abed

Well all we can go off is what's in the OP. OP said her dogs got out after one day at a new house. I'm sure the owners of the attacked dog didnt just do a random search of someone in the white pages and successfully find someone whose dogs got out. Dont mean to be a smart ass but I have a pug who weighs 4.5 kilos. If she'd been sitting somewhere and was attacked by 2 roaming dogs (granted she wouldnt be sitting unsupervised in a dog prohibited area but that's beside the point) she'd probably be dead. If your dogs are at large and attack another dog, you're in breach. As said by a previous poster, looks like the OP got off with a warning. Why fight that when they know their dogs were loose? People often report that they think the dog involved in an incident was the dog belonging to a particular address and the council put pressure on the owner of that dog on a suspicion without actual evidence. I was involved in an incident like that once where a Rottweiller was believed to have bitten someone and the owner of a Rottweiller in the near vacinity was facing a Dangerous Dog order on the assumption that their dog must have climbed a side fence when the owners were at work on that day. What eventually cleared the suspected dog was the attacking Rotty was reported to have had a docked tail, their's had a tail and the case was dropped. Being told your dog is suspected of doing something needs to be thoroughly investigated before an owner should accept that their dog was involved.

The OP has admitted that her dogs were involved. I had the impression that the OP was told of the incident. They can't admit to a series of events unless they saw it happen is what I am saying. Dogs escaping from the yard and creating a nuisence involving another animal (Pug) are two different things.

Walking 3 mature SBT's is a quite a defensive force against an attacking dog, but it reminds me of a security guy I knew once who was over confident walking his protection trained GSD thinking his dog was untouchable. An off leash ACD X nailed the GSD one night saved by millimetres nearly lost an eye with nasty gashes that required stitching up at the vets. The GSD stood it's ground and growled but by that time it had been badly bitten and didn't fight back. The GSD's handler kicked the other dog off and it ran away. Had some thugs attacked the guy, his GSD would have done a good protection routine, but with a dog attack, you wouldn't really imagine a hardened highly trained protection dog would come off 2nd best.

I would be interested to know what evidence they had to determine the OP's dogs were involved???.

I agree with your understanding very much Corvus. Play and food consumption is antagonistic to fear and is a difficult process to redirect a fear aggressive dog onto food and toys when in a state of stress to encourage an alternate behaviour. It happens with sporting dogs sometimes working at a new training field where they suffer a noticable reduction in prey drive which is often insecurities the dog is feeling causing their performance to suffer. It's the same flatness caused by a performance dog fearing heavy corrections in training where positive and drive training overtook the old school methods easing stress on the dog enhancing performance.

I don't usually like to argue with scientific research and facts This is not something I just dreamed up. I'm not sure who your clients usually are, but I can tell you that Mrs Citizen with her DA dachshund would promptly walk out of my school if I proceeded to hang her dog with a DD collar and then ask her to do same . Sorry abed, but I need to work with methods that the average dog owner is willing and able to do, regardless of dog breed and severity of the aggression. My aim is for that owner to come away with good handling and coping techniques with permanent results, and the way I and my instructors work with these dogs seems to work for most of them. I didn't want to get into a debate of methods...seriously over that on DOL ...you will always cater to your own audience, and my audience is the average dog owner and their kids I do understand the facets of commercial dog training and I don't disagree with your stance on that, but having said that, I don't think all classes should be based around Mrs Citizen and her Dachshund with the same process applied to Miss Fivefoot's DA GSD if it's not the best process to suit Miss Fivefoot's situation or she be denied the use of a DD collar as an example because Mrs Citizen may throw a hissy fit. I often end up with Miss Fivefoot's predicament after training systems applied by class necessity failed her dog or she was ejected from the class when her dog didn't respond appreciably. There is too often a cross of swords between pet dog and working dog trainers in the use of equipment and methods which is shame really that there appears quite a division. Given that most working breeds are pet dogs, there is often a pattern where it appears many pet dog trainers try and apply systems that work well with the average pet type dog to a working breed on the basis of it being a pet and not a police dog. But some working breed pets have the same traits used in police work and sometimes need that little bit extra in training which would be of great benefit when recognised IMHO.

