poodlefan

Dogs aren't blank slates KTB. Genes and early environment play a part. My timid girl didn't come to me until she was 8 months old and I think more socialisation may have helped. Darcy (the fear aggresive boy) does lack confidence. I didn't hesitate to seek professional advice when his behaviour concerned me and I recommend that others do so quite frequently. Oh, and you sooooo need to read this thread

I know and I wasn't actually talking about you - I always find your posts very thoughtful and helpful in my Elbie matters I guess my worry is that in some cases, the thin-skinned poster runs away and the only casualty will be the poor dog because if the owner isn't getting the advice from here, he/she might be getting it from somewhere less desirable and the poor pup ends up devolving and ends up at the pound or worse :'( I just think if we can keep the person here and talking - maintaining a line of communication - there's more of a chance at finding an approach that works. Not to worry KTB, I've had plenty of accusations of "newb bashing" levelled at me over the years and some posters will reject any advice that isn't what they want to hear as a personal slight. All I can say is that most posters play by the forum rules. This is a public forum and if people want to ask for advice, sometimes they are going to get views that are more than they bargained for. Some sifting may be required but generally folk get a lot of help here. It just doesn't always come sugar coated.

Some of us were also trying to prevent a child from being bitten - a very real risk in this scenario. I've lost count of new posters here who came for sympathy, took issue with frank advice and somehow interpreted it as a personal slight but in the end came to find that all the in the world didn't help their dog. Witness the long term DOLer (now) who got mightily offended when her aging dog was described by some as "morbidly obese" and was told by the "nice people" that he was too old to be dieted, it would be cruel to do it and just to let him be. She cowboyed up, took the diet advice, shed kilos of the dog and he got a whole new lease of life. How would sympathy have helped there? Once a bite has occured, you're in damage control in more ways than one. The dog has learned that biting deters unwanted human behaviour and to be quite frank its unlikely to ever "unlearn" that lesson. You end up with a dog with a very low bite threshold, a child that's probably scared of the dog (I think the OP already has one of these) and potentialyl another dog in the pound with zero prospects of rehoming. If people get a little blunt about their advice, bear in mind how many times the scenario outlined above plays out in homes all over this country because the signals a dog is sending out loud and clear get ignored. And its not just dogs that pay the price when it happens.

You were advised not to let your daughters pick up the dog or touch him when he was sleeping, to buy a crate and crate train him and to seek professional help. You were further advised to tighten up the boundaries with this pup, to involve your daughters in his training. and to keep him off the furniture. I guess we only see what we want to see. Nekbet is the only dog training professional that responded. No one in their right mind is going to give you any advice on how to tackle this issue directly if they've not seen the dog in person. With any form of aggression, that's just plain irresponsible. All other advice was directed towards managing the pup to prevent a recurrence. MM, YOU were the one who made it out to be a big deal (very properly I thought) and if you now choose to downplay the issue so be it. Personally I think you'll be doing yourself and your pup a disfavour if you leave here. My guess is that this won't be the last issue you confront with this pup and this is a great place for advice, even if you don't enjoy reading all of it and you choose to ignore most of it. Best of luck. Oops back again Did you say your son feeds the dog?

I used the term to illustrate the fact that for the 8 or more hours a day that many dogs spend without human company, a system of dealing with competition and cooperation is required. Maybe you need to spend more time with dogs that live in groups of 3 or more. My view is that it is in situations where cooperation is needed or competition is required that you see the hierarchy at its most visible. Place a stable pack in a perceived threat situation and I bet you'll see one dog or more dogs step up to deal with it. I've seen it in my own. I've seen it in others. I recall a group of 5 dogs (3 mine, two belonging to a housemate).. large strange dog approaching. Two dogs went forward.. would you like to hazard a guess which of mine did? Leadership only applies to social situations and we have modified some breeds to have a lower pack drive than others.

