There are four things that are important when you want to prevent aggressive dog behavior.
1. When the dog meets another dog or a stranger, it must be praised when being friendly.
2. It must have a lot of opportunity to play with other puppies / dogs and meeting many different people, old as well as children, men as well as women, and other animals in the home, it is important that it meets them regularly as early as possible.
3. It must learn to “sit” – and “stay” – on command, so you can always take advantage of it, in problem situations. A dog lying down is not nearly as threatening as one standing up.
4. Should your dog start to show aggressive behavior, snarl, growl or bite, it shall immediately get a “quiet” command and has to lie down when appropriate. Never use a hard tug at the line, it will only increase aggression or make it afraid of you. Remember to praise the dog when it does what it is told. Actually it is a good idea to accustom the dog to always either sit or lie down immediately before it is allowed to greet someone, go in and out of the door or in and out of the car so that it waits for you to give permission.
Before I go any further, I better “come clean”! I belong to the “soft school”. I have learned and clearly believe that physical punishment of the dog is always a very bad idea. When I really want to “punish” my dog, I take hold of the cheeks, look it deep in your eyes, and read him his rights. Mine – and my teachers -experience is that it is better to reward the right actions, good behavior instead of punishing the wrong ones.
Dogs consultants have an incredible number of inquiries from people with dogs of about 4 to7 years of age who suddenly become aggressive, and upon closer investigation it turns out to be because of pain. Often the pain is in the neck and is caused by hard tug at the line when trying to get the dog to walk nicely. It’s much better to lure the dog with encouraging words and treats.
Now to return to prevention, it’s a very good idea to make sure that the puppy, when just acquired, will have ample opportunity to play with other puppies and friendly dogs as soon as it finishes vaccinated. It can be like a “play group” that meet once a week. It is especially good if you can start on a dog training class immediately. In this play group the puppy will build his confidence and also learn that there are some dogs that are dominant and others that it can dominate, and it learns to adapt. This also includes the mother bitch trying to teach her puppies right behavior. By having such a play group, can also be a place that the dog later returns to in order to restore his confidence, if it had trouble in a fight with an unknown dog during adolescence or later in life.
If the dog has become aggressive, there are several ways to tackle it. Generally speaking, the approach to use in the prevention, also is good to use in the treatment, including praise when the welcome friendly. Generally, there are a couple of dogs (or humans if it is aggressive toward humans, it is about) that the dog likes. The general and consistent obedience training is always good to resort to and it’s often a good idea to do some exercises in which it is stressed, who is “the dog”, but without resorting to “violence”. Showing the dog aggression, when you meet another dog or human, we must try to distract its attention by calling on it and have treats or ball ready when it obeys by looking at you. At the same time we must try to build a play group for dogs, so it can learn to associate with other dogs in a good way.
Hope you like the article, if you want more info on aggressive dog behavior, and find out how I changed my 8 y.o. dogs aggressive behavior check out my blog at: http://www.aggressivedogbehaviors.com
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