Firstly, no learning is occuring once the dog is pumped full of adrenaline and cortisol during an aggressive fire up, so there is no point doing anything really! Dog isn't listening nor learning anything at that time, so any reaction from you is both futile, useless and too late. I would - mentally thank my dog for letting me know that I was either too close to another dog or allowed another dog to get to close to us - take the dog away as quickly as possible - U-turn or back-away (only if pre-conditioned)- no negotiations here. - make a mental note of what I wasn't paying attention to prior to the incident ie the dog's micro behaviours, the environment, why I wasn't watching etc, whilst cursing and swearing at my stupidity - wait patiently until the dog calms down and then continue working on the CC exercises and adhere to threshold as best as possible. - keep my training sessions short and sweet Sorry if there are no miraculous techniques here however this is what I found works best for the dogs and handlers I work with each week in class and is something that almost all handlers are capable of doing. I beg to differ on the assumption that a dog is incapable of learning or listening during an aggressive light up which I don't think is entirely true. A protection dog will out on command when pumped up in defensive fighting drive under attack from a decoy/offender and a multitude of other high drive engagements. I think that dogs can obey and learn under adverse conditions and drive levels. Some say in theory they can't, but theory isn't always reflective in practice. I agree with your other concepts which I think work best too, but in the dragging away process, or U turn, the theory there is you are ramping up the dog's aggression level in agitation in the process where the dog could easily redirect back to the handler resulting in a serious bite when yanking a dog around in an aggressive mind set. I think that approach is too close to the wind preceeding a bite if the dog isn't muzzled and quelling the aggressive drive as fast as possible is a safer approach in that instance. If you block an aggressive lunge and episode with a DD collar as I do, wheather or not the dog stops lunging by learning that lunging isn't permitted or the dog is avoiding a correction it's still coherent enough to make a choice when faced with a reactive stumulus so I am thinking it must have learned something otherwise the dog would keep lunging which they don't after a couple of DD collar blocks then you work on the process as you have explained. The difference is, your dog if unfortunate enough to be faced with an aggressive stimulus exceeding the threshhold during the desensitsation process will continue to lunge in aggression, mine doesn't lunge in the same circumstances with all other training processess being equal how does allowing the dog to continue lunging if it wishes, produce more consistancy in the result???. In other words, in your system, the dog has never been taught that aggressive lunging is a top level bad behaviour. I am thinking given that you can't ever really trust a recovering aggressor, wouldn't a situation down the track be a bit more reliable if say the dog did think about a lunge and bite with a collar shy dog than one that has never experienced a hard correction for aggressive behaviour???. To be really honest, I don't see in a correction free desensitisation process that the dog ever learns that aggression is not a tolorated behaviour. I think without a correction, the dog will continue to think a lunge is ok if nothing better is on offer..........yes, maybe, no

That does explain the real side of things Megan and the environment makes things difficult for the average pet owner to put a controlled desensitisation plan into place to avoid major setbacks. You could try on targets the dog won't react to, "who's that", dog has a look, then say "no one" as a maker word then treat. That often works to switch a dogs focus on and off and teach them they don't need to react on the maker word "no one" then move onto targets they normally bark at :D

