What do you do if you've been protection training your dog, and most agitation sessions involve a guy suddenly appearing from around the corner... then one day you're walking your dog (on a leash) around the side of your house when your stealthy neighbor walks around the side of his house, takes your dog by surprise n your dog goes off on the guy barking n pulling on his prong to run at the guy?

I don't wanna set my dog back by over correcting him, but I was kinda hard on him when this happened and he wouldn't let it go when I told him "it's ok", he stopped barking but he was on high alert not being able to take his eyes off my neighbor when he walked to his mailbox. We are still trying to "bring him out" in training, so we haven't gotten to any control work, right now when he sees red his job is to pull on the leash n go crazy at the decoy until he's really biting good and his confidence has built up.

When it comes to corrections when he's in drive, I don't think I have much to worry about in terms of over-correcting, he pretty much ignores everything I can do on a prong collar! So this one incident shouldn't affect him any, but if it happens again, do I praise my dog, ignore my dog, distract my dog, or correct my dog? I don't want my neighbors thinking he's gonna chew them up by just letting my dog go crazy at them <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> Well, some people on my block needa know to stay the heck away from my property, but for the most part, my neighbors shouldn't fear my dog <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Can't really offer much advice on this Mike as I have no experiece of it but have a couple of questions....

Are you on good terms with your neighbour normally ( & still? :-P )
Have you gone to see him and explain/apologise?

My first instinct is that you CAN'T correct your dog for this as your training him to do that very thing and it would be really unfair to kick his ass for something he's been praised for just yesterday. But that's just my opinion.

Very nice dog by the way.

If you don't want your dog to growl at all the "demons" popping out in real life, then you might consider teaching a command "alert" "strict" which identifies for your dog that this is work.

At the same time your "it's ok" needs to be respected. If I was in that place and said "it's ok" and the dog did not stop, I would correct severely, as it could become an issue of liability and your's dogs life.