Life with a dog agressive dog...

Wellyboots6

Aww poor Zara. She does like to keep you on your toes!

If she is ok with groups of dogs, could you try walking her with a group and have each member of the group drop back one by one so eventually she is left walking with just one dog? Keep doing this but changing the dog she gets left with?

gettingready

I do not have a group like that - this was with her previous dog walker.

Since lonng before her operation, we were not going to where we normally would go and meet the dogs she was normally meeting...

NewKittenHelp

gettingready wrote: »

Zara was on group walks with sometimes 12 other dogs (3 dog walkers walking together) for years. She was always fine.

I will not have ger oon a lead by my leg AND muzzled. Nope. That would only make things worse. This has only came up last weekend - trying to go for dogs that she knows....

I have a horiible feeling that she is "protecting" me and jelaus of any dog possibly coming near ME....

Zara's insurance for this year has all been used up by her hip replacement,. So will the next year's one as she needs the other leg done.

I don't think a muzzle would make things worse, quite the reverse. You're obviously tense now when you spot another dog, which will translate down to your dog and she will go into a heightened state of alert, which is contradictory to what you want to happen. If muzzled, she won't be able to do much damage so you'll be able to relax, which will translate into keeping her in a more normal state of anxiety.

Looking at it another way - if you refuse to muzzle her and she attacks and kills a dog before you can stop her (which is a possibility) then you won't have a dog to muzzle because she'll be destroyed and you may be liable to prosecution.

gettingready

NewKittenHelp wrote: »

Looking at it another way - if you refuse to muzzle her and she attacks and kills a dog before you can stop her (which is a possibility)

Not possible considering the way I hold her.

NewKittenHelp wrote: »

then you won't have a dog to muzzle because she'll be destroyed and you may be liable to prosecution.

Please stop this nonsense you obviously know very little about it so....

My dog is never agressive towards people ever and it is dogs who attack people that MAY be destroyed.

My dog is under control, I hold her in a way that she has no chance to do any damage to any dog and I will not muzzle my dog as it sends completely wrong signals to other dogs/people and stresses the dog too much. This would not help.

NewKittenHelp

gettingready wrote: »

Not possible considering the way I hold her.

Please stop this nonsense you obviously know very little about it so....

My dog is never agressive towards people ever and it is dogs who attack people that MAY be destroyed.

My dog is under control, I hold her in a way that she has no chance to do any damage to any dog and I will not muzzle my dog as it sends completely wrong signals to other dogs/people and stresses the dog too much. This would not help.

Until you let her off the lead which you've said you do!

Your dog is dog aggressive, muzzling her is not 'sending the wrong signal' it's taking responsibility.

I'm withdrawing from this thread now but I do hope that no other dogs (or unintentionally, people) get hurt because of your pride.

Notsosharp

Hi,

I'm sorry you're having this trouble with Zara, I know how difficult it is having a dog aggressive GSD, mum had one and I took care of her for a bit and you had to be on constant alert for other dogs!

Meg was the same, she'd bark and lunge at any dog whilst she was on her lead and it was sometimes a struggle to hold her back because she was so strong and powerful even in her old age. BUT if she had a ball or a toy/stick in her mouth she would not let go for anything not even to attack the other dog. In all her life she never attack/bit another dog though, she just used to run up to them and shoulder barge them over. Once she'd done that, she'd run back again.

Zara might be feeling fearful because she's on her lead and she might not feel that she can escape from this other dog my collie is like this too. He has the same problem as Zara with his hips and sometimes when he's in pain with them he can be aggressive to other dogs, especially when he's on his lead.

She's probably feeling your anxiety too, I know it's hard but whenever you see another dog try not to tense up and relax, just keep talking to her and try and keep her lead nice and loose if you can. That used to work with Meg, if you're not willing to use a muzzle have you considered a halti or maybe a harness instead? Divert her attention away from the other dog by telling her to sit/stay and keep it diverted with a treat. My mum used to drop a tin of pebbles on the ground and that used to work with another dog aggressive dog she had.

