I have started training with an e-collar according to eds methods, and also have his video. i have 2 dog agressive females, and they are doing so well with the ecollar training for obedience. Ed touches on treating dog agression with an e-collar in the video but never demonstrates it.
My question is for those of you who have successfully addressed and manage your dog's dog agression with an e-collar. I was curious if any of you could perhaps describe the process you took to get your dog to where he/she is today. I am optimistic that ecollar training for dog agression will work, but i just want to do it correctly! The more detail the better!

Lauren,

This a long-winded reply, but it was a long process...I have a dog aggressive older female (rescue, GSD/chow/lab) that I have had for about 9 years. She was very aggressive with some dogs, and with house guests, and kids, and anyone who wanted to touch her on the street, and was in general very difficult to deal with. I posted on her behavior here several times over the past 1-2 years, and from suggestions received here, I used first desensitivation (the "look" command) and a dominant dog collar to greatly modify her behavior. She still needed a lot of work. It was suggested I use an e-collar. I also decided to buy an e-collar for my 2 yo male GSD after he ran after a deer in the country and was gone over an hour. I used my car to wander the area, and found him over a mile from the house, and he had no idea where he was. Obviously I needed a solid recall under distraction.

I bought a Dogtra 1702 (for her and my 2 yo male GSD) and used it to first teach a very solid recall on lead. I did this with her alone, the other dog was not present. He was trained separately. I chose this model because it had enough power to really stop her in her tracks if needed.

I do not have Ed's DVD, but used methods described on Lou Castle's site, see the instructions there to curb crittering. From discussions between these two men on the Leerburg board, I gather there are some differences in how the stim is applied. I used Lou's method, to apply a low levels stim, say “here”, and reel the dog in. When the dog complies, release the stim. After a few reps, the dog learns to come rapidly when called, and stim is rarely needed. I also taught heel, sit and down with the e-collar. Some of my neighbors had used this method with dogs to solidify a recall, or to curb aggression.

When she had that down, I let her off lead in a large public park, with no other dogs around, late at night. We practiced the recall. She was very good. With the young dog, we practiced a recall when he was chasing raccoons. If she started to approach another dog in any way, I recalled her.

One night, a friend came along with his dog, who is an old buddy of my 2 yo. At one point she did get upset, tried to get between them, but I recalled her, used the stim, and she ran right to me. Later in that same walk, that dog again tried to engage her in rough-housing, but she just came to my side, with no reaction. I was very pleased.

Maybe a month later, I started taking her down to the off-lead park in the mornings, where there are more dogs, but no enclosures, and kept her away from other dogs. I slowly started to acclimate her to other dogs. Now she is very good, keeps away from fights, and sniffs noses, butts, in a pretty normal way. She also started to let the other dog owners touch her. Her body language is relaxed, she gets exercise, and her successes feed on each other. Cesar Milan would approve. One caveat is that she would still engage one or two dogs that live in the building, so I still need to keep her away from them, but I can get her a lot closer without incident. I watch her like a hawk, if she seems tense, I call her, she trots over, no problem. I never let any dog get in her face. I know that many board members do not allow their dogs to interact with any other dogs, but in order for her to get exercise, she needs to be able to be near other dogs. She doesn’t play, except with my other dog, but she also doesn’t fight.

All of this was accomplished over about 4 months. She keeps getting better, more relaxed. Everyone in my park notices how much happier she is now. Please keep in mind on all of this that I have no idea what your dog's problem is, you may need professional advice on that. I was a complete novice with the e-collar, but it worked very well for me. Naturally, I would never let her off lead without it.

polly

Polly,
Thank you so much for your imput and sharing your experiences! To clarify, my dogs both have issues with other dogs. If they see one, they want to attack it. Unfortunately the younger, and bigger one, has learned this agression from the older one. So on her own she doesnt get so worked up at the sight of other dogs like the older one does. But they both have, and will, fight other dogs without hesitation.

