Our dog we recently got back after 3 years attacks our smaller dogs even though they lay down and submit. What can we do?

Question

I know you must get many letters so I appreciate you taking the time to read and answer my email. and I am writing to ask your opinion because I am at wit's end with my dog which is part Border Collie and part Australian Sheppard. I picked up the dog when it was 6 weeks old and met the mother, but the father was locked up because they said it would attack strangers (perhaps that should have been a clue - but I did not know it at the time). I trained her by positive reinforcement. The dog, Sable, who is now 7 years old, has always minded me and never acted aggressively towards me, however she is completely random with her aggression towards everyone else. She seems to tolerate some people but if they reach for her she will snarl as a warning and then bite. The only people she has not snarled at or snapped at are my parents. I had to give her away three years ago to another family because I was traveling daily, but they returned her recently when she started acting aggressively towards their toddler and felt they could not always be watching her. She immediately recognized me and started minding my every command. I brought her back to my house and she attacked both of our small male dogs, including the one who had submitted, by turning on his back. I feel this dog is a big liability, but because she is very intelligent and loyal to the core with me, I feel an obligation and a desire to find a solution other than putting her to sleep. Do you think it is possible to train a 7 year old dog out of this behavior or possibly train her for drug sniffing or some role where she would not be such a risk to people in general?

    Thanks for your response.

Accepted Answer

Keep this dog away from other dogs – totally away from them. Get a prong collar and train this dog to mind all the time under EVERY distraction.

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.

If you do these things you can make it work but it will require you to change the way you look at animal husbandry. This is a pack animal and you are seeing pack drives that need strong obedience and corrections.

I personally do not tolerate dog aggression in my kennel. If I have a female who fence fights with another dog I correct her with a padded protection stick, (like the ones they use in Schutzhund). Dogs are pack members and they need to learn that their pack leader (ME) will not tolerate dog fighting. So I tell them to “leave it” and if they continue to fence fight I hit them HARD right between the ears with this stick, and they continue to get hit as long as they fight. It is totally up to them how many times they get hit. The second they turn and stop fighting they are praised. This is very important. While this will blow the minds of all the animal rights people out there – I say to them – come and try and correct this problem on my dogs any other way – pansy-ass dog training does not work with hard, tough dogs or dominant dogs.

I normally only have to do this once or twice with a dog and then they respond to “LEAVE IT.” This falls under the category of “one good correction is better than 1000 nagging corrections.”

I will also say that these are very hard females (bitches that take a hard correction and recover very quickly). The harder the bitch the more times it is going to get hit, a soft bitch may just need a tap to remind her that she is not supposed to do this.

With my males, (especially my males that are protection trained), I use a shovel – not a stick. For the simple reason that I may need it for protection (to stick in the dog’s mouth) if he turns and comes after me. A Schutzhund stick is not going to faze one of my males – it just pisses them off.