The dog is in front of you at the end of the leash, pulling and barking aggressively, what do you do at that point where the dog has lost the plot???. As I mentioned previously, I would have a DD dollar on that dog and block it with a firm no and release it when it regained composure. I am interested in how you would tackle the same situation??? I'm not Kelpei-i, but in the past I have done as you have done (on a flat collar), or physically picked the dog up & removed him from the situation (he was extremely stable & did not redirect). However, I also think that by letting the dog get so close that my dog was aroused or freaked, I had undone some of my work desensitising the dog & made my job ultimately longer & harder. So, what I did to control & redirect my dog was only making the best of a bad situation. My old boy was a terrier - very predatory, very game, scared of nothing. I believe we never got him feeling calm around other dogs, although with drive work (mainly) and corrections (some) he became very trustworthy in public and would act non-aggressive towards other dogs (so long as he knew he would either be rewarded with a tug or corrected). I think the distinction between acting calm & feeling calm is an important distinction for some dogs. I would love to learn more about handling aggressive confident dogs, but sadly just about every trainer I've visited in person (in the quest to reform my prior dog) have had more excuses than knowledge to impart. Your old boy sounded like a nice dog to handle and work with from a training perspective and is similar to how many good working dogs react. He doesn't sound to have had fear based aggression but more a social dominance. True fear based aggression is the most difficult behaviour to contend with I think as the dog is too foggy headed in a reactive state to do a lot with in terms of redirecting energy towards toys, food etc. The narrow vision one track mind to get that dog before he gets me insecure mentality always presents the greatest challenge. I think a different approach is needed from determining why a dog is DA as to the best rehabilitation road to take. Really hard nerved confident working dogs although hard to motivate sometimes and perhaps not ideal for all working disciplines are never DA, they don't care about other dogs and have a grace of arrogance which other dogs seem to pick up on like an alpha status most other dogs won't challenge. They do however resist direction often with an attidude "if you make me do something I don't like, I might have to bite you" :D

The dog is in front of you at the end of the leash, pulling and barking aggressively, what do you do at that point where the dog has lost the plot???. As I mentioned previously, I would have a DD dollar on that dog and block it with a firm no and release it when it regained composure. I am interested in how you would tackle the same situation???

You can't avoid other dogs, you need dogs around for the distraction to train alternate behaviour which is the problem most owners are faced with. You can train in a dog free environment some wonderful focus exercises with great success, but it's difficult to override a strong fear reaction in a dog with commands learned in a stress free environment. My latest intake began training 5 weeks ago. The two "worst" dogs in this group last week worked inside a group of five other dogs. One of them had a polite, on-leash greeting. The other walked between two other dogs 4' apart, then back again. For the first 4 weeks, one of them worked from behind a tarpaulin we had set up between star-pickets about 20m from the rest of the class. He poked his head out for 5 seconds at a time, working up to 30 seconds at a time with 1 min breaks between trials. 5 trials at a time, then back in the car for 5 minutes. Not a stress free environment, but pretty close and it got some good groundwork in. Admittedly, I handled both dogs last week. So there were no concomitant cues from the owners, and my training mechanics are unconsciously competent. Both dogs did have brief reactions, but were responsive to the cues given. The tarpaulin idea is a good one, I like that :D

Each to their own with the above abed...although I no longer agree with this.....USED TO THOUGH ;) How do you handle a dog that is at the end of the leash in an aggressive state barking and lunging with the intent to mount an attack???.

The alternative to not blocking the reaction is the dog being allowed to elevate it's aggression level through collar agitation being restrained or dragged away. The handler is reinforcing that it's ok for the dog to lunge and bark and agitates the dog to go harder from the physical restraint much like a back tie situation to elevate defence drive in protection training. The dog IMHO gets the wrong message what's required of it. I don't believe that a handler screaming NO NO NO and at the same time providing collar agitation to elevate a defensive state of mind is relaying the right messages to the dog.