I too have the dogtra 1702 for mine. Thats good we can compare apples to apples then.

If I understand correctly, it sounds like you have basically trained such a reliable recall that your "Cure" for agression to other dogs lied in the training the dog to come to you when they see another dog. Did you ever stim your dogs for looking at, posturing or showing agression to another dog? What if the dog was at your side and started growling when it sees another dog? According to Ed, as I understand it, this would warrant a strong, high level, continuous correction until the dog stopped the agressive behavior.

My dogs have been doing great with their recalls since I started the e-collar work. Like you did, I have started taking them to an open field near my house. Unfenced, not a dog park, but there are often children playing and people do bring their dogs to walk around there. Its been a great way to teach recalls and when seeing other dogs ive been doing 2 things: teaching them to come to me, which is working well, and also stimming them at a high level if they start growling, barking or posturing at the other dog (when they are already at my side). I have read that doing this could supress their agression, rather than "cure"/"treat" it, and they could lash out later on because they attribute getting a high stim with seeing another dog.

Another question i have is do you say NO before stimming for showing aggressive behavior, or do you just DO it (since its not an obedience command) until they stop?

Just curious how you and others have addressed when/as a dog starts to act agressively to another dog.

Thanks so much!
Lauren

Well, for a very long time, I felt I had to walk my dogs separately, to keep the older one from teaching the younger to be aggressive, and because she would redirect aggression onto him. You may want to to do that for a while. I know it is a lot of work, but it should be temporary. This all took time, and I had to be very vigilant. I think it would be very challenging to do this with two dogs at one time, so I would train them separately, at least at first.

Personally, I do not correct with the e-collar for looking, posturing or growling, I use my voice to redirect the dog. If she is off-lead, as soon as I see that she is aroused, I call her to me, and praise her for obedience. If she does not recall, she gets a stim until she does so. I imagine that if I had a dog that went very rapidly from growl to attack, I would use the stim at a growl, but at the lowest level needed to change the behavior. In that case, I would probably use the word No. When she is on lead, she is wearing a dominant dog collar, and then if she growls, or goes for another dog, I use the collar to prevent escalation of the aggression, and make her keep a down-stay until the other dog is passed.

I never allow her to get close to any dog that is either unknown, or known to be undisciplined or very pushy, or dominant. I do not let her play with pups yet. I absolutely do not allow her to walk towards a dog when she is clearly aroused, and would use the stim if needed to recall her in that circumstance. I never use high stim unless my dog is fighting or trying to fight. In general, I have used the stim to teach her to keep her distance from other dogs, to obey my recall instantly, to disengage from any pushy advances by other dogs. I have tried to teach her using low stim. Now that she knows that she can avoid stim by coming when I say Here, there is rarely a problem. I guess I use Here more then No as a command in these cases. Sort of like, "Here, let me handle that". In her case, I think she was making too many decisions about how to react to other dogs, and I am taking control by making her stay by me.

In a similar way, I would never use the stim to correct the dogs if they stared intently at a squirrel or raccoon while on lead, but would use my voice (“leave it&rdquo to remind them that crittering is not allowed when they are on lead, because they can take off my shoulder.

thanks again polly for your input.

I must say i feel overwhelmed!

I like the idea of using come (or here) for avoiding problems. with an impeccable recall, i guess id never have to worry about an "incident" if the dog will back down as soon as i call it.

I'd still be curious to hear from those who HAVE used high levels of stim for dealing with agression in the way Ed described on the video, in which he described turning the stim to the highest level at the first sign of agression toward another dog. The concept was eventually the dog will go into avoidence and will be totally uninterested in ever becoming agressive again.

Thanks again for sharing your experiences. it is very helpful to me!
Lauren

Yes, Ed uses high stim on an e-collar as one method of teaching a dog-aggro K9 to avoid other dogs while under your command (onlead or at least in your presence) -- But he also stresses that it will NOT "cure" aggression, so when you aren't around, your dog may still go on the attack...