I'm sorry I can't be of much more help, I'm not really all that good with dogs but I have had experience of this with a GSD and I just thought I'd tell you what worked with her.

krlyr

Firstly, if Zara is OK with some dogs it may be a case of reactivity rather than all-out aggression - this is a lot more common on-lead behaviour and if Zara is on a lead most of the time it could be why she appears this way most of the time. Unfortunately it's not so easy to test out the theory until you try her off-lead with another dog but I certainly can understand why you may hesitate! Casper is dog-reactive but can be OK with other dogs when introduced carefully - for example, he's 110% fine with Kiki, we have a walking buddy he's very good with (they just both get a little overexcited with each other so we still have to be careful and keep the dogs on longlines so we can remove them from certain situations so they don't have a falling out), but it goes to show that his behaviour is not true aggression. One time we got cornered in a country park by an off-lead Jack Russell that wouldn't leave us alone, owners absolutely useless at catching it, and poor Casper just threw himself on the floor behind me doing that pitiful GSD cry! He definately could have done some real harm to that JRT if he wanted to but he was so scared of it.
A behaviourist I know believes most, if not all, aggressive behaviour stems from fear in dogs anyway and I think she has a good point. In Zara's case, it could be fear of the unfamiliar, as she's been isolated recently, and maybe fear of pain from her hips making things worse.

If Zara is in pain this can have a huge effect on behaviour so my first port of call would be the vet to see if her medication, exercise regime, etc. need adjusting.

If a behaviourist is not an option at the moment then I would say the first step is to make everyone safe. Yes, you need to consider muzzling Zara. Introducing correctly, a muzzle will not distress a dog any more than a collar, harness or headcollar - it will be another piece of "clothing" that they accept, as long as you introduce it slowly and carefully. There's a fab video by the trainer Chirag Patel on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FABgZTFvHo

Yes, people look at you differently when your dog is muzzled - but you can use this to your advantage! What I tend to do, as I now know Casper is very unlikely to bite even when pushed right to his limit, is just carry a muzzle on me. If I'm cornered in a tight spot or can see a dog approaching that I don't like the look of (e.g. looks like it may run up to us), I can slip Casper's muzzle on. For the most part, this the causes the other dog owner to avoid us anyway, which saves Casper the stress of blowing up at the other dog. I don't care what other people think, Casper is my priority and if using a muzzle can keep his life less stressful, I will use a muzzle. I did go for the beige Baskerville muzzle as it is a bit more subtle with his fur colour so not glaringly obvious, but visible enough when a dog is becoming near enough to be an issue - they do black ones too which may not show so obviously on Zara.
Yes, there are no criminal laws on a dog-dog bite but it can be taken to court as a civil case as damage to property. Not only that, but if the dog is seriously hurt and it goes through your insurance, Zara may be excluded from having any behaviourist help with this behaviour (a friend of mine had lots of exclusions put on when she alerted her insurance company of an incident with another dog). Also bear in mind the wiggle room in the DDA - in certain situations, a dog that causes reasonable fear to a person, they can potentially press for your dog to be deemed dangerous, without any kind of physical contact. Or what if they were bitten trying to help their dog during an attack and ended up bitten themselves? It may be discounted if they admit it was to break up a dog fight, but what if they lie and say Zara attacked them? They have bitemarks that match Zara's teeth perfectly and then it's your word against theirs about what happened. It's not a risk I would take when you could introduce a muzzle properly and it never bother Zara anyway.

Secondly I would aim to train some of these commands which can be of a huge help with reactivity.
"Watch me" - eye contact, eventually taught to be prolonged, so you can get Zara to watch you as you pass another dog. Often staring at/eyeballing another dog can be a trigger for that dog to give off unfriendly body language too so this can help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHLvt6TQzqA

"Look at that"
One issue with Watch Me is that some dogs get unnerved knowing there's a dog nearby but not being able to see it. LAT is used to allow them to look but you've pre-trained it to be a quick glance then an automatic focus back to you. They've clocked the dog and can put their mind at ease and look back to you, because you've made it an automatic behaviour like a dog sitting when you pick up its food bowl or lead (if you've trained those behaviours)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdraNF2hcgA

