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Old November 14th, 2008, 11:56 AM
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Dekka Dekka is offline
Agility addict
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Central Ontario
Posts: 236
I would never yell or correct a dog who bites. Dogs aggress out of fear. Increase the fear and you make the problem bigger. You may suppress the behaviour for a while but you are not fixing the over all problem. For example if you manage to scare the dog into not snapping/biting. What happens when the dog then has a child to deal with. The dog knows its bigger/stronger than the child.

On the other hand I would address the real issue and fix that. Then you don't have to worry about the biting.

Long story condensed... Had a foster pup. Animal control picked him up and deemed him aggressive. Joey was a 6 month old JRT. As he was deemed aggressive the JRTRO sent him to me. He was in no way aggressive. He was a very happy drivey JRT. You could take food/toys from him. He had no quarding issues, he loved strangers, you could come up behind him and scoop him up. He was a delightful pup. He got adopted by a family that was incrediabley unsuitable. They go for training but (as I know the person they went too) they didn't follow directions, the argued etc etc. I get him back 2 year later. Now Joey has bitten badly, numerous times. He was so aggressive the daughter couldn't even go in her room if he was on her bed. He was extremely reactive to strangers.

First off his issues were created by stupid people. Second of all I don't want this dog thinking the only reason he shouldn't bite is if the people are too scary to take on.

So he entered boot camp. He had to live in a crate for a while and work for every thing he got. He had to down stay in his crate for his morning meal, he had to come, down, off, sit, stay for the remainder of his meals. The rest of my family ignored him.

Now this did a few things. By being in a crate he couldn't practice guarding furniture and be reinforced for aggressive behaviour. By having to work for all things he learned that I owned everything-not him. I taught him that people taking stuff away from you is a great thing. (start off with a very low value toy take it away and either give a better one, or return it with a smear of cheese or peanut butter.. gradually increase the value of the toys until he is excited to have you take the item)

Once he was good I had my child hand feed him some food for sits, downs etc etc. (My son was 7. He is very dog savvy. He was the child handler of the year for the JRTCC and competes in AAC agility and dockdogs.)

Then I had friends from school come over (went back to school) I told them to ignore him, not even make eye contact. I gave them a hand full of high value treats. Then I let him out of his crate. He barked and acted all spooked with his hackles up. But as no one made any threatening jestures (the previous owners had taught him, by correcting him with leash pops and yelling any time he barked at people, that strangers meant bad things.. we need to reverse it) As soon as he settled down I had them dribble the fun treats.

It took a few sessions and soon he was quite happy to have strangers show up in the house.

I then took him to a JRT trial. Just to hang out. I took him around other people. He growled and snapped at someone. MY fault. I had pushed him too soon. (we live on a farm so its hard to meet people walking in public) He had learned that strangers in our home were just fine, but still didn't like strangers outside the home) I simply removed him from the area and we walked where it wasn't so crowded and he did fine. If I had corrected him, it only would have reinforced that people are nasty and made the problem worse.

I didn't have the time to work with him in public places (school, farm, family) but he was now to the point where he could go to another foster home. They have kept working with him (they live in a city) and he is doing great! They have decided to adopt him (yay for happy endings)

I have many more stories like that one. Joey was the worst has he had done some serious damage to the father of the house on more than one occasion. He was the kind of dog who met aggression with aggression.