Questional Behavior

[ObeytheBC]

Alright experts (which is every one of you because you have all been in this far longer than I), I have a behavioral question/issue and would really like some feedback and/or input. If I have put this in the incorrect topic, please let me know.

 

So, I have four Border collies. A 6 year old male, a 3 year old female, a 2 1/2 year old female and a 5 month old female. The 6 and 3 year olds I have owned for the past 2 - 2/12 years and the other two were just brought in 3 months ago. It has been rough transitioning from a 2 dog household to a 4 dog household (with my very first puppy at that). So I am pretty sure I am doing something wrong or am not seeing something.

 

Here is the issue. I purchased a 2 1/2 year old female nursery dog. She had been owned by a very nice gentleman and his family since she was about 5 or 6 months old. She had a brief life in the house and, from what I garnered (and can not be held to), she has lived in an outdoor kennel/run situation where she would be taken out for chores or to work (or go to a trial) but otherwise was left in her kennel. I do not think she ran free with a pack of dogs very often.

 

I am going to go ahead and insert my token: I do not feel this is unfair treatment or abuse, I am simply telling you the facts.

 

Now that I have her, I run things a bit differently. Since I only have 4, they often get turned out together to run, play, and go to the bathroom. They are crated separately when we are not working, training, playing, etc. Dogs may be turned out individually, with 1 or 2 others, or as a full group. This is how I have always done things, but that is because it was just a group of 2 dogs.

 

This new dog is showing some behaviors that I do not quite understand. The behavior is ONLY focused on my male dog. I have tried to recreate it with the other females and it does not happen. She fully focuses on the male dog, following him around, checking to see what he is doing, etc. He often likes to have a toy in his mouth (he is a huge fetch fan) and when he does, she fully focuses on him. If you take the toy and move it side to side, the other three dogs follow the toy, she follows him only (does not look at the toy, never attempts to get the toy). She instead will jump in his face and bite at him (a very loud snap of teeth, has made contact at least twice, has taken away fur as well). If he is simply walking with a toy in his mouth (no human involvement), she will do the same thing or will circle him widely and then dodge in to bite at his face. If he is laying down with a toy there, she does the same thing but not as often - this may be due to the fact that if he is simply laying and holding his toy (and not focused on enticing someone to play or fetching the toy) he will defend his possession with a growl. When this has happened with her, she immediately backed down (and was never going for the toy in the first place) and moved to circle him or lay down.

 

Obviously, there is no fetch when she is out. But I do not understand this behavior. It is not over the toy, she has no interest in obtaining the toy. I would imagine it is some sort of controlling or herding behavior.

 

But I can not figure out how to get her to switch her focus. I do not care if she has toy/ball drive. That is the last thing on my mind. I simply need her to stop biting at my other dog's face and would prefer to find a way to train it out of her instead of just managing the problem by taking away all balls and toys when she is present or separating her out from the group.

 

I would appreciate any insights or ideas on how to correct this. I really enjoy this dog as a working dog, but part of the reason I purchased a female was because my male will handle abuse from girl dogs (if a male were to attempt even the slightest amount of controlling behavior towards him, there would be a fight). It was never my intention to have him bullied or harassed by another dog.

 

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

[juliepoudrier]

Does she respond to a correction?

 

J.

[ObeytheBC]

Originally a verbal correction (her name, a "hey") would interrupt the behavior temporarily meaning she would back off and circle. Now, the verbal does not always work, probably because it is difficult to always catch it so I can't make it consistent. I have only tried verbal correction at this time - she will not dive in at him while she is near me and I have not thought of another way to correct her. Also, in verbally correcting her, the male dog will back off the toy as well and come to me which takes away some of her focus until he is engaged again. The verbal correction does not last.

[Maxi]

OK IMO I dont think it is unusual for one to dog to decide to pick on one other dog but not do this to others - I sometime see it when I have other people's dogs around.

 

Firstly, I would not use a generic hey when I wanted to reprimand just one dog in a group. I would say his/her name in a low growl, maybe add a hey, use a sidewards glance at him/her and perhaps raise my hand slightly to and loosely point a finger towards the dog in question. All these signs would hopefully reassure the other dogs in the vicinity that the warning was not directed towards them. If I wanted to warn the whole group for some reason I would probably say something like hey you-all

 

To work on the particular biting issue, I would look carefully at your bitches body language to determine the cues she gives off prior to going in to grip. This may be the way she stares or positions her body towards him. It is at that point I would give my warning i.e. the low growled name, sidewards glance etc.