. abed, which is why I find it important to keep the dog just under threshold at all times when going through the desensitisation process. It's when the totally oblivious owners continue to deviate from threshold that the symptoms continue to persist. This hinders the rehab process and strengthens the notion to the dog that this is the way he must continue to act. Someone asked earlier how do we know when you've reached a breakthrough....this is merely anecdotcal and based only by my findings over many years and dogs... 1. Lack of any apparent displacement/stress signals at the current distance and at some deviation of that threshold. Dog looks much more relaxed than previous, although still looking around. 2. Displacement and stress signals can be one of more of the following: heavy panting when no hot weather/no physical exercise, yawning, lip flicking, eating grass, looking away/hiding, continuously jumping up on owner and grabbing at arms, clothes, reluctant to obey known commands (especially down/drop), reluctant to have back towards other dogs ....etc. When a previously highly reactive dogs, flying at the end of the lead with dogs at say 20 metres away can all of a sudden, quickly but calmly walk past the same dogs at 20 metres, that is the start of the initial breakthrough! The next step (of course this will vary with different dogs), would be to close that threshold by .5 metres so that the dog walks quickly but calmly past the dog at 19.5 metres (or even closer in some instances). Again, the 'breakthrough' is the lack of any apparent displacement and stress signals from the dog at the current or closer threshold. Physical corrections (however they are applied) will stop the symptoms (barking, lunging, air snapping, growling etc) but will NOT remove the displacement and stress signals, because the dog is still very much stressed in the environment.... and habituation/desensitisation has not occurred. This is one reason why these dogs are always forever panting, eating grass, looking away or jumping up on their owners in class. Which is why I call these dogs "ticking time bombs". I have found in all cases that a physical correction does reduce the displacement and stress signals as the dog learns by not reacting caused by correction avoidance, that nothing happened being exposed to another dog and dogs being within their previous reaction threshhold are nothing to fear. They learn that the situation they once thought required an agressive response is no longer required of them and stress in general is reduced. The other thing also is stress induced by the handler fearing the lack of control in an aggressive reaction, the handler/seeing another dog knowing their dog will cause a scene, or turning around to avoid another dog, the handler transmits to the dog that the issue ahead is a scary situation to be feared making the dog worse. This can be seen with the same dog often handled by different family members. With one family member the dog is not too bad, with the other, the dog wants to kill everyone in proximity. The family member who the dog reacts worse with, has the higher level of anxiety increasing the dogs suspicion and fear/defence response. Furthermore to this which is common, a small woman with a large aggressive dog, her fear is being unable to control the dog in a reaction because she physically cannot restrain the dog effectively if he lights up and for good reason she is petrified of this scenario when out with the dog. Show her how to take the drive away from the dog with a DD collar and instantly she has a handbrake to apply if the dog goes off. Her confidence skyrockets with her ability to control the dog, her anxiety reduces and the dog in reciprocation improves along with her increased confidence. We are getting a bit techo here...........but most will know what I mean, hopefully??????.

You can't avoid other dogs, you need dogs around for the distraction to train alternate behaviour which is the problem most owners are faced with. You can train in a dog free environment some wonderful focus exercises with great success, but it's difficult to override a strong fear reaction in a dog with commands learned in a stress free environment.

I disagree, nor is it necessarily about lowering drive. That I agree with. What if we can teach a dog that a calm reaction reduces stress instead? The reactive drive in aggression is defence drive and lowing defence drive is what raises the reactive threshhold. Maintaining a high level of defence drive in a reactive dog or increasing it by agitation defeats the purpose. Defence drive IMHO must be reduced to provide the best opportunity for rehabilitation. Teaching the dog a calm reaction reduces stress is the idea, yes absolutely. Even a very hard protection breed will not stay in defence drive for ever if the other dog doesn't go away. Nor should the dog be unresponsive to commands during defence drive if the groundwork is completed correctly. We are not talking about clear headed dogs of stable temperament ideal for protection work that are reacting with sharpness or social aggression, different ball game with a dog like that, than a dog who displays similar behaviour out of insecurity and defence although the symptoms of their behaviour may appear the same lighting up on the end of the leash. The socially aggressive dog is not stressed and is acting out of an extension of prey drive ecsalating into fighting drive like a hunting drive if you like to catch the prey and kill it. A dog high in social aggression in a hard working breed wants the fight, they are not reacting out of fear or acting in defence. Rehabilitating a good working dog not to react aggressively is easy, so there is a difference between the two scenarios and the training approach also I believe. In other words, a good working dog isn't loopy in it's thought process the way a fear aggressive dog is. The difference between the two temperaments can be easily seen for example, a stable dog acting out of social aggression can be redirected with a toy fairly easily when they are lighting up at a stranger for example, you can give them a reward to satisfy drive and they take it. A dog reacting out of fear/insecurity won't take the bait, you cannot divert their focus off the aggression target.

