And either way, how can we teach our dog to walk away, or ignore, when growled at?
I have a 5 year, spayed, golden retriever. She is the sweetest dog, as goldens are
She plays every day with other dogs, which belong to our friends, including small dogs and large dogs (shih tzu and pitbull, etc.)
She is fine with any small dog climbing on her, licking her face.
Her pitbull friend even steals sticks right from her mouth. You can take toys, food or treats away from her no problem.
She will share her food bowl with other dogs.
However, if a strange dog growls aggressively towards her (we have only seen this from small dogs) she will attack it.
This has happened a couple of times (only with small dogs), while walking on off-leash trails, but yesterday was the worst.
Yesterday we walked up to 2 small dogs, they all sniffed each other for a couple of minutes.
When I called my dog, she started to walk away and the other dog growled at her, and they immediately started fighting.
It only lasted a couple of seconds, and I was easily able to grab the collar of my dog and pull her away.
But she was bleeding extensively from her lower lip, and limping. The other dog was fine.
The bleeding stopped and she walked away within a few minutes. Today she is just fine, you can hardly even see the scratch on her lip, I don't know how it could bleed so much and stop quickly but it did and we are happy that it was not worse.
My question is why does she get so aggressive from just the growl, and is there anything we can do to teach her to walk away?
I don’t believe that keeping her away from dogs will help the situation. But for now I will keep her on leash near strange small dogs.
Down our back lane we have several houses with dogs in fenced yards, small and large. If the dog comes to the fence quietly, my dog will walk up and they will sniff noses through the fence, but if the dog comes racing up barking (which 90% of the small dogs do), my dog will pull on the leash and want to run over and fight with it.
I have a 5 year, spayed, golden retriever. She is the sweetest dog, as goldens are
She plays every day with other dogs, which belong to our friends, including small dogs and large dogs (shih tzu and pitbull, etc.)
She is fine with any small dog climbing on her, licking her face.
Her pitbull friend even steals sticks right from her mouth. You can take toys, food or treats away from her no problem.
She will share her food bowl with other dogs.
However, if a strange dog growls aggressively towards her (we have only seen this from small dogs) she will attack it.
This has happened a couple of times (only with small dogs), while walking on off-leash trails, but yesterday was the worst.
Yesterday we walked up to 2 small dogs, they all sniffed each other for a couple of minutes.
When I called my dog, she started to walk away and the other dog growled at her, and they immediately started fighting.
It only lasted a couple of seconds, and I was easily able to grab the collar of my dog and pull her away.
But she was bleeding extensively from her lower lip, and limping. The other dog was fine.
The bleeding stopped and she walked away within a few minutes. Today she is just fine, you can hardly even see the scratch on her lip, I don't know how it could bleed so much and stop quickly but it did and we are happy that it was not worse.
My question is why does she get so aggressive from just the growl, and is there anything we can do to teach her to walk away?
I don’t believe that keeping her away from dogs will help the situation. But for now I will keep her on leash near strange small dogs.
Down our back lane we have several houses with dogs in fenced yards, small and large. If the dog comes to the fence quietly, my dog will walk up and they will sniff noses through the fence, but if the dog comes racing up barking (which 90% of the small dogs do), my dog will pull on the leash and want to run over and fight with it.