Aggression

After about six weeks of living with Trill, Dr. Sharp knew that the frightened, anxious dog needed something more. The training and behavior protocols were working in the sense that the dog was cooperative, but Trill still had a panicked look in her eyes much of the time. Sharp was concerned: No animal should have to live with that much fear, she thought.

at least until the NILIF program has had a chance to take effect. If he jumps into the car and immediately takes up his position at the steering wheel

Garbage-raiding, counter-surfing, barking at passers-by ... How do you train your dog to stop his bad behavior? Often, the answer isn’t a matter of training at all!

As a holistic behavior consultant, I believe that most problems people experience with their dogs are not really dog problems but rather communication problems. Dogs don't have problems being dogs; they have problems being dogs who live with humans. Most humans don't even know how to communicate with each other! Every interaction you have with a dog teaches the dog something about living with a human.

Hannah was a normal, healthy Labrador Retriever puppy: happy, boisterous, playful, and always willing to eat. Hannah’s owner, Connecticut resident Anne Hassett, bought Hannah when the pup was seven weeks old. Hassett trained, socialized, and loved the golden pup. A field-line Labrador, Hannah hunted on the weekends and enjoyed the comfy life of a companion Lab weekdays. Hannah was well known in hunting circles for her steady, easy-going temperament, the coveted hallmark of the Labrador breed. Hassett considered breeding her, and had the dog examined and tested for genetic diseases.

There’s nothing like a good dog-pack hike to give our canine companions an opportunity to have fun with their peers and run themselves into a happy state of exhaustion – provided there are no canine bullies in the group. Just like human bullies on a school playground, canine bullies take the fun out of the game, put everyone on edge, and bring to the party a real risk of physical as well as psychological damage. A dog who is bullied, especially at a young age, can quickly develop a negative association with other dogs and become defensively aggressive as a result.

The tragedy of the 12-year-old boy killed by his family’s Pit Bulls in San Francisco once again highlights the importance of providing information that will help people survive such dog attacks – and perhaps the need for laws that encourage and require dog owners to be responsible for their dogs. Any large, powerful breed of dog will, occasionally, cause serious injury, even death. Small dogs can certainly bite, too, though they normally have less potential to do serious harm (the Pomeranian who killed a six-week-old infant in California in 2000 notwithstanding).

I have a serious problem with my six-year-old neutered male Vizsla. He was a high strung, but good tempered dog for the first three years of his life. Something seemed to snap after that. He is loving and affectionate most of the time, but he gets aggressive when family members leave the kitchen (he and our other dog are limited to the kitchen and family room). He barks, snaps at them, and snags clothes with his teeth. He has never chomped down and bitten anyone, but he has scratched people with a tooth.

At some point in our lives, some of us find ourselves living with a difficult dog, one whose behavior challenges our patience, and exhausts our training knowledge – and opens our hearts and eyes to a new, better way of training. This is the story of one such dog and her very knowledgeable dog owner. Together, they reached an entirely new and higher level of dog training skills, thanks to the owner’s life-altering experiences with a reactive dog who wasn’t fit to compete in the career intended for her: Flyball. Flyball is not the sport for everyone. It is a relay team event, which means you have to commit to training and competing with your dog and other dogs and dog owners as a team, and you have to have an appreciation for over-the-top dogs and the resulting cacophony of sounds. In flyball, a team of four dogs race, one after the other, leaping a series of hurdles, throwing their bodies against a spring-loaded box that ejects a tennis ball, snatching the ball, and hurtling their bodies back down the row of jumps to where their next teammates strain to be released for their turns. The fastest team wins.

Your vet should be a important member of your problem-solving team if your dog displays idiopathic aggression.

Not all dogs have the benefit of a nice start in life. Sergeant had about the worst start possible. His first owners left Sergeant locked in their apartment when they abandoned it in October 1997. By the time the landlord found him, the three-year-old male Rottweiler-mix was emaciated. The landlord brought him to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (SPCA) of Upstate NY, a no-kill shelter. It was several days before Sergeant could eat solid food without vomiting.

So, what should you do if your dog is the victim of a canine bully? Intervene, by all means. Here are some of the signs to look for that tell you that you need to step in and break up the interaction.