My dog will be nice to all other dogs in the park but when I nice sweet lab comes in, he becomes a monster. Why is he like this?

Question

Hi,

    Thank you for putting all the great information on your website.

I have two male unaltered Malamute/German Shepherd dogs that my husband picked alone and brought home. It seems for a while is my job to take care of them as my husband is most of the time away from home. I am trying my best as I don't want anything bad to happen to them or to anybody.

One of them (Sam) is the boss of the other one (Labus), his brother. Sam is obedient, comes when called even from the distance with many distractions around, but has a problem with some dogs at the off leash park where I take them 4 times a month to get them used to, socialized with other dogs. Some days there could be 30 dogs in the park (all sizes) and he plays nicely with all of them, and other days a nice sweet lab comes in the park and Sam becomes a monster. He growls and corners that poor dog until gets him to lay on the ground and he gets on top of that dog and threatens to bite him. I have to use all my strength to remove him without causing him to escalate his aggression into biting the other dog. I feel that if I don't interfere he will leave alone the other dog after few minutes, after he submits, but I can't do that because the other owner will intervene immediately and I can't blame them. I tell him that he is a bad dog and I take him on the leash around the fence of the park (like a time out) and not let him to play with the other dogs for a while. Few times I just removed him and we left home. I hope he will understand that by removing him I punish him for behaving that way. He is a big strong dog but he enjoys playing with the small dogs anywhere he meets one. He bows in front of them and runs to them and prefers their company but he plays nicely with Rottweilers or Huskies and German Shepherds.

    I noticed that he picks fights with dogs that are close to his age (11 months) and that are very submissive, like some nice sweet young Labradors.

    Why is he good with the rest of the dogs and so bad with the young sweet labs? So far I noticed four different Labradors he does not like. What makes him to target this breed?

    The other dog, Labus (Sam's brother) is more difficult. He is not aggressive but he is very stubborn, he takes off and will not come back, when he gets the chance to be free (on a ravine not far from where I live). I strongly believe that I would have lost this dog long time ago if it was not for his brother Sam. Labus comes back after a while for Sam, not for me. He pays no attention to me and when I walk him he pulls me on the leash ( I use a prong collar), he crosses me to get on my other side if he wants to mark a shrub or to sniff something. He has no respect. I am trying to be firm with him and put him back in his positions but I see he is only ignoring me more and he is showing no affection or respect for me. He loves my husband so I know he is capable of bounding with somebody. I am not too harsh or too friendly with him, I just want him to be more obedient as his brother is. No matter what I do, this dog doesn't care for me, I am invisible to him. He is not reading my face, no looking back at me, no waiting for me. I feed him, walk/exercise him the same as his brother. What is funny is that when he disappears for 5-10 min on the ravine and he come back running towards us after a while, his brother, Sam is visibly upset with him and he will take him by the scruff and put him down, and bark at him few times and look at me to see what I will do. I don't encourage it, but I like to thing he is punishing him for me. Is this to punish his brother for wandering around? If I can only understand those dogs.

   I want to neuter them but my husband will not accept this in any way. I tried many thing to convince him of the benefits. Unfortunately he considers this to be mutilation... I understand you are very busy and I appreciate any advise you can give me.

    Thank you!
Laura

Accepted Answer

These dogs need structure and proper handling. First read this article about dog parks. In my opinion, this is the worst place in the world to take dogs that are untrained.

Neutering doesn't affect dominant behavior, although vets will try to tell you it does. It does stop certain hormone driven behaviors and if your dogs are not breeding candidates it's probably best to have them neutered at some point. I try to wait until they have reached their full growth and their growth plates have closed (18-24 months as a rule).

I would be training these two dogs separately, and taking away all privileges until you have calm and obedient behavior from them. Stay out of the dog park too. I would not let them run loose together at all until they are both responding to you with respect and obedience 100% of the time. Training 2 dogs is very hard, so you have your work cut out with you.

The first thing you need to do is to establish clear leadership with your dogs. This is achieved by restructuring your dog's daily life and controlling all privileges through our groundwork program. Please read this article first.

The first sentence in this article says it all: "You can feed water and love your dog and he will like you but he very well may not respect you."

This article was written for people like yourself, people who have great intentions but not enough knowledge of pack structure.. There are links within the article that will take you to other articles on my web site.

Pack structure and how to live with a dog in your home are the very first issues to deal with whenever you add a new dog to your family or have problems with existing dogs. This DVD extensively covers the way Ed and I live with dogs in our home.

I would also recommend the 4 hour DVD on Basic Dog Obedience.

You will probably find that you have not had the full picture on the training steps for training your dog. A dog must go through training steps before it can be considered fully trained.

I also recommend that you read the recently written article titled THE THEORY OF CORRECTIONS IN DOG TRAINING.

While obedience training is not the solution to all behavioral issue it most definitely is part of the solution for every single behavioral problem.

I hope this helps!

Cindy