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Her
Dog Shows Two Different Dear
Adam:
adopted
five months ago from a shelter.
We have received different opinions on his mix. Some have said
goldie/shepherd, some have said goldie/chow. The latter is the opinion of the
[local dog training academy], where he is presently enrolled in their
one-month board and train program.
We enrolled him because one month ago he attacked a jogger. The jogger was running by my
husband, who had Rudy in a sit on a slack leash. The jogger changed direction
quickly, running straight toward Derek and Rudy. Rudy lunged at the jogger, jumped
up on him, barking and growling aggressively. He tore
the man's jacket by nipping at it, but he did not bite the jogger. [You
weren’t paying attention to your dog. If you were, you’d have already
been running the other direction to execute the “attention getter” drill
as outlined in the book. – Editor ] The
only other time he had displayed such aggressive behavior was toward a UPS
driver coming up the driveway, but he was well under control that
time. He has
a very strong prey drive and dominant personality. He had been doing very well these
past three weeks at the Academy.
They were not able to elicit any aggressive behavior from him, and
his obedience training was going well. But last Thursday, he bit a
trainer. He apparently was
being put back into his kennel and ran off down a long hallway. He was not
leashed. When he got to the
dead end, he first went submissive, rolling over on his back. The trainer then reached to grab
his collar and Rudy gave her hand a good bite. She then reached for the collar
with her other hand, and he did the same to that hand. He did not give her any warning
growl or snap. He did not
move forward toward her, just reacted to her reach toward him. After the second bite she backed
off, and another trainer was
able to coax
Rudy to go back with her uneventfully. I have
read your book and believe that the trainer bite was an example of fear
aggression? (I don't know what to think about the jogger, though.) The Academy seems to be saying
that they can't train that reaction out of him; that we will just need to
be vigilant and mindful of his triggers. That goes without saying, and I
now believe that being cornered is one of his triggers. (Our vet had also mentioned that
when they cornered him to get him on a table, that he had snapped out at
them.) But your book and
tapes led me to believe that you can train such behavior out of a
dog. Or am I
misunderstanding? Are you merely just getting the dog to react to you
instead of following his instinctual reaction? Certainly that's a good thing, but
what if he's with someone else when he's triggered? We need
some perspective on this situation. I love him and want to give him every
chance to learn correct behaviors.
But on the other hand, we live in a dense children and jogger
packed neighborhood. We can't
keep him if there is reasonable risk of this kind of thing happening
again. - Mary
Ellen Dear
Mary Ellen: Thank
you for the e-mail. You've
got a couple of things to consider: 1.
The dog needs to be firmly corrected lunging. Going after the biker is a
prey-based aggression.
Correct him for this, as described in the book. 2.
Going after the trainer and the veterinarian is the result of the
dog being insecure and not trusting the handler. Usually in these types of cases,
he will not bite if he is secure that you will not hurt him. Or if he knows that he will only
be fairly corrected for behavior that he understands. With
aggressive behavior, we can never say 100% "All" or "Never" that your dog
will or will not show a specific behavior. Regardless, your dog needs to be corrected for such behavior,
and then shown that if he is calm, he gets praise and nothing bad happens
to him. This can sometimes be
achieved by placing the dog in such positions while he is wearing a
muzzle. He cannot bite you,
and ultimately learns that everything ends up “A-Okay.” To read more of my dog training ramblings, read about my book: Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer!
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