My roommate has 2 female dogs while I have 1 male dog. The 2 females always get into fights and recently, my dog has gotten involved. How do I stop this aggression?

Question

I am a owner of a 2 yr old boxer-lab mix, who has just recently developed aggression towards other dogs. As a puppy, I took him to the dog park (almost every day) until he was attacked by a female pit. (He had to have stitches and a drain put into a puncture wound.- probably one of the worst days of my life!) He never had any aggression problems at the dog park up until about 18 months when he started being aggressive towards puppies. (I read in your articles that this is the age of maturity when aggression may develop.) I stopped taking him there, and instead took him on a daily walk. Recently, he has become very aggressive on his walks... when he sees other dogs he will growl and lunge at them. It seems that this aggression is only when he is on a leash. Also, if other dogs run up to him (strays or owners w/their dogs off of the leash) he is fine, lets them sniff him, he sniffs them and there's no problem. He has never shown any aggression towards me- not when I take away toys, or put my hand in his food... has never growled at me or anything. There have been a few times when he has growled at a person on our walks, usually someone wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses (I know that this behavior is still unacceptable, but he does not show aggression usually to people.) He has never shown aggression to visitors in our home.

    As a sidenote, it might be beneficial for you to know that my roommate's dogs (2 females) do not get along... we've had to separate them completely in fear that they might kill eachother. They were like this before I moved in, but when my dog and I moved in, the problem exacerbated. (My dog wasn't a part of the fights at first.) We had a behaviorist come in, but they were unsuccessful and we now we keep them in separate rooms and let them out at separate times. My dog was still young when we moved in (I think that he was about 1 year) and initially did not join in the fights. However, as he got older he did... always going after the underdog. He was never hurt, and only joined in 2 or 3 times. (2 or 3 times too many.)

    My question is... how can I stop this aggression? I recently was told to do the "alpha roll" which I have done a few times (it was before I read about your take on them) My dog is very submissive to me and knows many commands- he almost always responds to them. When I did the alpha roll, he didn't show any aggression towards me. Can the roll work for some dogs, or could it make him aggressive towards me. I'm just really confused, there's so much information out there, and it's hard to know what is correct! I thought about taking him to obedience classes, but he's already very obedient (minus the aggression towards other dogs.) Could it be that he's protective/defending me? He is not like this with anyone else who takes him for walks... my roommate has been able to take him to the dog park without any problems - no signs of aggression at all! (Although I have stopped her from taking him just recently.) If you could please give me your take on this, that would be great... I've read some of your articles but am not really sure what the answer is for my dog. A muzzle perhaps? I just don't want this problem to continue anymore, I fear that it will just get worse.

    Also, he has been around my parents dogs (2 shih tzus, a springer spaniel and a chow)- he grew up with them, lived with them for almost 5 months. There was some growling between him and the chow a few times (unfortunately our chow was very old and had to be put down.) He gets along fine with the 3 other males... I don't understand his aggression on our walks. Please help!

    Concerned owner,
 Mindy

Accepted Answer

Mindy, There are a lot of things going on here.

The dog lives in a dog pack (3 dogs) and he has reached maturity. Hence dominance issues
Dog parks are stupid dangerous places. But then you found this out and unfortunately will have these problems for life.
Obedience training in this kind of a scenario is only about 15% of the solution. It is a necessary part but not the only answer
You have found out that most behaviorists are out of their league on problems like this.
An Alpha roll is never the solution. It is too dangerous and in many cases just not the right approach.
You don’t understand pack and rank behavior – and you need to become an expert on it if you are to safely live with this dog.
A muzzle does not solve the problem (even though I am happy to sell them and in many cases they are needed for handler aggression and for testing your pack training)

The solution for your dog is handler education, then dog training. If this were my dog I would run him through the work in my DVD titled Dealing with Dominant and Aggressive Dogs I would be using a dominant dog collar and not a prong. Once I was through that would I would finish the training with a remote collar. I would never take this dog out without a remote collar on again. Not ever. My DVD teaches you how to train with these collars. You are always going to be exposed to people who offer advice on how to fix your dogs behavioral issues. The problem is that most of these people don’t have the experience to offer sound advice. This results in a lot of bad information being passed out on how to deal with behavioral problems. Pet owners like yourself need to figure out who has the experience to warrant listening to. Dog training is not my hobby, it’s a way of life. I have been training dogs for over 45 years. I have bred over 350 litters of working bloodline German Shepherds, I was a police K9 handler on a drug task force for 10 years and I have produced over 120 videos on dog training. Many of them directed towards professional dog trainers. If my web site were printed out it would be over 10,000 pages. It is the largest dog training web site on the Internet. I have written 300 training article which are included on my site, I also have a dog training web discussion board which has 97,000 posts and growing every day. The board has 8,400 plus registered members and there is always over 100 people on the board at any time of the day. Learn to use my web site search function. Here are some articles you should study: I recommend that you visit my web site and read a training article I recently wrote titled THE THEORY OF CORRECTIONS IN DOG TRAINING. The reason I wrote this article was to help people understand how to motivate their dogs in training. Most people either use the wrong kind of correction or over correct dogs in training. I am not a fan of “force training” (although I most defiantly believe that every dog needs to go through a correction phase). By exploring corrections in training you will become a better dog trainer. You may want to read the article I wrote titled The Ground Work to Becoming a Pack leader. This is the protocol we use in our home when we raise a puppy for ourselves. It is also the part of the protocol we use to solving behavioral problems such as dominance and/or house breaking problems. I also recommend that you go to my web site and read the article I wrote on my philosophy of dog training. I think you will get some good ideas there. Regards Ed Frawley