I think that is a very good point. No matter what techniques are used to reduce aggression, there needs to be a system in place for dealing with the unexpected situation without setting the training back weeks. Just from my experience with my own very DA dog, I think reducing aggression using pure desensitisation requires a trainer who is very skilled in reading dog body language & manipulating critical distances, and a very controlled environment. I also think aggression would never be "cured" unless the dog learns a new emotional reaction to seeing other dogs or seeing people. Just controlling the behaviours the dog exhibits (through punishing the aggression or rewarding alternative behaviours really heavily e.g. working in drive around other dogs) is IMO only management. It teaches the dog self control or it distracts it, but the desire behind the fighting behaviour still remains. Unfortunately from my experiences you are totally correct Staranais IMHO. Even with good success, you should never trust a dog with a predisposition to stranger based DA or HA in an uncontrolled environment, or should I say, I would never take the chance of assuming under all circumstances that the dog is cured.

I disagree, nor is it necessarily about lowering drive. That I agree with. What if we can teach a dog that a calm reaction reduces stress instead? The reactive drive in aggression is defence drive and lowing defence drive is what raises the reactive threshhold. Maintaining a high level of defence drive in a reactive dog or increasing it by agitation defeats the purpose. Defence drive IMHO must be reduced to provide the best opportunity for rehabilitation. Teaching the dog a calm reaction reduces stress is the idea, yes absolutely.

In the desensitising process, unless the dog lights up in an aggressive reaction there is no reason for any type of correction to be applied, so contemplating a correction or aversive measure in the process, the dog must be lighting up or acting aggressively which provides us with the options below: 1. Drop the leash and let the dog go. 2. Drag the dog backwards and heighten defence drive through agitation 3. Correct the dog and take the drive away I don't agree that either dropping the leash allowing the dog to attack or ramping it up in collar agitation is beneficial in the rehab process. Obviously no one will apply option 1, drag the dog back giving commands the dog ignores which is what most people do is bad IMHO especially if the other dog retreats allowing the aggressive dog to win will bring a large proportion of the desensitsing program undone. If in the situation during desensitisation that the dog does light up in aggression, correction is the only beneficial option to keep the work done intact. that to me deoesn't really sound like desensitisation To me desenstisation is acutally really habituation; which means learning that a certain 'something' is nothing to worry about. I would think that by using punishments you can't achieve habituation. I don't doubt that it is taching the dog something, but it is not teaching the dog that the presence of another dog is nothing to worry about. That's a good point and ideally true, but given the road to rehabilitation is a long one, unless you can provide absolute controlled conditions at all times to train the dog reducing the reactive distances to raise the aggression threshhold, at some stage in reality I suppose is the term for it, the dog will light up in aggression, maybe an off leash dog running into the training area, a person with a dog popping up around a corner on a casual walk whatever, but it will happen, and dealing with that situation when it does I think is an important part of the process.

There are more than 3 options. There probably is too, but every second the dog is forging at the end of the leash in defence driven aggression, the aggression level and determination to attack the other dog is rapidly rising. It's the reason that applying a weak correction or pain induced aversive with prong and Ecollars at that point can escalate the situation and agitate the drive into a higher level and on occassions will provoke redirected aggression where the dog can bite the handler. The only thing that will lower the drive naturally in the aggressive dog is the other dog running away. The classical symptom of dog aggression is the dog lighting up in defense at the end of the leash and ignors known commands and the handler looses control of the dog other than physical restraint, and how that sitiuation is addressed has a major bearing IMHO upon the strength of the rehabilitation platform. The dog reacts to try and lower it's stress level and the worse thing is the dog to learn that an aggressive reaction reduces the stress and becomes a learned behaviour and becomes part of the dogs disposition. This happens often in working breeds where a dog owner likes the idea of their 3 month old Rotty pup or GSD barking at strangers thinking they have the makings of a good protection dog. The puppy barks through insecurity and the owners reward the behaviour and the person or dog the puppy barks at retreats. The puppy learns this behaviour and by the time it's 9 or 10 months old, the owner has developed a fear biter by that time is uncontrollable.