Yes; I am interested in these different approaches to dealing with dog-aggression, as I am about to get an e-collar specifically to help with this, with 'off-lead deafness' <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> and with over-enthusiastic greetings to visitors! (as well as all those other 'extras' I'd like her to do eventually <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> )

I have Ed's e-collar DVD, so have some re-watching to do, too.

Yep, it's impossible to watch Ed's Dom & Aggro DVD "too many" times, LOL (I'm afraid mine's going to wear out!) -- And be sure to take LOTS of time conditioning your dog/s to the collar B-4 you ever turn on the stim (my son just bought one for his recently adopted rescue Doberman & I told him not to even charge it for 2 weeks, so he wouldn't be tempted to use the stim prematurely, just practice putting the collar on, letting him wear it in different situations for various lengths of time, and taking it off again until the collar means absolutely nothing to the dog)...

Lauren - a point to make here is not to forget the ultimate goal of the collar training - which is to train your dog to follow a voice commands.

With that said - if your dog gets to the point where it is growling at your side - you have made a handler mistake. You have let it go too far. You should have done something when the dog even looked at another dog.

When you have serious dog aggressive animals the simple fact of looking at a strange dog sets them into an aggressive mode - so you need to STOP THE LOOK - not stop the aggression after its started (I.e. the growl)

So when you dog looks at another dog you say LOOK (assuming you have trained your dog to LOOK at you on command). If the dog does not LOOK then you say NO LOOK "stem"

Once again for the other board members benefit the level of stem needs to be strong enough to over power the level of distraction your dog is facing.

With dog aggression this is usually a high level distraction so the stem level has to be increased to compensate. The fact is as training progrsses the dog is going to get a grip on his emotions because he KNOWS HIS PACK LEADER is not going to tollerate this behavior.

This resuts in him relaxing more and not being so distracted by other dogs.

What that translates to is with strange dogs not being as high of a level of distraction as they once were the level of stem does not have to be as high as it was in the beginning.

So you will find a time when you can and should reduce the level of stimulation.

You are correct, I am not a fan of the methods Lou Castle uses. I have made that clear on this board in earlier posts.

I don't like ESCAPE TRAINING - the mthods Lou talked about are not his methods - they were around way before he started training dogs. I know because I am older than he is and have trained dogs lot longer than he has.


With that said I also want to say that ESCAPE TRAINING works. There is no question about it. I just think there is a better way.

I also think there may be palces for escape training to be used - possible by vendors that have to train police service dogs. It's very important that these animals are under control all the time and vendors dont have the luxury of taking the time these other methods take. They have to get the job done in a hurry with handlers that have often never trained a dog before.

thank you ed for your detailed response. it does seem much clearer what you were trying to say. In the video you made on E-collars and the section on agression, you did say that escape training would be warranted in this case. I understood (as did my boyfriend who watched it) that you are to use: high level, continuous stim, no command, and only to let off the stim when the dog stops looking at the other dog. Could you please clarify whether you still advocate using escape training for agression, as you do in the video, or have you found a different method since the time of the creation of the video?

Also to add to when i said if the dog was growling at my side, i was referring to how my dogs have been in the past, before i was starting to address their aggression issues. I was only using it as an example because someone was explaining how if their dog was on a line away from them and started to growl, then they would correct them. I was curious if the same would apply if you didnt have the dog away on a line, but rather perhaps sitting at your side, saw a dog, and started barking. This is usually the way things progressed with my dogs in the past.

If i am to understand correctly then: if i am with my dog, whether she be at my side, away from me, on lead or not... and another dog approaches, i need to say "watch" (thats my command for "look") and then if she doesnt watch, then say NO, WATCH and correct her with the e-collar at a higher level? Or do I immediately correct her for even looking at another dog (which was the impression i got from watching the section on your video)?

Thanks alot, I just to be sure I completely understand what Im doing before I attempt it on my dogs. You havent led me astray yet, Ed, so Im optimistic this wont be any different.
Thank YOU!
Lauren