hi....not sure if i'm posting this in the right forum.

in the 'luc making progress' thread i mentioned that when i tried to ice his sore paw, after a bit he stopped being 'cooperative' and started mouthing - actually more attempting to nip me i think.

i grabbed his muzzle and held it shut, made eye contact, then let go. he tried the nipping/mouthing again. my trainer had said that if he's not wearing his collar/lead for corrections, grab him by the scruff, shake it, hold his muzzle shut and make eye contact.

well - i grabbed him by the scruff - he was PISSED. he really tried to get me then, so i didn't do any shaking of the scruff as i didn't want to escalate him even more. throughout the whole episode, i got a little scratch on one of my fingers.

obviously i'm not so experienced in this stuff, so maybe that was the issue, but i wasn't shy or hesitant with him. i just felt like it was escalating from aggression towards a fight, and i stopped it.

i did some searching of this site - i found a couple of mentions re: puppies, so not totally applicable, and a couple of other mentions that said if you try this sort of thing you'd better be winning, so to speak.

when i let luc go, he immediately lay down and showed me his belly. but he was not behaving submissively AT ALL when i actually had him by the scruff.

i'm thinking to never try this again. is that silly? am i wimping out? we have training tonight and i'll be discussing this with my trainer. however, while i greatly respect my trainer and he's helped us a great deal, i did notice in his booklet he describes alpha rolls/how to do them. he's never suggested i do so, but everything i've read shows them as pretty controversial and probably a really bad idea for someone like me.

is a scruff grab (or shake) sort of like a lesser alpha roll in that it's challenging the dog on the same level? i'd just like to sort that out and if my reaction is appropriate, so i can feel comfortable in any position i take tonight in training class (assuming he says i should continue that type of correction, and he may not).

side note: luc's fine with me handling his feet, toes, nails, pressing on them, rubbing them, etc. but he did try the same mouthing/nipping when i tried to put boots on his feet(i decided we'll use wax in the winter on hikes, he lets me apply that). what got him upset with the icing was when i folded the ice pack over his foot and it was sort of covered just like with a boot. he's obviously got some sort of thing with that.

The scruff shaking and grabbing the muzzle may work for some dogs, but it didn't work for yours. Luc's reaction was similar to my dog's reaction when I tried this. The fact that you only saw posts regarding doing this to a puppy doesn't make any difference, IMO, because if a puppy won't take it, getting older won't make him any more submissive to it.

It's good you stopped when you did. It would have probably escalated into a fight, and you probably wouldn't win the physical restraint of the dog and you would have had to resort to another means of correction in order to win "in the end", which is not soon enough.

My dog absolutely will not stand for any hands-on physical restraint or correction - a prong collar (or flat collar if Luc responds to it) and a leash are the way to go.

If you go to Ed's article here, and read the 4th page, you'll see he does not recommend alpha rolling a dog http://www.leerburg.com/pdf/packstructure.pdf

I believe people got into the alpha rolling bit because they think that's what the alpha wolf would do in a pack. Out of all the documentaries I've seen and all the articles I've read, I've never seen or read where the alpha wolf rolls any other wolf. It's a misconception - if the alpha growls or administers a bite, the lower wolf will roll over on its own. The alpha does not roll another wolf.

A dog with any strength of character is not going to be happy about someone causing them pain while injured, you were messing with a sore paw, ofcourse he is gonna mouth at you, it hurts I wouldn't take it as an act of aggression.

3.5 years old is too big to scruff a dog, if the dog has any character he'll try and bite you in the hand. Even my showline will bite me if I grab his fur, but he's a cocky lil ....

Alpha rolling is also dumb, don't do it unless your dog is a pansy, and if your dog is a pansy you won't need to do it anyway!

The most common place people get bitten is the hand, so if you are going to correct a dog for aggression (which I cannot believe this was), make sure you are unreachable by the dog! If your hand is by their neck they will reach around and bite to make the correction stop. A dog isn't just gonna sit there and go "OK, kick my ass, I deserve it".

