My 2-year old chow challenged me last night. We are considering starting a family and I am concerned about this dog. What can we do?

Question

Dear Ed,

    I just finished reading some letters on your website and liked your answers. I have two dogs...one a chow/lab mix and one full blooded chow. The full blooded, Pride, lunged at me the other night and darn near scared me to death. We got him when he was six months old. We've had him for 1 1/2 years and he has never done this before. He growls a lot, but my husband says that is his way of talking. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. Anyway, my other dog had jumped up and taken a bag off of the kitchen table and they were both trying to get into it. Pride did not like to be corrected I guess because that's when it happened. Our other dog, the mix, can just get a look from me and the tail goes down between her legs. She rarely has to be corrected and it takes little for her to know she's done wrong. She's been that way since the day we got her. My husband and I are planning to start a family next year and I'm afraid this will happen again. After the incident, I put him outside for a while and when I let him back in, all he wanted to do was give me kisses. Do you think we should put him to sleep? I've heard chows are one family or one person dogs and I know anyone who would be interested in him would have to be told the reason for us giving him away and then they probably wouldn't take him. As we were originally planning to breed him he has not been fixed. Do you think this will mellow him out any or is he exhibiting one of those aggression behaviors you were talking about?

    Thanks,
Tania

Accepted Answer

This dog has a dominance problem. It will not go away without you doing something about it. The dog is challenging your position in the pack. That's what happened and you did not recognize it for what it was - a challenge. Putting him outside did not really accomplish anything. It will happen again. This behavior can only be controlled by you establishing your pack position. This is done through obedience training. If there is any question about the dog challenging you in this work he should wear a muzzle so you cannot be injured. So there are a number of things that need to happen here:

Get the dog neutered. You should not breed the dog. Go to an outside stud dog to breed. People that think they want to breed mistakenly think they should keep males for their breeding. That is a big mistake. New breeders should keep females and pay stud fees to a top stud dog. That's how the breed is improved - not by breeding the family pet because they think it is cute.
Get one of the wire muzzles that I sell, or one of the Jafco muzzles and make the dog wear it a lot. He has to wear it enough that he doesn't even think about it when he has it on.
Get a prong collar and learn how to train this dog. Unless you can establish your pack position you will never cure this problem. Some people simply do not have the temperament and cannot or will not learn to give an effective correction. If you are one of these people, put this dog to sleep.
If you do not understand obedience training (and I do not think you do) get my Basic Dog Obedience training video. Read the description of this tape and you will see how little you know.
Get dog crates and use them in your home.