Life isn't necessarily a constant parade of competetive situations. Social dominance exists as a means to avoid fights, which occur when individuals are in competition over something. What happens if you have two dogs that rarely compete? My boys are very different and have very different priorities, so they rarely come into conflict with one another and therefore there is no NEED for one to be dominant over the other. What happens is one always backs off. Who it is depends on who wants it more. Erik is pushier, bolder, and more likely to think he can get something he wants off Kivi, but if Kivi doesn't want to give it up Erik doesn't pick a fight with him. Erik will try to encourage Kivi to give it up and if Kivi doesn't care that much about it he will, but Erik is a lot smaller than him and can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do. Kivi is highly motivated to avoid conflicts. That's just who he is. So he doesn't want to compete with Erik. And he doesn't. End of story. No vacuum to fill. They make decisions based on what they personally want. Whether the other dog goes along with it or not is neither here nor there. Who said leadership was only about competition or power? The reason pack hierarchies exist, is it not, is to minimise competition and maximise cooperation within a social group? Unless you leave dogs in a sterile environment, there's competition anyway.. even where they rest may result in a competition over resources. An absence of competiton points to the existence of a stable pack hiearchy anyway. I believe the scientific term for a dog like this is "little shit". That dog's behaviour would not be tolerated in my home. Sounds like the boundaries need to be reinforced with him.

That's how they got here in the first place. Never say never.

Seems to me two dogs fought, not one. All dogs are potentially aggressive - its the relationship between these dogs that's the issue. Don't look to only one dog as the problem. You can probably have the two dogs together under supervision if you are aware of what you are doing - that's where professional help comes in. The rule of thumb to minimise the risk of this kind of behaviour is not to have two dogs that are the same gender and close together in age and size. You've got just that.

The very clear Alpha in my household is my 13 year old poodle Teddy. He’s not the first out the door barking in alarm or warning but generally no one messes with him. He’s a true alpha – he doesn’t need to do more than look meaningfully at the others and generally they’ll defer. Same goes for pups – no big threat displays required to get them to back off – just “the look”. My next door neighbour is a police dog handler. He knows a thing or two about dogs. We were chatting over the fence one day and something came up about guarding behaviour. He looked over at Ted and said “of the dogs you own, that's the one I'd think twice about before entering your yard". Ted is aging and a new leader may emerge in the months ahead. My guess is it may be the Whippet.

Dogs don't have power vacuums. Who steps up when you aren't there?

Start feeding them in separate rooms or crated immediately. Summon professional, experienced help ASAP. In addition to the damage these two could cause to one another, don't under estimate the damage they may cause to you if you get yourself between them and they are fighting. I can't see speying really helping this situation but why wouldn't you want to spey the bitch anyway??

The general recommended dosage for Drontal is every 3 months.

My personal view is that dogs will sort out their own hierarchy in any multi dog home. A harmonious pack is probably more symptomatic of a clear pack hierarchy than the absence of one. That said, I'm with Megan - I think who takes lead is a fluid situation depending on the event and even lower pack members can and will fiercely defend resources. As Ian Dunbar says, only a foolish Alpha male will try to take something from a lesser ranked bitch. All we can do as humans is set the boundaries of acceptable behaviour and manage any event the dogs cannot resolve without aggression.

Marleyz Mum I don't think you're an idiot and I'm not "blaming" anyone. I'm glad you realise that the responsiblity for how your children interact with the pup is yours. What I fear may happen is that the pup will realise its warnings aren't working and escalate to biting. Once that first bite happens, his bite threshold will plummet and he'll use what he knows will work for ANY undesireable behaviour. This is a safety issue and I'd really hate to see a bitten child and a dog that may be unsuitable to remain in your home. I'm glad you're taking this seriously. My concern is that you were not. You need to sit the kids down and talk about what's happening and tell them why for both their sakes AND the pups that they need to work on moving him without picking him up. He's only going to get bigger. Best to start using methods now that you can use for the rest of his life. EFS

Agree Dan - eliminating pain as a reason for the behaviour should always be the starting point. This is a baby puppy obtained from unknown parents of unknown temperament and with a less than ideal start in life - possibly with very little (or inappropriate) handling before being acquired very young by the OP's family. A behavioural consult would be ideal as would a vet check.