 

If she responds to the warning, I would instantly release the pressure on her, by leaning back and warmly praise her for her behaviour. It is important that you do this because it acts as a reward and makes her feel comfortable. If you want to use a distraction toy at this point then fine (but obviously you need the distraction toy to hand and that may not always be available, so personally I would not bother).

 

However, from what you describe she probably wont initially respond to your warning.

 

So I would start increasing the pressure towards her by taking a step forward, stiffening my body and putting a bit more aggression in my voice. If she still doesnt respond, I would really push into her body space as I give a really mean growl. You have to do this with complete authority However, I am certainly NOT saying that you should physically hurt her in any way, but she needs to believe that if she doesnt back down that she is going to get it. Even if she moves away, I would keep my body stiff to show my annoyance.

 

Throughout this escalation of pressure, if at any time your bitch responds by backing off then I would reward this behaviour as I previously described.

 

Its very much the dogs decision on how they respond. Personally I find that most dogs very quickly learn that if they back off when I give a warning they will be rewarded and praised but if they continue ignoring me, then I will up my response and make them feel uncomfortable. So most dogs seem to make the decision to respond to my warning growl.

 

In my experience, iin order for this method to work you need to be consistent in using the graduated pressure scale and most importantly you must always reward good behaviour.

 

Now there are several additional things that you may also need to consider. First, where you are positioned in relation to the 2 dogs when this behaviour starts. If you stand behind your bitch and you start putting pressure by moving forward, it may push her onto your dog and she still may bite him. Instead you need to stand either behind your dog (so that when you apply pressure you are pushing her way from him ). Alternatively you should be staning to the side of the pair so that when you move in you end up blocking her from coming forward onto the dog.

 

In both positions you are also showing your dog that you are supporting him.- If it helps work out where you should position yourself in relation to your bitch.. think snooker/billiards, with you being the cue ball and your bitch being the one you are trying to pot away from your other dog

 

Also consider your other dogs. One of my dogs is very sensitive to human energy. She doesnt like it when I start to get annoyed (even when it is not directed towards her).I find that when I start to give warning glances to one of my other dogs then she will come up between me and fawn all over me. In doing this she is probably trying to deflect my attention onto her good behaviour.

 

Because of these additional points, and because you say that you cannot always be around when it happens I would recommend that you set up the situation and only give your dog his toy at a time when the other dogs are not in the same room.You will also be able to get yourself into a good position to deal with the situation should it arise.

 

Although it may not completely stop her from wanting to bite him, this method should hopefully make her more responsive to your initial warning & so you should find it easier to deal with her unwanted behaviour.

 

As said, I find this approach generally works for me, but i fully appreciate that there are other training methods..and not every one suits every handler.. so it may or may not be successful for you.

 

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

 

[Donald McCaig]

Sound advice.

 

Donald McCaig

[Root Beer]

FWIW, Dean did something similar with Speedy when we first adopted him. And with the issues Speedy had, this rocked his world.

 

I approached it by spending a lot of time with Dean alone in the yard, teaching him to play the game with me. He would go out by himself, we would play, then he would go in and the other three came out and Speedy got to play.

 

Once he had built up some excitement for toy play with me, I started to take him out, and play, and then add Speedy back in after Dean had played a bit. Dean learned to focus on the toy, not Speedy. After a while, the issue simply went away and they played outside together well. Dean would chase toys and retrieve them and Speedy ran in big circles around Dean with a toy in his mouth. It was an arrangement they both enjoyed.

 

I would probably try separating them for outdoor play for a while and see if there is a change in dynamic.

[Maxi]

thinking back.. I did have a bitch who would specifically stalk one male dog in particular . Always him & always focussed on him, no matter what any other dog in the group or I were playing with.

 

She would occassionally go forward and grab at his neck, but it clearly was 'in play' mode . Most times, he was not botherered by her behaviour. Howver, If her grip got too much for him or she was blockng his running too often, he would respond and give a quick poke to warn her off. She would then settle back on her haunches and go back to stalking him from more of a distance..

 

It never really escalated beyond that. I just considered it play & left them get on with it. If I had considered it an issue, then I would have stepped in as I described in post #4

[juliepoudrier]

^^I have a youngster (bitch) who does this with an older male. It actually seems to irk me more than it does him, but in my experience, when a male is pushed far enough he will get ugly, and fast. I honestly don't like one dog working another (and that's really what it si), ever.

