Possessive Aggression in Dogs

Possessive Aggression

In Dogs

dog

Most dominant dogs are also possessive dogs.

One must think about this when handling these kinds of dogs.

I have 2 male dogs. They get along well until I go in the backyard with them. When I go back there they start to fight. Do you know what is instigating this? Also do you think it is best to just kennel them off from each other?

Dealing with
Dominant & Aggressive Dogs

I read your article and found it very helpful. I have a six month old Beagle pup, Reagan. As I am writing this email, he is being neutered. We brought him home at 7 weeks of age and noticed immediately that he had food aggression. We were given different instructions on what to do and have now begun feeding him out of our hands and petting him gently on the back. He is finally starting to not growl when we pet him on the back. He was also growling when we put his water bowl down. I've been putting my hand in the water and he licks my hand and seems to be okay.
In addition to the food aggression, he is also starting to show other dominant traits, like growling if you go near him when he sleeps, etc.

I have two small boys at home and am concerned that these problems can not be corrected. I have signed our entire family with our dog for an 8 week pet training/obedience class. This starts next week. We were letting Reagan sleep in our bed, but after reading your article and on the advice of my vet, he is out of our bed tonight and off all furniture. I figured today would be a good day to start since he is being neutered today. My question to you is do you think that since he is showing these traits so early that any effort that we make to correct it will not help, or on the other hand, since we are getting a grip on things early, do you think he can be helped? Other than his aggression problems, he is a good dog. He does not beg, he is house-broken and does not destroy things in our house. I am very concerned about my family's safety. I have two boys, 4 and 8. He has snapped at my 4 year old twice. Please let me know what you think.

I am currently 5 months pregnant with my first child and the joint owner of a pit-bull mix (Male, 4yrs old) and blue heeler mix (female, 1 yr old). I am concerned about the potential of my pets to view my baby as a threat to their position in our home, and have considered placing them outdoors. However, my husband objects and feels that placing them outside would be cruel. I am the disciplinarian of our home and often have conflicts with my husband about the dogs. He allows them to place their heads in his lap when he eats. He plays tug games with them and allows the female to nip him during play. He also allows them to pull when we take walks. His lack of discipline disturbs me because I feel that we should have more control over them especially now that we have a baby on the way. I'd never forgive myself if one or both of them were to harm my baby in any way.
Should I put my foot down and demand that the dogs be moved outside? I am being made to feel like a bad person because I want order in my home.

Basic Dog Obedience

I have been reading your web site and feel you could give me a good answer with what little info I can give you. We have a wonderful dominant GSD, 6 yrs. had since she was a puppy. She is not dominant with us or our kids (7 & 5) and has always been excellent. We adopted a rescue male Mastiff cross 2 days ago. He is around a year old. He seems very submissive with everyone in our family as well as our GSD. Our GSD is possessive with her food, her kennel and her toys-will bark and growl (no teeth) and he will back off right away. There have been no fights at all and they will sleep in the same room when out of their kennels. Is this too good to be true? Will it change? We are careful of course. If we leave the room, we make our kids come with us. At night we let our GSD free (she chooses to sleep in her kennel but it is not locked) and put the new dog locked in his (he is fine with it, not barking), they are both fairly well trained. Our GSD will bark at little bit if we are petting the new dog, but it has gotten less, and we make sure to give her treats first, food, attention, going outside etc. Are we doing the right things and is there any info you could suggest? What should we watch out for? All the other web sites seem so wishy-washy and you seem to be realistic and honest. Thank you for any advice you could give us, and thank you for reading this!

I have a pet sitting business in Sarasota, Florida called Luv'm and Leash'm. I have a client that has a 6 month old lab/maybe sheppard mix ... mutt! They crate him, which he seems to be okay with. I just started walking him on a regular basis during the lunch time hour. When I get there he is excited to see me and we enjoy a nice walk. Sometimes he is skittish, but is okay with both people and other dogs. When the walk is over and I take off the leash he immediately rushes back into his crate and gets into a stance where he is prepared to attack if I touch the crate door, he starts barking and growling if I touch the door. He does become aggressive and almost psycho. I am not sure how to correct the behavior. I am not sure if he would bite me or not, but I don't want to tempt him either. I end up throwing a treat into the cage to distract him and then use my foot to close the cage. He then lunges at my shoe and bites the bottom of my shoe. The owner is aware of the issue and has NOT seen this behavior before. We are planning an afternoon for them to spy and see what happens. I don't want to encourage the behavior by feeding Cool a biscuit, but I don't have any other suggestions. Can you help from the info that I have given?

How to Fit a Prong Collar

eBook

I have a 5 month old jack russell shortly who occasionally will growl when we try to take a bone/pigs ear away and even growled one time when we went into his food bowl. What can we do to correct it before it happens again and how do we handle at the time it does happen. Currently we just growl back at him and roll him over and regain dominance. We keep him on his back until he calms down and breaks eye contact. We have had this situation a few times and we are beginning we aren't handling it right because it has happened again. Please help-thanks.