The OP has expressed the dog is selectively aggressive. Professional help needs to be called in for this. They cannot go on living with the two girls avoiding the dog because it doesnt accept them as respectable members of the family. I agree. But the only time this 12 week old pup appears to display aggression is he is disturbed while sleeping or the daughters try to pick him up. I'd certainly not persist in any behaviour a dog growls about - its begging to be bitten. If the OP can't justify the expense of a crate, a behaviourist consult is probably not going to happen. All that's left to keep the kids safe is to prevent the actions that put them at risk.

How about you start with forbidding your daughter from picking him up? Why on earth would you allow her to persist in behaviour that the dog has repeatedly warned her NOT to do?? As I said at the beginning of this thread, disciplining growling may extinguish the warning and escalating him to biting without it. He isn't biting. He's warning her off. Something about what she does is possibly hurting or making him uncomfortable. The dog is telling your daughter in no uncertain terms that he doesn't want her to pick him up. For the sake of your daughter and the dog please listen to what he is trying to communicate here. The only other thing you can do is summon professional help but persistence in the behaviour your dog is warning against may well result in a bite. If I sound frustrated, its because I am. Short of a banner, what more must this dog do to convince you not to allow your daughters to handle him in this manner when he is clearly very unhappy about it?

Red ACDs certainly aren't!

I hope the news from the vet is good. Great dog to let out of the house under the control of a child... NOT!! I hope you can track down the owners, report it AND get your vet bill paid.

Our of curiosity - what sorts of confidence-building exercises do you recommend i.e. what's worked with your babies? Elbie seems fine in class and is quite sociable with other dogs - but you saw for yourself that he wasn't very happy in the offlead section of BDOC that one time when he was surrounded by all those big dogs :D What worked for my little girl was agility and me protecting her from encounters that made her uncomfortable. She will ask to be picked up if she's not happy with other dog's behaviour and despite what so many folk will tell you to do, I do pick her up. She hasn't got a dominant bone in her body. My other boy who was fear aggressive is similarly protected - kept away from overly friendly or dominant dogs and no bad encounters has boosted his confidence.

KTB: One thing you're going to learn in the next little while KTB is that loving dogs and understanding them are not necessarily one and the same thing. I know very very successful dog sports triallers who IMO know very very little about dog behaviour and aggression . The worst of these are those that have fluked one very very savvy dog and had a lot of success with it (I swear some dogs can obey the judge's cues or count) That's why a lot of folk (including me) differentiate between dog "trainers" and "behaviorists". Like the "dog person" my friend encountered who informed her that the way to establishing the right relationship with any strange dog was to take it by the collar and fix it with a commanding stare eye to eye. Or the new convert to Amichien Bonding who informed me that the reason my dogs like to sit on the back of my couch to is show dominance over me. "Even when I'm not home?" I asked sweetly.. the back of the couch is the only they get to see out the front window.

I have two black male miniature poodles but they aren't identical.

How many 60g meals is she getting a day?

Fight/flight reflexes are funny things. A harness removes a dog's capacity to get out of a stressful situation so where does that leave a stressed dog.. with the option of fighting the restraint or shutting down. Remove the restraint or remove the dog from the stressful environment and I'd be expecting an instant improvement. I'm cautious about ascribing human reactions to dogs. Yes, dogs do chuck tanties but there are other possible explanations for this. I'm also cautious about treating every dog issue as a pack dominance one. I agree that consistency is extremely important so establishing routines and consistent approaches by you should assist. I think you've got a challenging mix of breeds in this dog who came from a less than ideal background. Keep that in the back of your mind KTB. What you're dealing with is not just down to how you as an owner have handled this pup but also a factor of genes and his early environment. Good on you for tackling your concerns head on and getting help.

The fastest cure for submissive wetting I found was to stop people leaning over to greet the dog when they arrived. After a short period of ignoring her, greetings could proceed calmly without wet carpet. I also kept all greetings outside for a while. Wet grass is easier to deal with than wet carpet. A happy dog can still be submissive - the two aren't mutually exclusive and submissive and fearful ain't the same. I'd describe submissive urination as an indication of lack of social confidence. A combination of maturity and socialisation seems to do the trick for most pups. Bladder control also increases with age. Being roughly greeted by strangers to the house would definitely trigger an uncertain pup KTB - you're nipping those sorts of greetings in the bud and that's good. What is it with people who thinking roughing a pup up is fun for the pup??