I am hesitant to give advice on dealing with aggression on forums, I only say what not to do, because I have seen too many people not get it right or not understand what their dog is telling them. On top of which, this doesn't sound like a big issue to me, but I dont know the dog or his history so who knows??

apparently luc has character then....heh.

yes, my mother said 'i can't believe you tried to ice his paw' (but it would've been good for it!).

he's not aggressive to me other than that he's got a paw thing (and i leave him alone when he's eating his bones, but that's only fair). i was sort of hesitant to post in this forum b/c of that, i sort of see him trying to nip me as being aggressive, but not necessarily being TOO aggressive, if that makes any sense.

i'd never alpha roll....it seems like a fantastic way to get myself hurt.

i did think he should be corrected for trying to nip at me, that's certainly the position my trainer has taken anyways. but what i'm getting from both of you is that scruffing luc isn't an appropriate or useful correction.

(i'm glad i wasn't far off in my reaction to it - this makes me more confident for any discussion i have w/my trainer tonight)

Jennifer, you gotta love a dog with character

I would definitely listen to Mike and having recently gone through somewhat the same thing with my dog, he put it into perspective for me so I agree with him that it was not an aggression issue. Sometimes we forget that dogs have extremely strong instincts, and if they're injured or our medication hurts them, they react without "thinking".

Your mom was right

Jennifer, it sounds like you have a pretty good grasp of what happened, and what you need to do in the future, re: scruffing is not appropriate for your dog. Your progress over the months with luc has been really inspiring and I think you've got a very wise attitude about your training, and your relationship with your dog - way to go!!

I just wanted to ask a question to Mike, based on his comment about luc not expressing "aggression" when he reacted to Jennifer's fussing over a sore paw - isn't "pain induced aggression" considered a proper form of aggression? I think I saw this on Ed's dominant & aggressive dogs dvd... maybe you were only referring to something like handler aggression or a dominance aggression that could have been directed at Jennifer from a confrontational perspective, rather than a instinctive pain response (and I completely respect your expertise ) but couldn't you describe luc's nipping/biting as an aggressive behavior of sorts?

Either way, appropriate correction is obviously necessary, but I was just curious...

~Natalya

i was kind of wondering that as well. i get what mike is saying, but i'd thought that anytime a dog tried to nip/bite it was considered aggressive. i'm thinking that all aggressions are not created equal???

(and thanks natalya)

sandy....it might be horrible to say, but i don't think i'd respect luc if he didn't stand up for himself etc. it's not that i want him nipping at me, not at all, but on some level i am glad to see that he will stand up for himself.

Here's my take on it (aggression). It is not in a dog's nature to attack a person, otherwise we wouldn't have them as pets for centuries and they wouldn't be looked upon as "man's best friend". Of course there are exceptions as we all know. We're not dealing with wild animals, although dogs have retained basic instincts from having been taken from the wild at one time. Humans have instincts; dogs' instincts are more pronounced.

You've heard not to approach a wild animal who's been injured. Some of this instinct is in a dog, further back than in a wild animal, but still there. So the nipping/growling is instinct, not pure aggression.

When I think of aggression, I think of a dog who either wants to bite and is dangerous because of that, or bites easily when stressed or corrected. In other words, a dog that gets ticked off easily and reacts with biting. It's more a pattern of behavior than a one-time incident when injured.

that makes sense.

though i'm not entirely sure in this case that it was isolated to the injury.

he didn't mind me putting his foot on the ice pack - what set him off was me folding the ice pack over so it was covering his foot. he's had very similar reactions when i've tried to put boots on him. i can do almost anything else to his feet, but he really seems to have an issue with his feet being covered.

(my mother works with a woman who says it is probably b/c as a shelter dog his nails would've got cut past the quik a lot and then his foot would've been bandaged, giving him these negative associations....realistically, who knows, but he's got some sort of tick there, though - i can see it as being instinctual however, and it seems to me that he is trying to protect himself against whatever is happening to his feet (if that makes sense).

 Quote: Jennifer Mullen

and it seems to me that he is trying to protect himself against whatever is happening to his feet (if that makes sense).

It makes perfect sense… in the past all of his “foot attention” has been negative and traumatic. You take that stress/fear and combine it with the scruff shake and it probably pushed the dog into survival.

Conquering your dog’s foot issues will take some time but should be easy to correct!