Hi there,

I'll try to keep this as short as I can, but I’d like to give a bit of background first.

We have a GSD/Husky mix, Jake. Now 20 months old, rescued 8 months ago, he has been a challenge for us, but we have worked hard with him. He is quite dominant and when we brought him home was jumping up on everyone, chewing anything etc... We had him in obedience classes, worked with him on our own, establishing alpha dog, using an e-collar etc... and he is quite frankly is a different dog than he was when we brought him home, but he still has his challenges and they are becoming a frustration.

My new issue is this. He can be dog aggressive (is okay with family dogs) but has always been fine with people. He is very friendly and loves attention. A few weeks ago we were visiting my parents with Jake. They live in a townhouse and when their neighbour they share a front porch with came outside, Jake pulled to get at him twice. I felt he just wanted to greet him, but I kept him near me and corrected him for pulling anyway. The neighbour seemed scared of him and kept his distance, although he continued to stare him down, right in the eye. My parents don’t care much for this neighbour and so we joked that Jake was simply a good judge of character. So, this weekend my Husband was over again with Jake and the neighbour came outside and Jake lunged at him again, twice, this time grabbing part of his Jeans. He never barked or growled, bared his teeth or raised his hackles at all. My husband corrected him and took him inside. My neighbour has now told my parents he considers our dog to be dangerous. This really upset me, as I have never to this point viewed Jake as a threat to anyone, however now wonder if we should be concerned.

He has always been okay with people, apart from this one guy. Is it possible he just doesn’t like this or trust this one guy. I am not afraid of Jake at all, neither is any of my family/friends who meet him, he is a big softie really. But now I am afraid I can’t trust him around people as we really don’t know the reason he lunged at the neighbour. Perhaps we will need to muzzle him. I want to be responsible but I am just frustrated at the thought having a dog that needs to be muzzled, that we can't just "fix" him. I just feel like a failure after all the training we have done with him and I don’t know what more we can do with him

Sorry for long post, just really feeling frustrated today and needed to vent!

Staring at any dog in the eye is a challenge, more so to dominant dogs.
Did you allow the dog to "meet" the neighbor? Or did you make him stay by you?


How does the dog act around other people? And how do you handle that?

If your parents do not like the neighbor and you knew this, you may have been projecting tension down the lead that you were unaware of.
After the dog tried to approach the neighbor and you corrected, did you loosen back up on the lead? Or did you keep some tension on it? If you kept the lead tight, this may have signaled to your dog that there was cause to be tense in that particular situation with that particular person.

Also, next time the dog is over there and the neighbor comes out, he needs to be made aware that the way he approaches and stares at the dog is wrong.
Sounds like he may not understand that but you need to take responsibility and tell him that staring at dogs in the eye is inappropriate. Or, maybe the dog should not be out when the neighbor comes out.

Complete "ditto" to what Carol said. Either the guy is a jackass, and Jake knows it, you were projecting your feelings down the leash, or the guy's staring triggered his behavior. Eye contact is one of the most common, dumbest things non-dog people do. My GSD gets it all the time; he looks at people suspiciously, they stare back, and voila! Quite a noisy outburst. I am well-aware of how he feels about staring (he finds it rude, and wonders why everyone wasn't raised properly, as he was) so I can usually counteract it before anything happens. There are the occasional idiots who don't stop staring when I ask them to, and instead as "Why?" to which I reply amidst snarling "THAT'S why."

Keep an eye on him, but don't become overly paranoid; you WILL project this, and it will make it worse.