"Touch" - teach the dog to put its nose to your palm, building duration to a prolonged touch. The dog has to focus on maintaining contact with your hand, but it means you can keep moving while the dog keeps up to maintain contact and the dog doesn't realise you're actually moving past another dog because it's too busy concentrating. A bit like Watch me, but you can keep the dog's attention focused on your hand, so you have a bit more control (e.g. you could keep your hand tucked by your hip/thigh to block the dog's view from a dog immediately to your side)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWSJVwZybwo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttEZKk-DtMo

If you can splurge to it, I'd recommend Grisha Stewart's book on BAT, it's a method of training she's developed - called behaviour adjustment training
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Behavior-Adjustment-Training-Frustration-Aggression/dp/1617810509/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347256786&sr=8-2
The basics of it is that you don't have to just reward a dog with treats or a fuss but you can use the thing/behaviour they want to do as a reward for doing an alternative behaviour. So with dog reactivity, you set up a situation where Zara sees a dog - but at a distance, and then just before shes is over her threshold, you stop and watch her behaviour. You wait for her to perform something good, like looking at the dog but then back at you, or sniffing at the ground to relax herself, or a bunch of other behaviours (the book goes into more detail) and at that very instant you reward her by moving away from the dog, which is what she wants to do if she's afraid. You can set up situations on your own if you have large parks or similar where you can skirt on the edges, but some pre-arranged situations can help too, where you go somewhere quiet and have a friend or a trainer/behaviourist bring their dog and you both can control exactly how close the dogs go etc.
http://functionalrewards.com/ explains it a bit more

You might also want to consider some calmative products to maybe take the edge off Zara's nerves - I've mentioned them before but stuff like Adaptil, Calmex, Zylkene, magnesium supplements, a Thundershirt and so on. One super cheap option you could try first is your own pressure shirt by adapting a t-shirt for her. You want is snug, but not overly tight, around her shoulders and then you can gather the bottom half snugly by using a hair tie or elastic band. Works on pressure points, like swaddling a baby. Or a TTouch anxiety wrap is fairly cheap - you could maybe look into TTouch too, I think you can find videos explaining the basics if you can't afford a workshop on it.

There's no quick-fix for dog reactivity but it's something you can work on by yourself if your budget doesn't allow for a behaviourist. The key is to prevent as many reactions as possible, because they raise the stress levels of a dog and a stressed dog doesn't learn so well. Read up on trigger stacking too as this could be quite valid - Zara has a bad day, painwise, meets a dog on her morning walk and when reacting to it, jars her hip a bit. She's now in more pain and more stressed when she woke up. She meets another dog that afternoon - more stress, probably a more extreme reaction. The more reactions she has, the more stressed she gets, and the more easily it may trigger a reaction. The next day, all this remaining stress from yesterday (as it can take a couple of days for a dog to bounce back from this kind of stress) causes her to react at a dog twice as far away as the one she kicked off at yesterday. It's not just reactions that may increase her stress level too, but other things like her pain level, things like going to the vet if that worries her, etc. Trying to recognise these stressful situations, and giving her the chance to recover from them, can really help. If Casper's had a particularly bad reaction/day, I may even decide to not walk him the next day so he can recover from it - he's more than used to skipping walks here and there now and I believe it's far less stressful for him to miss a walk (we'll play in the garden and do more training instead) than to be forced out into public where he may react again.
http://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/how-are-dog-bites-like-tetris

Some other books that may help:
Feisty Fido - Patricia McConnell
Fight!: A Practical Guide to the Treatment of Dog-dog Aggression - Jean Donaldson
Click to Calm: Healing the Aggressive Dog - Emma Parsons
Control Unleashed - Leslie MCDevitt
The Dog Aggression Workbook - James O'Heare (should be the red workbook, not the others - they're aimed at that trainer rather than the owner)

I would really recommend signing up to the Dogpages forum too - lots of members with experience in reactive and aggressive dogs, several behaviourists who are happy to give what advice they can over the internet, and quite a few South East members who could potentially arrange stooge situations for you too.

Fosterdog

My GS boy is also dog aggressive and I've been working on everything krlyr said except the t-touch bit and I've seen a huge improvement.

My boy is set off by pain, for a while I thought there was no hope of him being around other dogs but after his first course of cartrophen injections he's been like a different dog. His second course is due in December but I'm noticing he is in more pain already and his aggression has come back, so he may go in for them sooner.