We are the owners of a 5 1/2 month old Golden Retriever. I was reading your articles on Dog Dominance and it seems that we have a puppy who thinks that he is the alpha. There are a few things that we have noticed. One is that he does growl when we put our hand in his food dish and also if we give him a pig ear as a treat he runs around growling with it and will not let us get near him at all. He also has started to bark constantly. We started puppy school this week and they stated to use the word hush and when he stops give him a treat. He is a very smart puppy and he will hush to get the treat and then starts to bark again. My biggest problem with him right now is that he bites. He use to playful bit when he was younger and we would tell him no and give him a toy to chew on, but now it has become a problem. He is very aggressive when he bites and shows teeth and growls. We have tried some techniques that we have read about (sticking your finger down there throat, holding there nose shut, hitting them under the chin) and none seem to work, it just makes him angry. The class stated to push his nose but we are unable to even get to his nose to push it before our fingers are in his mouth. He is still young and we are hopeful that we will have a great family dog someday but we need some help.....

Remote Collar Training for the Pet Owner

I have a Doberman which I rescued from a bad situation, he is very gentle with my other dogs and cats inside the home. I grew up with Dobermans so I'm very aware of the breed. He has a super high prey drive and a hair trigger temperament. I take him to dog parks and he does very well with other dogs, but you add a tennis ball to the mix and he becomes super aggressive, he likes to retrieve the ball and bring it to me to throw it for him and it's a great way to exercise him, but he has becomes aggressive when another dog either approaches the ball or grabs it and will get into a very nasty dog fight. Possessive aggression is out of hand. I bought him a shock collar to stop him from running after squirrels and into the street, he already knew his basic commands and more so it was very easy to train him, and I hardly ever have to shock him, but with the tennis ball even shocking him does not stop him, he drops it for me but any dog approaches us he attacks without a warning I correct his behavior with come and down and he does obey but he still is aggressive about the ball. I'm not sure what to do, he does not back down and I would hate not to be able to take him out to run anymore and removing the ball would totally cut down on his exercise. I have read to take away the ball and avoid the situation but I’m not ready to give up. There has got to be a way to correct this behavior because 1 am the boss and he needs to listen and my commands should be all important to my dog, but 1 must be doing something wrong.

I found your web page as I was researching dog dominance. We've got a great case of dominance. The dog is approaching 2 years old and has very strong dominance behavior with sexual excitement issues. Our friends rescued him from a shelter at the estimated age of 14 months. My husband and I are doing all the right things to make us the leader and the dog be the follower. The dog does not like being demoted from leader to follower but too bad. We're the pack leaders, we set the rules.

Just a quick list so that you know we're not totally stupid dog owners: We eat first, he eats last and on our command. When we walk, we lead, he follows. We go through doors first, he enters on our command. We give affection when we want, he can ask but we don't give. No freebies. He has to earn everything, food, affection, etc. He is not allowed on sofas or beds--he is only allowed on the floor. When he misbehaves, it's "outside!" and he comes back in when we're ready. Demand barking means more "outside" time. No whining. No whimpering. No comfort for bad behavior. With all of this, the dog still has dominance issues.

I understand it takes time and consistency after all, we've only had him for less than 8 months. So we're prepared to hunker down for the long haul because this pushy bully of a dog will take a long time. What we were unprepared for was seeing dog mount a bucket. I found one thing on the Thethe Internet about mounting inanimate objects. The article said the dog was frustrated and advised to needed to dominate something. The article fear let the dog mount something without of negative reprisal. dog mount a bucket. I found one thing on the The article said the dog was frustrated and advised to let the dog mount something without.

Here's the story:
A week ago, the dog dragged a large bucket into the main yard. Those are stored on the side of the house. We let it go because he likes swinging buckets around and it wasn’t causing any harm.
One day, I noticed him beginning to mount the bucket and said, NO. He got off. I put the bucket back in the stack. A few days later, my husband was doing some gardening and caught the dog in full mounting position on the bucket with his penis hanging out about 4 inches. We removed all of the buckets from the yard. My cousin told me later that he saw the dog enjoying the bucket for more than 2 hours straight with his pink thing hanging out. Buckets of all sizes have been in the yard before and we didn’t see the mounting behavior. Also, he doesn’t mount the bucket every time he sees it. What’s going on in his brain where heeds mounting a bucket with sexual excitement? Do you have any suggestions for us? Please email or call. Many thanks.

Muzzles

Myself and my husband are new dog owners, who researched your website, and others prior to buying our now 8 month old male American Bulldog. We both agree with everything you have said on your website and are looking for some assistance. I have read the articles on your sight about the overly aggressive dog and we have your basic dog obedience DVD.