In the desensitising process, unless the dog lights up in an aggressive reaction there is no reason for any type of correction to be applied, so contemplating a correction or aversive measure in the process, the dog must be lighting up or acting aggressively which provides us with the options below: 1. Drop the leash and let the dog go. 2. Drag the dog backwards and heighten defence drive through agitation 3. Correct the dog and take the drive away I don't agree that either dropping the leash allowing the dog to attack or ramping it up in collar agitation is beneficial in the rehab process. Obviously no one will apply option 1, drag the dog back giving commands the dog ignores which is what most people do is bad IMHO especially if the other dog retreats allowing the aggressive dog to win will bring a large proportion of the desensitsing program undone. If in the situation during desensitisation that the dog does light up in aggression, correction is the only beneficial option to keep the work done intact.

Hello to everyone. I am a working dog trainer and I don't generally enter into training discussions on pet dog forums due to the fallout and arguments that occur in the process and personally I am not interested those debates. Having said that, I deal with dog and human aggressive dogs on a regular basis and although you can never trust a DA or HA dog to behave in all circumstances, you can infact raise the reactive thresholds and with a good handler who can read the dog well, you can generally improve the behaviour to the point that the average person seeing the dog out and about would never know the dog had DA or HA tendencies underlying and in most circumstances the dog will behave well on leash. Part of the success is the handler knowing when to back the dog out of over confronting situations that is likely to light the dog up being a process of gradual exposure and desensitisation that takes time. The dog the OP describes seems more like a dog that wants to get the other dog before the other dog gets him given that he dragged the handler 3 metres to mount the attack. With dogs who react in that way, I use a stabilisation collar or a Dominant Dog Collar as they are also known for the purpose that if the dog does light up in the rehabilitation process, the dog can be restrained and corrected with the drive to attack taken away from the dog. I agree that a physical correction can escalates the problem when the correction is not hard enough which is usually the case. A hard enough correction for the dog to remember the consequence of mounting an unwarranted attack will cause the dog avoidance of the action it was corrected for which avoidance of aggressive lunging is what the handler is looking to achieve. If the dog tucks it's tail seeing another dog and behaves by fearing a correction if deciding to lunge, I am personally happy with that, as it's a step in the right direction. Also the dog learns that the other dogs are not a threat and aggression wasn't necessary as the other dogs didn't do anything and they were nothing to fear in the first place. With the worse cases of lunging aggression towards people or other dogs that I have worked with, have stopped the lunging altogther after 3 corrections with the DD collar and the lesser aggressive types have stopped the behaviour after one correction. It's true that DD collar corrections masks the behaviour temperarily, it doesn't fix it but povides the foundation to work with for long term rehabilitation which is basically finding a job the dog will focus on best whilst in the proximity of other dogs during desensitisation and using known non reactive calm dogs as the decoys when reducing distances and exposure to other dogs. My worse case of late was a GSD pet dog that was both HA and DA, a dog that reacted from insecurities but was civil enough in drive to have a go and reduce it's stress and was a very dangerous animal to anything or anyone unfamiliar to the dog. After initial training with me, the owners worked with the dog to reshape the behaviour over about 6 months and what resulted is this: You can't trust the dog off leash in a public place and would never be a consideration with this dog. The dog uses a martingale collar and behaves well on leash. Strangers can't pat the dog and the dog would light up if another dog got in his face or acted aggressively towards him, but providing the owners don't place the dog in these positions, he is calm and obedient. It was 12 months in November since the dog has aggressively lunged, but the owners have done a great job in his rehabilitation and reading the dog and being on the alert that he could react. Serious DA and HA I don't believe can be fixed to the point of having confidence as you would with a dog that has never displayed the behaviour and reactivity, it's a condition with the right owner dedicated to manange the situation can result in a good pet in the right circumstances as far as a sporting dog or a dog that must be dog and stranger freindly, it has the wrong temperament to push the envelope that far. I might add that the use of DD collars effectively should be used in consultation with a trainer experienced in these methods of correction.