How do we control a reactive and aggressive boston terrier who has no problem with conflict? Patience. Calm energy. It's quite common for some dogs to have behaviors that require more work than just correcting the behavior out of them. I would argue it's more common than not. Almost never can we correct aggression out of a dog.
We can however lead the dog. Set the dog up for success until we build a better relationship with the dog and we can communicate more clearly. I don't have any sort of relationship with Mahoney at this point so I only have him around the easiest dogs that I have.
Mighty
Pretty unique insight into how we address when two more dominant male dogs get into a little disagreement. Sometimes doing nothing is best like what happened here. Not every circumstance requires intervention from a human.
I'm Back!
Here's the full video from my last post. Gotta figure out how to do this again 🤪
I'm back! Going to start posting two or three times a week again. It's been a long time but it's going to feel good connecting with you all again.
This is Bella, a dog available for adoption through Canine Cupids. She has a hard time meeting people but she's shown a great amount of progress in just the first few days being here.
Sox is here for a few weeks for some.pnvious reasons. Shes a young girl who doesnt quite know how to control her excitement. She did not have much success in her prior introductions to dogs in one of her previous rosters, so we are starting from scratch with this one. She's been here for about a week now and has already made some big strides.
Some of you may remember Clara from last summer. She did 3 weeks with us to work on her social skills with dogs and people. As you can see she has been doing great while her foster family is on vacation.
Unfortunately Clara needs a new foster home, preferably with dogs already, that can get her on a walk every day and socialize her with their dogs. Shes great with all medium to large dogs with proper introduction. She currently lives with older kids. Shes definitely someone's dream dog, we just need to find that someone.
If you are interested in adopting or fostering Clara long term, contact me or Tara with Paws Up Pet Rescue. I'm sure she will be commenting on this post 😊
Gigi is here for a few weeks for a quick reality check. She's got quite the bite history and is not the most pleasant dog when greeting new guests in the home.
Here's a sneak peek into how I take dogs out of the kennel with a bite history whom I have no relationship with.
Hint: trust your GUT!
How can you tell if your dog trusts you and respects you? Here is common test you can use to see where you are at with your dog.
Goldie came to us guarding her food and toys. Resource guarding, in most cases, is simply a symptom of lack of respect for authority or lack if trust in general. With Goldie it was both.
She had no reason to respect humans since no one ever guided her in a way she understood. Because of this lack of leadership she became an extremely anxious dog who would growl and nip when simply being touched in a way she did not approve of. That is where the lack of trust comes in.
Through consistent leadership and a lot of relationship building exercises, she learned that A. She has no reason to guard food and B. She CANT guard food. Now we get to have a dog who respects boundaries by waiting patiently for her food, and does not growl while shes eating since she trusts that we will not annoy her.
Grover is a young Rottie who came with some more serious issues, reactive on walks, buting his owners, guarding food and toys. The whole nine. You may wonder why I dont cover any of that in thus video. The answer is simple.
In order to truly get rid of problem behaviors you need to build a relationship with the dog built on a foundation of trust and respect. Trust is what we are establishing in this video. A trust that when he sits, I'll give him food. When he goes to place, I'll give him food. I'm teaching him a language and he has got to trust that I will never fail him. I'll talk about respect in a separate video.
Some dogs need more than what I can do myself. It is very important that dogs like Blue learn to respect other dogs. This is best accomplished by socializing them with more dominant dogs at a young age.
Blue is about 7 months or so and clearly has never dealt with an assertive presence like Marlin. It was important that he get a reality check from his own kind. If we can teach young dogs to respect other dogs without having to intervene, we will have done them a great service.
By the end of this video you can see Blue is much more respectful around Marlin because of Marlins presence, not because I am helicoptering over him, even though i did sneakily step in to help a teeny bit in this video. If we could get Bkue around many more dogs like this, he would learn to respect other dogs' space by default (reliable habit) rather than assuming he can run up on them barking his head off.
We had a lot of questions about our recent post about dominance come up in our personal messages, so let's talk more about it.
If you don't know by now, these are my two dogs Marlin and Mya. We had just finished playing with this toy and Marlin ended up with it. Now that you have the context, let's dissect some things I've said in the past.
In response to a question somewhere along the line of "Which of your dogs is most dominant?" You may have heard me say "none of them are, I am." That statement is true, however not entirely. There most certainly is a pecking order in our house. Now the next question is "who decides the pecking order?" That gets tricky.
Ultimately, I have no say in who is number two, three , four or five. All I am concerned with is who number one is (me) and every other animal is below that. I could care less what they decide among themselves who ranks higher. Ultimately the stronger dog is going to assert themself over the other dogs. You can see a little snippet of that hear.
Mya is absolutely toy obsessed. Despite having only three legs, she will chase with the best of them and often times take the toy right out if their mouth if she does not get their first. So, why isn't she taking it from Marlin? She clearly wants to, you can see in her eyes that she's going crazy. She simply respects Marlin that much. She is aware that he is fully capable of asserting himself over her.
Now there are a couple more questions I know I will get from this. "Jake, if Marlin is being territorial, why don't you correct him and tell him he can't be territorial?" The short answer is to see the fourth paragraph. I simply do not care what these two (three if you include Rocko) figure out among themselves. If I know there is a risk for a fight, that will be handled accordingly. In this context, I know Marlin would at worst tell her off.
Now to answer another question that will give you a bit of an insider secret within the dig training community. At least amon
Insecure reactive dogs. See it every day. In fact, most reactive dogs that I work with are very insecure. It's important to understand WHY a dog is reactive, but does how we come up with a solution vary depending on the dogs tempermant? Only slightly. .
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Whether to dog is insecure or over confident, we still need to be able to communicate to the dog that it is not okay to enter a reactive state of mind. We most certainly will find an appropriate way to correct every dog who is over reactive, regardless of why they are doing it. .
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What changes is what happens after the correction. With over confident dogs, we won't have to worry as much about tearing down their spirit. Certainly it is something we are always aware of, but if a dog is truly over confident, even after firm corrections, they simply enter a respectful, calm state of mind. .
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With a nervous and insecure dog, as soon as we snap them out of this reactive state of mind, we have to be very mindful of the repercussions of whatever correction we applied. If the dog runs away and hides in the corner, proceeds to shut down, we have to bring them out of that hidden, defeated, shut down state of mind by bringing them back into the room. Only then can they realize it was not their presence that was corrected, but their action of reactivity. .
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One more thing that MUST happen. Whatever is making the dog be reactive (human, dog or other stimulus), must respect the dogs boundaries and IGNORE them. That does not mean walk up to the dog and bend over and offer your hand to sniff. Simply act like the dog is not there. Don't touch them, don't look at them, definitely do not approach them. .
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This combination of holding the dog accountable and the stimulus respecting the dogs boundaries will allow the dog to feel like A. They are not ALLOWED to react, B. They do not NEED to react C. "This is not so bad after all."
Enlightened K9 is southeast Wisconsin's premier dog training establishment. We are often the last stop for the most severe cases.
