the dog park. I hear about this dozens of times every year. We highly recommend avoiding all dog parks if at all possible. Only bring your dog around other dogs you know and trust. I have received phone calls from people where their dog has just killed another dog at the dog park and are wondering what they should do. I have been asked by people, "What should I do when my dog attacks another dog at the park? He grabs onto their neck so hard I have to choke him out and it takes about 2 minutes for him to almost pass out. In that time the other owner is pretty upset." I have heard about a dog going around attacking other dogs and Bylaw was called to capture the dog. They could not find the owner. When 5:30pm rolled around the owner showed up. This guy would drop his dog off at the dog park at 8am and then go to work for the whole day leaving his dog unsupervised. I could go on and on but you get the point. Dog parks can cause a lot of problems. When we were in the city we would still go to the dog park but we would go at quiet times and where you could see dogs from a long ways off to decide if you wanted to go near them or not. Most often we would just avoid all other dogs and play games by ourselves off to the side. What happens after this? If a dog gets attacked, prior to that attack they may have felt their people were good at keeping them safe. After that attack they may feel their people are not up to the task of being a leader so the dog takes over as Alpha. This is when they can become quite reactive or aggressive to other dogs and people. Sometimes a dog may just be naturally aggressive as part of a breed characteristic. Pit bulls, Mastiffs, Rottweilers and German Shepherds can fall into those categories. You can still have "teddy bears" in those breeds but sometimes they are aggressive by trait. These dogs should be treated like a loaded gun, be careful who they are pointed at. Putting them to work is the best option. They will likely never be buddy buddy with all other dogs. How do we get back to the nice dog I used to have? The nice dog you used to have may never be back unfortunately. Sometimes you can get lucky and you will get that nice dog back. Many people want their nice dog back so they can go back to the dog park. You should be forewarned that you can spend a lot of time rehabilitating your dog and all it takes is one dog at the dog park to come pick a fight again and your hundreds or thousands of hours in training are erased instantly. Again I highly recommend avoiding the dog park. We are going to go over training methods that help out a lot. What are the training methods? The two best steps I find are these: 1. Long Line Recall - See notes and videos on this.

2 2. Sits and Downs working for food - See notes and videos on sits and downs. 3. Fetch or Tug - See notes and videos on fetch and tug. What you are doing here is this: You are getting your dog to focus on you with a distraction present. In this case it will be other dogs your dog does not like. Keep the other dogs at a safe distance. In Long Line Recall you can make the dog follow you whether they want to or not. In this you will go away from the other dog and then back toward and then away and repeat over and over. In many cases your dog will start listening to you. The second approach is having your dog work for their kibble to do obedience commands. Your dog does not get any food for free from their bowl. If they want to eat they have to work for it while another dog is present at an acceptable distance. Some dogs will choose not to work for their food for 2 days. The dog does not get to eat unless they are focusing on you. You are not starving your dog since you are giving them plenty of opportunity to work for their food. In almost all cases the dog will start to focus on you doing commands and begin ignoring the other dog so that they can earn their meal. Think of it this way: Your dog can be 100% focused on the distraction or they can be 100% focused on you at the opposite spectrum. There can be a variation in between. If your dog is 100% focused on you then they do not care about the other dog. This is the principle of "Socializing a Puppy" (See notes on Socializing a Puppy). Your goal is to get your dog to focus on you with other dogs present through either obedience or games. Two games that help to accomplish this are Fetch and Tug. There are excellent notes and videos on both Fetch and Tug. If you can get your dog to choose Fetch or Tug over going after another dog your life will be much easier. If a dog is highly tug or fetch motivated that can sometimes shortcut training. Have the dog on a long line for safety and play fetch or tug with them at a distance from other dogs. Sometimes that is all it takes to get a dog good with seeing other dogs at a distance. You don't usually get that lucky but sometimes you do.

3 See below for another option with drawing: Another technique that works quite well is tying your dog to a post with about 3 feet of slack. There is a picture below to help clarify. You will tie your dog to Point North and you will have the other dog off at a distance at Point East. You yourself will stand at Point West. Often times when you tie your dog up and start walking away your dog will stop acting aggressive and start focusing on you. They were only trying to act aggressive when they thought they had the rest of their pack to back them up. You can then see if your dog will listen to your commands and often they will to earn their meal. This is going to take a lot of time and patience. You may be doing this for months. The more your dog focuses on you and ignores other dogs the better things are going for you. You can start bringing in other dogs closer and closer. Each time you bring another dog closer your dog is likely to react. It is time in healing this emotional wound on your dog. If you feel things are going too slowly you should read "Aggression 1 st Read" article where it says "It's Too Slow Tyson, I Thought This Would Be Faster".

4 See another technique below: Distance Commands are very important (see video on Distance Commands) to get your dog to listen. You should train your dog to understand sit and down from a distance of at least 200 feet. Once you have this you can then tie your dog up and walk to the other side of a pathway where dogs on leash with their owners are walking down the path. You can then get your dog to do sits and downs. Once you have accomplished this you have reached an excellent goal point as your dog is focusing on you with other dogs going in between the two of you. These techniques mentioned are really good starters. As your dog gets better you can begin loose leash walking around these distractions. Do not practice loose leash walking if you have not first mastered it without distractions. There are excellent notes and videos on loose leash walking. This is going to be difficult to train as a dog that has aggression problems wants to be the boss and will not easily give up lead position on the walk. You are likely going to need to increase negative consequences for them being in front such as using Bitter Apple Spray, Prong Collar or a Dogtra IQ remote collar. Sometimes when your dog is acting aggressive a good blast of Bitter Apple spray in their mouth will stop them from being aggressive. If this works count yourself as lucky as you have a very mild case of aggression. Summary You are going to need a lot of time and patience. You will need the characteristic of being very consistent, organized and methodical. Overcoming dog aggression is one of the hardest things to do with a dog. It is easy to read "hard work" and think nothing of it. Hard work means you should be spending a minimum of 1 to 2 hours per day and do this for 3-6 months

5 to start seeing results. You may be at this for 1 or more years. You will have a very good appreciation for "An ounce of prevention is worth ten thousand pounds of cure". If you are not able to provide clear leadership and make your dog work for absolutely everything there is a very good chance you will fail. Having a military like regimen can help out. If you have a dominant dog you need to get to the point where when you walk into the room and look your dog in the eyes your dog's ears immediately go back and they lick their lips. That is what respect looks like. If your dog is coming running over and jumping on you, your dog does not yet have respect for you. The single best thing you can do is treat your dog like a dog. I tell people that we do not spoil our dogs. We want them to be happy so we treat them like dogs. I will leave you with the definition of spoil. Spoil - To damage irreparably; ruin. I hope you found this informative and helpful. This is in no way meant to make you feel bad if you have been spoiling your dog or not making them follow through on rules. I myself have violated every single rule I tell people to follow. Once I learned the importance of them I now consistently follow them. When it comes to aggression, I can t beat around the bush, I have to tell you exactly how it is. I really want every single one of my clients to have 100% success. Please follow the rules. The few that are lucky can have a dog that does decent around other nice dogs. The majority will have a dog they can manage better but they always have to be careful around other dogs. The dog is treated like a loaded gun.