 

So I correct the youngster, even if I have to get in her face to do it. This is all made trickier by the fact that the male is very sensitive to correction (fortunately, it has never affected his work, but even if you're correcting another dog he gets all hang dog and slinky). I will even chase the youngster off the object of her attention, and yes, even put her up if she continues getting on *my* nerves by harassing the other dog.

 

I'm hoping that once I can get her working more regularly, some of this will stop.

 

I like the approach Maxi originally described, but the downside is that you have to be in fairly close proximity to the action. Another option would be to leave a long line on the offender and just walk her away every time she starts the behavior until she gets the idea that the only thing that happens when she's a jerk is that she gets taken away. The advantage to this is only that you can apply it from a greater distance (however long the line is) and if your other dogs are sensitive (e.g., Pip gets all downcast even if I'm clearly addressing Birdie with my corrections), it lessens the chance of completely ruining their fun.

 

J.

[Two Labs & Mia]

That one might require a behaviorist. Have seen something similar going on at my Mom's, wish I could get her to go that route.

 

My Sister had 3 dogs together. An older terrier/G shepherd mix, female-absolute boss of the group, a goofy light hearted male black Lab, a skitish female chow named Sadie, timid, formerly physically abused seriously by her owner. Older terrier died, no change in Lab or Chow's behavior. Lab died, no change in Chow's behavior. Sis adopted another unwanted 100lb! male black Lab mix. All went fine for a couple months, ...and then Sadie, the always timid Chow started to boss the new kid.

 

She bit him bad enough to require stitches, just out of nowhere, for nothing Sis could see he'd done wrong. It would happen suddenly every few months. Sadie had always been happiest being low dog on on the totem pole, she liked to stay off in the shadows, never was into food, toys, attention, nothing, just a docile little shadow, and happy being there, she seemed to enjoy "observing" things the most.

 

Sis died suddenly, my Mom built a huge indoor outdoor run at her place and took in my Sis's Chow and the Lab mix. Her focus/bossiness of him is worse. She wants to control his door access. She wants to control his use of the toys, even though she doesn't want to play with them. She wants to control where he sits indoors, (they have a room sized carpet and sofa/chairs in the heated garage inside their kennel). She even controls what part of the large outdoor kennel he's "allow in", she follows him closely, really checks him out when he pees. Lunges for his mouth if he carries a toy as you described, he often retreats to the top of the picnic table in the outdoor area. She's fine with other dogs belonging to friends and neighbors. (?) But if he steps out of line as to her new rules, she corrects him right away. If he doesn't "listen" to her warning, she bites, usually his ear, sometimes his throat. The second he gives, she lets go and walks off, head held high, like she thinks it's an accomplishment. She's 60#, he's 100#. Other than the trading of owners, (maybe she saw Sis as higher status than Mom?), I honestly wonder if he has a health issue she is detecting, and considering him to be weak, (like diabetes since she's so fascinated with the smell of his urine). (?) Hope your situation doesn't get worse and you're able to figure it out. Will watch for your future posts hoping to learn something!

[sandysfarm]

^^I have a youngster (bitch) who does this with an older male. It actually seems to irk me more than it does him, but in my experience, when a male is pushed far enough he will get ugly, and fast. I honestly don't like one dog working another (and that's really what it si), ever.

 

So I correct the youngster, even if I have to get in her face to do it. This is all made trickier by the fact that the male is very sensitive to correction (fortunately, it has never affected his work, but even if you're correcting another dog he gets all hang dog and slinky). I will even chase the youngster off the object of her attention, and yes, even put her up if she continues getting on *my* nerves by harassing the other dog.

 

I'm hoping that once I can get her working more regularly, some of this will stop.

 

I like the approach Maxi originally described, but the downside is that you have to be in fairly close proximity to the action. Another option would be to leave a long line on the offender and just walk her away every time she starts the behavior until she gets the idea that the only thing that happens when she's a jerk is that she gets taken away. The advantage to this is only that you can apply it from a greater distance (however long the line is) and if your other dogs are sensitive (e.g., Pip gets all downcast even if I'm clearly addressing Birdie with my corrections), it lessens the chance of completely ruining their fun.

 

J.

I like this last bit better too. For one thing, on the off chance that she's

tough enough to blow you off even if you do stand her up, you haven't used all your options. I have a very tough-minded girl who is quite willing to slip away from her recall in favour of enjoying some alone time for herself...but she knows that if she does, I'm always going to walk her down, clip her to a light line and walk her back in full view of her friends. I don't say a word; I just do. It works very well. She still has the thought pattern but can't take the chance on being humiliated. It hasn't damaged her relationship with me; there's no anger, but she does treat me with more respect now that she knows I'm on to her.