Puppy Forum and Dog Forums banner

Is An Aggressive Reaction to Aggression Appropriate?

1K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  Maja 
#1 · (Edited)
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.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
It's really hard to answer unless we were able to see the interaction as a whole and see the body language of all the dogs involved. It could just be that she has a low tolerance for bad manners from small dogs with bad manners. It sounds like she routinely has to deal with small dogs climbing all over her and other dogs taking her toys...maybe the aggressive growl from the other dog is just that line for her, that one thing that is just one too much?

If you aren't sure what is causing this and how to train her out of it, it has happened twice, and she has been injured...I'm thinking that skipping the off leash trails, at least for now, is a good idea. Otherwise, with repeated events like this, what is now an isolated problem with certain dogs when they do certain things, could likely escalate into all dogs doing anything.

Beyond that, I'd recommend a canine behaviorist to see this behavior in person to get to the bottom of it.
 
#3 ·
Some dogs just have different boiling points than others. I think you now have a pretty good idea of your own dog's threshold when it comes to directly interacting with other dogs.

Instead of looking for ways to change how she responds to certain triggers when left to her own devices, focusing on maintaining positive control and proactively controlling the situation. Set her up for success. I'm glad you've decided to keep her on lead now. You should (ahem, need to) also stop approaching strange dogs. Keep her out of those situations entirely altogether. You don't know the dogs, you don't know the owners, and you're just asking for trouble. Especially since you know she reacts aggressively in certain situations.

That isn't to say you should keep her away from other dogs entirely, but limit her interactions to dogs that you know and whose temperaments you know to be compatible. And still ensure that those playtimes are highly supervised. Otherwise, you're just walking her straight into failure and begging for a "fight or flight" response--and you know what directions she's going to take.

Work on establishing on solid obedience foundation. When you're out and about, work on defaulting her focus to you when she encounters something threatening or alarming. She doesn't need to interact with strange dogs. It's dangerous and irresponsible. When you're not a part of the dynamic and when her focus is elsewhere, she doesn't have a positive outlet for her stimulus response. That outlet should be you. If she's uncomfortable, she should turn to you before she reaches her threshold.
 
#5 ·
Work on establishing on solid obedience foundation. When you're out and about, work on defaulting her focus to you when she encounters something threatening or alarming. She doesn't need to interact with strange dogs. It's dangerous and irresponsible. When you're not a part of the dynamic and when her focus is elsewhere, she doesn't have a positive outlet for her stimulus response. That outlet should be you. If she's uncomfortable, she should turn to you before she reaches her threshold.
To expand on this, you should teach her "look at me", which is exactly what it sounds like, your dog looks at your face on command. This is a great command for breaking focus and preventing reactions. I use it with my very prey drivey dog. When he sees prey, I say "look at me!" and looking at me, even just turn his head a bit for half a second, breaks that extreme focus, putting him back under control.

This does take a while. You have to start indoors where nothing is happening, then slowly move to other locations with greater and greater distractions. Using it with other dogs on a hike should be your last step after you've gotten it 100% everywhere else.

 
#4 ·
Well what's that old story about the man with sore shoulder that hurt every time he raised arm over head, Dr said stop lifting arm over head. (something like that)

It's up to you to be on your toes and avoid future problems. Your dog is ignoring warning growls and stepping up the action. Sometimes this gets easier for the dog if it continues and becomes a habit.

Other than avoidance it's hard without reading the dog to give help advice.
 
#6 ·
Thank you so much for the helpful tips. This is my first post on a forum, and I am so pleased to see some useful suggestions, and an awesome video too.
I will definitely work on changing her focus.
Which will actually help with another issue we have with her wanting to chase strange cats which are running away.
We have 2 cats, we she basically ignores, and if we encounter strange cats which don't run she will ignore them too, but if the strange cat bolts, she pulls hard on the leash wanting to run after it.
So I definitely need to work on getting her to change her focus to me.
She loves treats, so this should be something she will enjoy working on.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top