My trained explosive detection and tracking dog shows no aggression in day to day life but when he has any type of painful experience he becomes HIGHLY aggressive only towards me. Can you help me?

I have a pretty well-trained Belgian Malinois. He does explosive detection and tracking very well. He is also very obedient. He has no aggression toward dogs, territory, toys, people, etc. But for some reason when my dog has any sort of pain whatsoever, he becomes highly aggressive only toward me. I have been reading and have been familiarized with a lot of your training methods at Leerburg since I left K-9 handler school. But even in your literature or the schools, I can’t find anything that really is specific to this issue. I truly hope you can help me correct this issue with my absolutely wonderful dog. If it’s appropriate, you can contact me through email or phone. thank you for your time. And thank you all for everything leerburg does for dogs and dog owners.

Leerburg's Answer

This is one of those issues that is more of a reflex with certain dogs and I've not found anything that can "fix" this. Since pain is something that you often can't predict it can be a very stressful situation as a dog handler/owner. I've owned a dog like this in the past and in this dog's case, it was dangerous for humans to be around him in this situation. For example, he got his foot closed in a gate and then directed the aggression toward me. This particular dog held a grudge for days after an event so it was very stressful to be around him in unpredictable environments or situations.

I'm afraid that I don't have any advice on how to fix it because I am not aware of any real solution. Obviously, when you can anticipate a painful experience (the vet, for example) you can have him muzzled and restrained with a slip collar. It's unexpected situations that can be a problem and I really don't know what to advise other than have a slip collar and leash on the dog whenever possible so you can prevent him from getting even more upset if something he perceives as painful happens. You don't want to use a prong collar or remote collar in these situations because it can be like throwing gas on a fire to an already upset dog. I don't believe the dog is making a choice to aggress but it's more of a knee-jerk reflexive reaction to a painful event.