I have a 2 year old GS bitch. I socialized her very thorouhly when she was a puppy with every man, woman and child possible.

About 6-8 months ago, however, she started showing aggression towards kids by barking when ever she saw them. I was very shocked by her sudden agggression. Later on I caught the neighbour's kids tormenting her through the fence. They were throwing things at the fence until she would roar up it in alarm. Then they would scream and run away. Of course, the kids' parents were confronted but the damage had already been done. I don't know how long this had gone on before I caught them.

Anyway, a few months ago, I went into the yard to get her and she pushed past me and through the gate. The timing couldn't have been worse. The paper boy was in the middle of delivering the paper and was in "her" yard. She roared up to him and started barking and jumping up at his face. The woman that was with the boy started screaming at the top of her lungs and things got worse. In the end, my dog had nipped the boy on the arm (no damage done except a red mark) and had also barked feriously at the two other girls that were with the lady.

Can this aggression be corrected?

I have recently purchased a dogtra ecollar to perhaps aid in correcting this behaviour. How would you reccomend I go about dealing with this situation (with or without the ecollar)??

Heather

Heather,

The first thing is going to be obedience, obedience, and more obedience. You need to be able to stop the dog and down or recall him with a voice command at any time. You also neeed to teach the dog to respect boundroes and teach the dog that it isn't allowed to push past you under any circumstances.

The next thing I would do is some careful socialization with children. For starters meet some kids in a neutral situation for the dog. Do not allow the dog and children to interact. Just put the dog in a sit/down stay and talk with the children. As the dog gains some neutral/positive experience around children the aggression will start to decrease a little bit at a time. This process will have to be done slowly and carefully so that the dog doesn't go after the kids.

The other thing I would do is to put the e-collar on the neighbor kids and do some serious avoidance training. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for your reply, Richard.

I have done (and still do) tons of obedience with my dog. When I am out working her I always get comments about her being a police dog... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I was planning on doing some bite work with her, however, after this episode I never want to see her bite a person again.

I have also worked a lot on her pushiness (at the gate) and she is 100 times better (I make her sit and wait while I open the gate, I go through the gate then I let her go through,then she has to sit and wait again while I latch the gate again).

She is extremely obedient - except when in prey drive.

When she does bark at a kid or the noise a kid makes I have been correcting her HARD. It stops her sometimes - I don't think I can physically correct her hard enough though.

She is great with kids when on neutral ground - I think she thinks she has to defend her property from them.

Will the ecollar help? (I know it would help on those kids - on my dog, I mean) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Heather

Heather,

Check with Lou about the use of an e-collar for this problem. He is the expert on that.

If the dog will not follow an obedience command in prey drive, then the obedience isn't good enough. When she barks at the kids, re-direct her attention with obedience commands. Rather than JUST correcting her get her to do some other things so that her attention is directed back to you.

The other thing that you should do is teach her an out command. This can be either a modification in the "leave it" or as an out command taught as nearly an obedience command. The idea is to teach the dog to stop what it is doing. I start on out as puppies for anything the dog is doing I don't want it to. When we enter protection training it has ment that my dogs know out, and respond properly to it before we even start. You can generate prey drive with a ball or a tug and then teaching the out in the middle of the dog chasing the item for a retrieve. make sure the dog is in drive, and don't repeat it to many times at once. If you do the dog will hesitate when you send it out on a retrieve. A long line would work good for this.

I once had a dog some similar issues as your dog.I agree with teaching obedience,obedience and than after that a bit more obedience.I don't feel that a dogs mindset on something he has issues with can at all times be changed.With my dog if someone outside our home ticked him off bad enough he would never, ever forget it.This included unrulely little kids and inrulely adults.I'll admit it didn't take much to tick him off.The right mindset? No,but that was his personality and so we worked with it.We put so much obedience on him that we could call him off no matter how high his adreniline rush was running.Hell we probably could of probably blew the competitive obedience world away if we had wanted to but at that time my dogs were just pets.It's pretty hard to proof your acomplishments with kids because if you don't have what you need your setting yourself up for someone to get hurt,however if your obedience is their it should work on any type of distraction squirels,cats,whatever.I am not a pro.dog trainer,I just wanted a dog we could live with and we got it by having alot of control over him.And believe me even after all this obedience he never lost any of his drive,we just put a steering wheel on it.He lived to 12 and never once bit a kid and believe me he wanted to in the worst way.The little bugger.Good luck!

Originally posted by Andy Peck:
I once had a dog some similar issues as your dog.I agree with teaching obedience,obedience and than after that a bit more obedience.I don't feel that a dogs mindset on something he has issues with can at all times be changed.With my dog if someone outside our home ticked him off bad enough he would never, ever forget it. This is something that is not always true. Many dogs have taken un-believable amounts of abuse and will never turn aggressive. I really believe that genetic factors are undersestimated when compared to environmental factors. Thats another topic for another day.

Richard has given great advice. You can never go wrong by trying obedience.

My 2 cents is correcting aggresive behavior only adds to it, you need to redirect the behavior to something positive. for instance if the dog gets a hard correction like a shock perhaps whenever hs is barking/acting aggresive to a kid, in this case, than the dog will inturn think that the sudden shock/or correction whatever it is, is because of the kid (which is making the dog not like the kid even more), instead simply get the dog to do something else, anything down/stay with treats. anything that is positive and you have control.

Have this dog meet children on neutral ground, on the leash, watch her carefully, no touching yet. When dog is quiet, have the child feed her a treat. Continue doing this for several days, then have the child meet the dog in your yard, no touching again until safe. Feed treats when dog is at ease. Get as many kids as you can to do this, one at a time as to not overwhelm the dog. Make sure the children are not fearful of dogs. Always have the dog on a leash and plenty of praise for being good.

Thanks Kim. I really like your suggestion,. My only problem is where to get kids! "Excuse me, my dog is really child aggressive, could I intruduce her to your kid?" Hmmm.

Any suggestions?

Heather,

You can go to the park for starters and have the dog experience the children at a distance. Praise her for not reacting to them at all. The next thing I would do is see about finding a good trainer that has a group. Often there are children that are there, some of which have experience training, that are willing/able to help. It is going to be a question of finding the right group to work with. The most likely people to have the type of experience you need is someone that also works protection or SchH. This type of trainer is more likely to have experience in dealing with aggression problems (I wonder why?).