A few weeks back I took him on a dog walk with the rescue, there were about 30 people and twice as many dogs, he was kept muzzled the whole time but he was very relaxed and even played with a few of the dogs and was happy walking alongside them all, which relaxed me and made him even better. If he didn't have the muzzle I wouldn't have been anywhere near as relaxed and he would be more likely to snap.

This week an idiot left a terrier offlead on it's own while he left the park to take a call, the terrier made straight for us, I saw it in time and got my boy relaxed and put his muzzle on seconds before the dog reached us. The dog kept following us and pestering my boy, I reached the owner and told him he was lucky to have a dog left and to pay more attention. He was just saying "but she's friendly" when she pushed my boy over his limit. If he hadn't been muzzled he would have done serious damage to her. There was only one way in/out of the park so I couldn't take him a different way to get him home.

It's been a few days and only now I've noticed him relaxing fully again.

You say you are fully in control but that's only of Zara, you can't control other dogs so it's better to keep her safe, a muzzle is the best way to do that. I've cut out a few of the plastic "bars" from my boys, there are enough there for it to still be strong and sturdy but it allows him better access to water and I can pop small treats into his mouth easily to reward him when he's calm around dogs.

krlyr

One thing to watch with group walks is that it can often (not always, though) cause a dog to shut down - a dog with any sense will not kick off when surrounded by 5, 10, 20 other dogs. It's called flooding - used by some trainers but many do not like the method as it can cause a false sense of security as the dog is just surpressing its behaviour, and dogs don't generalise that well anyway so you can't expect to throw a dog in a group walk and then it never react to solo dogs ever again.
The way I look at it, if you had a spider phobia, what would help more - gradual introduction to a spider in a carefully controlled way, or being shoved in a room full of spiders? I mean, if you kept getting put in a room with spiders and nothing bad happened, eventually you may come to realise that spiders aren't anything to be scared of, but it will be quite a stessful process. The former method may take longer but will be a gentler way to go about things and may have a better longterm effect because you'd go on to desensitize yourself around spiders in various rooms, situations (spider in a closed jar, spider in an open jar, spider on a table, spider on the floor, etc)
http://selfhelpdogtraining.com/wordpress/?p=115
http://positively.com/positive-reinforcement/victoria-stilwell-articles/flooding/

I used to attend group walks with Casper when I first got him but saw no improvement in his reaction to other dogs we saw outside of these group walks. I decided to stop going and just arranged walks with one or two other dogs and it was then that he started to learn how to interact with other dogs - on the group walks he'd just hang back, presumably being uncomfortable or afraid but unable to express it amongst so many other dogs. His behaviour has come on leaps and bounds since doing the solo walks and working on slowly desensitizing him to other dogs out on walks - which is fortunate as we moved house to a road with a lot more dog-traffic than the previous house! We're now at the stage where we can pass a dog on the other side of the road without much fuss, which is a whole lot better than a dog who would kick off at the tiny dot of a dog in the distance.


The biggest tip for living with an aggression/reactive dog would be a change to yourself rather than your dog. Grow a thick skin, stop caring what others think. Don't worry about muzzling the dog if it helps keep people away or ensures Zara can't be blamed for attacking anyone. Tell people to go away, even if it makes you look rude. Tell people, firmly, to keep their dog away - tell them your dog is contagious if it helps (apparently tends to make people move a lot quicker than "my dog isn't friendly"!). Spot a dog approaching head on? Turn around and go the other way, even if you feel silly or rude doing it. Zara is your priority and the less she reacts, the better it is - for her immediate benefit and in the longterm, changing her behaviour (the less a dog practices a bad behaviour, the less ingrained it gets - just like toilet training, recall, etc). Just look after yourself and Zara because you cannot rely on the other dog owners to have the sense or manners to do it for you.

Wellyboots6

Oooh yes I remember krylr telling me about the 'watch' command on my thread about Tyson being an anti-social sod.

It works wonders! He can now let the big school bully from his dog club walk right round him without trying to kill him whilst watching me waiting for his treat. So far I still have to get him sat nicely and focussed on me before big bully approaches, but he is getting quicker to respond to the command.

We are even on no muzzles now so there is hope!!