My main question I guess, would be how to actually give the correction. Here's what happens:

When my dog meets another dog, whether on or off-leash, she assumes the dominant stance, with her tail up and neck arched, and sometimes her hackles will raise. Let me add that she was spayed at 2.5 months old, and she just turned 2 years old in February. Now, if she is on-leash, and I give her a verbal NO and a leash correction, she snarls, lunges, and snaps at the other dog. She's never actually bitten the other dog (to my knowledge). This is the leash aggression that I had asked about on one of the other boards.

If she's off leash, which is rare, as I do not take her to the dog park anymore and she isn't outside unsupervised anymore, she and the other dog will do the dominant-submissive dance and then everything will be fine and they'll play or the other dog will go along on its way. She has only ever been put in her place by another dog once by my friend's female husky, who is very dominant. In this instance, Gypsy did submit rather than try to fight it out, so that is a good sign I assume?

I'm going to schedule a private one-on-one session with one of the local trainers here that teaches agility and also uses some different training methods than what I've always used, but I wanted to hear what you guys might have to say as well.

She also has started showing dominance over one of our cats as well, so I need to nip this before she ends up harming him. She's never done it to a human. She knows her place is below us, even kids. My 8 year old cousin even puts her through her paces, so to speak, and Gypsy obeys every command.

I don't do on-leash introductions. When we're out walking or working on leash, meeting other doggies is not part of the deal. If I want to introduce my dog(s) to another dog, it is done on neutral territory off leash or dragging leashes so that they can be more readily separated should things go awry.

I would rather not do on-leash introductions either. In fact, I would rather her not interact with any strange dogs at all; but we have a lot of dogs that run loose, and it's hard to keep them away from us. I've taken to carrying pepper spray now, in case they won't heed my verbal warnings. The problem also arises when we're walking on one of the many trails through the National Forest or in the park, and we encounter other dogs.

Kristen,
The subject of dog aggression comes up regularly on almost all boards concerning dogs! It's a common problem and has a genetic component, so it's not something you're going to just correct out of the dog. The best you can do is to train your dog (through obedience) to ignore another dog.

The info was posted first elsewhere; hope it will be helpful to you...
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A dominant dog will use dog aggression to show his rank to other dogs.
A fearful dog will use dog aggression to warn off other dogs.
In either case it's a headache for the owner.

However, be aware that corrections or jerking the dog away generally are counter productive.
1) a dominant dog will simply load up more (my leader is getting excited too, so I better crank it up a notch!)
2) a fearful dog will become more fearful (my leader is not helping me scare them off...I better crank it up a notch!)

A really strong correction may immediately stop the aggression for that moment in time but it can also teach the dog to “mask” his pre-aggressing signs so that afer a couple of times, he will cover up ALL of the humanly readable precursors to his inappropriate aggression.
When that happens you will have a bigger problem on hand because you will not be able to react proactively to prevent such aggression.

FYI: the canine precursors to dog aggression are:
1) stillness,
2) ears forward,
3) closing of the mouth,
4) staring (locking on!)
5) barking/lunging.
These can all happen very quickly, and a handler must start taking action no later than number 3...which requires keeping an eye on the dog at all times during a relearning session, rather then socializing with other humans....

There are Operant Conditioning solutions to dog aggression, based on the same principals as developed for training marine mammals:
1) Ignore the bad behavior (DO NOT reinforce it with ANY action) and
2) Elicit and reward "other" behaviors that are more appropriate at that moment.
(Based on learning principals that behavior reinforced will continue, behavior ignored will diminish.)

The key to teaching a new learned behavior to dog aggression is in "catching" your dog early in the pre-cursor signs: when Fido goes still, closes his mouth while staring at another dog...you react!! Get a different behavior that you can reward: heel away, a down command, or "look at me"...anything that you can reward right then with treats or praise.

This is not a fun routine. It's much more pleasurable to teach a dog a new trick, or some obed command...but without this new learned behavior, any new exercise will be hard to teach around other dogs.

This type of training will not "guarantee" that the dog will always show desired behavior and not aggression...but neither will any methods which use aversive control, ie, physical punishment. You have a better chance with O.C. And you, the owner, will be much better able to "read" your dog after this type of training has been successful, especially since the dog will not learn to mask any of the pre-cursors which lead up to the aggression.

And btw, this is not just theory...this training DOES work: our male dog is dominant, sharp, and very dog aggressive. He will never be an off-leash park dog, but he is trained enough now that he remains under control when we meet another on-leash male dog.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this dog showing signs of being dominate and not dog aggressive? Wouldn't a dog aggressive dog want to eat other dogs in any situation without training? It sounds like your dog wants to establish dominance and your correcting it is making it worse. Maybe redirection would work as suggested and positive reinforcement. You can work on this at a distance the dog is comfortable and then work closer until you can keep your dog's attention when close to another dog who is on lead.

Yes, it is dominance rather than out and out aggression, because once she has established that she is dominant, she's just fine with the other dog, and will play and have a good time with it. She plays just fine with my aunt's min pin/jrt mix, and my other aunt's sheltie and gsd. It doesn't start out with her trying to attack the other dog; that only happens if I correct her or if the leash gets tight. I'm working on getting her to heel when we see another dog, but my main concern is how to keep her from trying to dominate every other dog (and now the cat) she sees? It makes her look bad, when she really is not an aggressive dog.

Originally posted by Tonya Slack:
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this dog showing signs of being dominate and not dog aggressive? Wouldn't a dog aggressive dog want to eat other dogs in any situation without training? It sounds like your dog wants to establish dominance and your correcting it is making it worse. Maybe redirection would work as suggested and positive reinforcement. You can work on this at a distance the dog is comfortable and then work closer until you can keep your dog's attention when close to another dog who is on lead. I like this thought process.

It doesn't make sense to me that if you're obeying the leash law and others are letting their dogs run loose and approach yours, that you would be worried about how YOUR dog looks. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who lets their dog just run up to mine like that deserves what they get.

Is it possible that instead of stopping and allowing a greeting to take place, you can just keep walking and ignore the other dog? I've found that if you stop and hover while two dogs posture, it's far more likely that you'll have a problem, while if you just keep walking and don't make a big deal out of it, the other dog will just keep going its own way.

Lisa makes a good point and it ties into the re-direction theme in Tonya's post. Re-direct the behavior by simply ignoring the behavior of the strange dogs. Your dog needs to follow your lead. Don't make a fuss about it and just move on. If that dosen't work then we can discuss some other things.

I too would not be that concerned with "how your dog looks".....your not the one having your dog run wild.

I think in your first post you said that you don't take your dog to the dog park anymore. Good move.....that is the first step...steer clear of those foolishly invented places.

excuse my question little bit off the main subject
did i read and understand that the dog was spayed WITH 2,5 month ???