Aggressive Dogs And Group Obedience Classes

[The Spotted Devil]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but aggressive dogs at my club where bright yellow "give me space" coats :rolleyes:

[Kelpie-i]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but aggressive dogs at my club where bright yellow "give me space" coats

Yeah we are toying with this idea too. I instructed at a school that had the coloured lead rule but really didn't see too much benefit since many silly people totally ignored the rule.

[Staff'n'Toller]

They seem to work in principle, have seen the two extremes- the owner who says "hi everyone my dog needs space, he is wearing the yellow bandanna to show this" and the owner who is abusing everyone left right and centre for getting too close to her dog when she was deliberately walking in the very area where people are trying move into and out of the training centre. :rolleyes:

Gotta love human nature really... ;)

Mel.

Edited March 18, 2009 by Staff'n'Toller

[Kavik]

I did my best to let people know Zoe wasn't friendly, but they didn't listen :rolleyes:

Unfortunately, I think if I called out "STOP!" loudly, she would have reacted. Best with her to be quiet and calm. Much easier said than done!

[ILK]

I've not experienced it personally but I have seen a number of dogs successfully trained in group obedience class on a check chain. From what I've seen it didn't work 100% of the time but the success rate was higher than not.

The trainer would take the dog to begin with far enough away from the other dogs not to stress the DA dog, but if it did react he would give the dog a quick hard check and say "Leave It". When the owner felt confident enough with this the trainer would hand the dog over and the training would be continued.

I have seen this work so successfully that the DA dogs have eventually been offlead with other dogs, not a worry in the world, but I have seen it go the other way where the dog became so stressed it couldn't be taught obedience at all. I guess these reactions could occur with any DA dog.

I'm not an expert on this so I am just offering what I've seen, it may be helpful info.

ILK, using physical (lead) corrections to manage dog aggression is not a good idea. Firstly you are punishing the dog for being in an emotional state. When the dog is aggressing, barking etc, it is doing so for an emotional reason, ie it is fearful and it is displaying the only behaviour he knows will make the threat go away. Using corrections on a dog like this, is like me hitting someone over the head with a piece of 2 x 4 whenever they screamed at a spider or snake (or whatever they are fearful of).

Yes lead corrections might make the dog stop the growling or lunging (if done hard enough) but we are not changing the emotional state of the dog. Therefore we infact have a ticking time bomb on our hands that can go off any time. This dog has not learned any coping strategies and has not learned any other conditioned responses to the triggers. The only thing we have done is punish him for giving us any warning signals to tell us he is not comfortable......WE NEED THOSE WARNING SIGNALS!! It is the only form of communication from the dog to us. This is why we see so many dogs that simply lunge and bite without ever giving a warning growl or some sort of signal beforehand...because we have punished them for doing so.

Those dogs who end up romping around with other dogs after a couple of leash corrections never really had true dog aggression based on an emotional fear to start with. Their aggression may have been due to other reasons that did not have a deep rooted emotional base. Genetic based aggression is the worst to deal with as we can never "cure" it...only manage it and "mask" it the best we can.

I can see what angle you are coming from here Kelpie-i and what you are saying does sound very logical and sensible. I can see after reading your post why some of those dogs I've seen have become so stressed.

[Sheridan]

My last dog became DA after he was attacked and decided that a first strike policy was a good thing. I decided to take him to obedience classes for socialisation and to stop the DA. The club had no particular policy other than to tell people with DA dogs to stand at the end of a row and away from others. It worked well and he got his first obedience cert but then several dogs got loose and although there wasn't an attack he clearly saw them as a threat and we were back to square one.