The problem is that our dog has become extremely food aggressive, and this has displayed itself in a matter of one week. First off, I know that we have created this problem, so I am looking for what my husband and I can do now to correct ourselves and improve our status as leaders with our dog.

We have had Briggs since he was 8 weeks old, and we crate trained him from day one. He has not had a problem with learning the basics and is a very intelligent and well mannered dog. He has always slept in the crate and is in the crate when we are not home. He was made to sit before he eats, every time, and we always take rawhides away from him at the end, because he will try to swallow them whole and choke. I have taken rawhides from him by getting his attention, telling him out, and then taking the bone. He had never even growled at me in the past.

Last week I did the same thing and he got up, growled fiercely and came at me with his paws. My husband firmly corrected him (a shot to the ribs) and he was put in his crate for the night. No more rawhides. We attempted to try and stop him from eating during dinner two days later to test whether he would respond better, and he did the same thing.

Here are the mistakes that I know we have made. 1. After a few months, when he was learning and being so obedient, we allowed Briggs on the couch with us. I know now that established him as our equal. He is no longer allowed on any furniture, after the first incident with the rawhide. 2. His crate was in our bedroom, now it is in our family room and he is not allowed in our bedroom. 3. we slacked off on our obedience training. We used to do it daily, but then only afew times a week. We are back to daily. 4. We allowed Briggs to be off leash in our yard, and we used an electric collar instead of a prone collar (this collar did not work when he was in high drive, he would run to play with our neighbors dog and the collar did not affect him.

Now Briggs is on leash at all times, with a prong collar. He is perfect in the house, listens on walks and even avoids other dogs. This has been for the past week. Yesterday my husband wanted to see how he would react with the food, and Briggs went after him. My long drawn out question is, what can we do to reestablish ourselves as the pack leaders? We are getting him neutered this week, and we are considering taking him to a professional trainer, who shares the same beliefs as you. We could either have 8 sessions with the trainer and our dog, or he could board him for two weeks. But we are still concerned about whether Briggs will ever learn to be non aggressive. I apologize for the length of the email, and would be grateful for any comments you may have.

Prong Collars

I have been raising a pure bred German Shepard now for 4 months and 3 weeks and about 46 pounds. From the start we got your videos (your puppy 8 weeks to 8 months and also & basic dog obedience) and I have watched them and enjoyed them many times; I have learned a lot from them. Every day twice to three times a day we do training exercise's for about 10 minutes incorporated in playing ball in the back yard with a leash, this insists on me throwing the ball and her chasing it. She is a very food driven hard animal. We practice the basic commands, sit, stay, down stay, come, wait etc. She does them with no problems, Also I wanted to say that from day one when feeding her we have taught her to sit and wait before allowing her to eat or drink, she will wait for the "ok" command before she eats or drinks anything when we are placing it in front of her just like when entering or exiting a door way or her cage, she will wait until the "ok" is given.

I also groom her every single night for about 3 minutes. I am telling you all this because I wanted to make sure you know that I try and do the right things in being a new dog handler and trying to go about things the correct way the first time. My question is this, within the past month to month and a half she has been "food bowl guarding". I have read your website on this and talk to her and gently stroke her back while she is eating, and also put my hands in the bowl, this makes her eat faster. I have also tried to use different food bowls to break her of this habit, such as Tupperware containers, paper plates, feeding her in different areas of the house to try and break this guarding. She was getting better at it for awhile but now she has, just within the past week got worse. This morning and also this after noon when approaching her and talking to her she would growl, then step back and bark at me while her ears back and down and hunched over, I immediately grab her by the back of her neck by her skin and shake her till I hear a whelp and tell her "bad" instead of "no" and in doing so she usually roles on her side or her back. When I am grabbing her sometimes she will go after my wrist and mouth it, almost like she wants to bite me but thinks twice at the last minute but she makes contact with my wrists just doesn't add pressure to it.

This also concerns me for when she gets older and bigger. If I approach her while talking with her and just walk by her without touching her (lately) she also would growl and stop eating with her head down and ears back. I have tried several things but what seems to work for the moment is calling her name while she is eating and she immediately looks at me and I will tell her to sit, and then give her the "wait" command and she will stop eating and sit and wait. I don't make it a practice of grabbing her food bowl away but I have done it a few times to see If I can approach it and grab and take it up without getting a response and so far so good with that approach, she will stop eating every time and sit and wait and let me touch the bowl with no problems. Its when I go and pet her, walk by her, she growls, once I am there I can put my hand in the bowl with no problems except for her picking the pace up with the eating as if I was going to take it away. She was a litter of 8 with 7 females and 1 male, she was the biggest female almost the size of the male, at 8 weeks she weighed 13 pounds. My question is with reading the above and taking all this into consideration what would your honest opinion be. We always feed her out of the cage, once again thanks for your time and any advice would be appreciated.

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