Our 18 month old rescue dog has bit my wife three times. What should we do?

Question

We have an 18-month-old girl lab mix named "Lily" that we rescued six months ago. She was a loud barker right from the start, but seemed to make herself at home with us. Neither my wife or I had much experience as dog owners, so we naively hoped that a loving & comfortable home life would be enough to calm her down. She is very smart and did in fact learn to mind us and show us a lot of affection after a while, but she was still difficult to manage on walks and showed territorial aggression around the house with friends and meter readers, etc. We took her to a professional trainer who helped make a difference, but he confirmed that she was one of the most stubborn dogs he had ever worked with.

    I am writing to you now because she just bit my wife for the third time. The first time occurred when Lily was sick with an upset stomach and bit my wife's face as she was leaning over her to try to comfort her. Not too much later Lily bit my wife on the finger when she was trying to control her at a car dealership. Tonight my wife was again bending over her to kiss her, and Lily lashed out. Each occasion was a quick strike without any provoked attack or growling; after each attack, we tried to correct her by shouting NO and by flipping her on her back and holding her down for a minute or so. She responds by being submissive for awhile, but we feel like we can't trust her anymore and now realize that our social life is being affected by our fears about her with people coming to our house.

    We've read the letters from other owners on your site and wonder whether anything can be done or whether we are up to making the changes required. She has been sleeping on our bed at night, so we'd have a long way to go. What do you think?

    Thanks,
 George

Accepted Answer

I think you have a couple levels of decisions to make here. The first is do you want to continue to try and save this dog or in reality is it time to send her back to the shelter - where she will be put down? If you want to try then you need to work at it in a better way. Here is what needs to be done:

NO MORE BEDROOM - read my articles on this. This is the most foolish mistake that dog owners make. Get a dog crate and the dog should learn to live in it. Feed her in there. Put her in it when people come, and she always sleeps in it.
Train this dog with a prong collar. If you would like to learn something about the principles of obedience training a dog, read the description for my Basic Dog Obedience video. You will probably find that you have not had the full picture on the steps of training a dog must go through before it can be considered fully trained. You can also read why I am not a fan of taking an untrained dog to obedience classes.
Do not kiss this dog. DO NOT ALPHA ROLL any dog - read my web site. I have talked about how foolish this is. A great way to lose your face.
If there is any concern about the safety of the dog, get a muzzle (the Jafco muzzles we have are inexpensive and work well). When the dog goes out for walks or rides it wears the muzzle.

This dog needs strict obedience. If you keep it you need to become a responsible pet owner. You inadvertently have not been one.