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Behavior change:

 

Background;

I have a 7 year old male neutered border collie. Very sweet, likes most other dogs, people, very submissive. About 5 weeks ago he was attacked by another dog while on a walk. Very terrifying time, a chocolate lab escaped from his fenced yard and took us both down and went to town biting my dog. My dog didn't fight back at all, had no chance. He needed stitches to both front legs, one rear and inner ear, numerous staples. He healed very well and now were out and about again.

 

My dog is showing signs of aggression towards other dogs, ( hair raised, lunging, showing teeth) Today his best buddy came in the yard to play (a rough collie) that he knew since a puppy and he showed some aggression towards him. Lunged at him and snapped several times. The rough collie did nothing to provoke anything, he's sweet as pie. Now these two spent many years playing together and staying overnight together when one of us is away. They adore each other.

 

I have no experience with this, I've owned dogs for almost 30 years and this was dog attack I experienced. I don't know if he's experiencing trauma, trying to show he's dominate? He never has before, so I'm stumped.

 

Anyone experience a dog attack and have issues afterwords?

Thanks in advance

kate

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I am no expert and not seeing what is happening makes it harder to figure it out, but I think your dog has had a horrible, traumatic experience - and he is showing aggressive because he is fearful. I don't think it has anything to do with dominance (which I think is a concept or word that is much over-used and mis-used). He's afraid now and it is very natural for a dog with fear to react with aggression. If a dog that he's seen before (or not) comes out of apparently nowhere and attacks him viciously, he may well be nervous even about familiar dogs and places.

 

I am sure there will be people here who can give you good advice on how to deal with this but one thing I would try to do is get him to focus on you, especially when something (like another dog) is in the area and he would want to react with aggressive behavior.

 

I don't think scolding or any form of punishment will help because that may just contribute to his fearfulness. He needs to have confidence in you and know that you are in charge of the situation, and will be there to help him out. You need to be calm, firm, and not fearful yourself - which could be difficult in certain situations where you might be worried about his reaction.

 

I think that you may find this lessening with time but I'm not sure it will ever be a non-issue for him. I hope someone here can help with much better advice, and I'm sure that someone will.

 

Best wishes!

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I am so sorry to hear that this trauma has happened in your and your dog's life.

 

I have had wonderful success re-training fear-aggression dogs using the techniques outlined in a book called "Click To Calm". It is available in paperback from Amazon and is cheap.

 

Whether or not you have ever used clicker training before, I highly recommend that you give it a try with this. The book will tell you how to do it. You will need to take things very slowly and make progress in tiny baby steps. Your dog has the canine equivalent of Post Traumatic Stress, and it will take time and patience to recover. Best not to push him into encounters with other dogs, not even the collie with whom he has played previously. He can get over this, and positive reinforcement conditioning is the best approach.

 

You will probably want to start with the collie he knows, but with the dog at a very safe distance (or maybe even out of sight, but he knows the dog is there). Whatever distance it takes for your dog to be calm and not reactive, even if it is 100 feet, that is where you start. You will click and reward for calm behavior at this distance and then VERY gradually, and probably over the course of several weeks, decrease the distance, ready to move back immediately if he starts to show any stress at all. it may take months, or it may take days, but you need to let him set his own pace and not push it. He will need to be re-conditioned to learn that being around another dog is not a bad thing.

I wish you lots of luck.

D'Elle

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Since I haven't seen the dog I'm not sure if this will help at all but I might try to walk the dogs together, or even with your dog behind the collie so he can smell his friend without the intimidation of a face to face meeting. The collie doesn't know what happened and he may be coming in with a "too forward" meeting that is too much for your dog right now. After walking together and relaxing then maybe he would be better to interact off leash.

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Thanks for the replies,

I'm thinking it's too soon for other dogs, maybe in time. It was a very traumatic experience for both of us. This was his best buddy, thought it would be ok.

 

- Olivia, we walked the two dogs first before coming back to my house for them to romp, they played and ran for 15 minutes before my dog started snapping. Nothing I saw provoked it. My dog humped the other dog a lot, something he never does. Thats why I was thinking he's trying to be dominate. Just a complete change in his behavior. So, for now, I'm not going to push it. He would rather be with me hiking and playing frisbee anyway. Just have to get use to this and take it slow.

 

D'Elle- my dog hates clickers, but I could use a marker with voice & reward...in the future.

Thank-you all

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I agree it's the trauma. With my reactive boy, after he made progress, any unusually scary event would send him three steps backwards into reactivity again.

 

For my dog, it's been nothing but a long series of safe and pleasant (or at least neutral) exposures to his triggers: bikes, people, dogs. He's lost his reactivity in most situations, though strange dogs charging him will still set him off.

 

It seems as though your dog is still revved up (adrenalin raised, etc.) from the other encounter. From my experience with Buddy, I'd say you need time and slow introductions to tiny stimuli: let him play with his friend for a very short time, and then move it to a longer and longer time. TIME and ENERGY LEVEL and PROXIMIITY and NUMBER OF DOGS all make Buddy's stress levels rise. One calm dog can be played with forever. One slighly jumpy dog, for a shorter window. Numerous dogs as a safe distance are fine - but numerous dogs can't come as close as a single dog, or be close for as long a time.

 

The idea is the keep your dog under his threshold: don't let him be exposed to stimuli long enough to make him reactive. The threshold gets higher as sensitivity decreases. But going past his threshold will set you back.

 

Good luck!

 

Mary

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I'm thinking it's too soon for other dogs, maybe in time. It was a very traumatic experience for both of us.

Were you injured in the attack too? How are you doing? Is it possible he's picking up on some sort of tension from you that you may not even be aware of?

 

I'm sorry you had to go through such a horrible experience. Praying for healing for both of you.

 

Pam

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Even if your dog is "dominant" over his buddy the snapping and barking can be anxiety based. The mounting could also be a sign of that anxiety (trying to protect himself from another attack by showing the other dog he is the boss).

 

The best way to deal with anxiety is to teach the dog that he has nothing to fear.

 

1) Protect him. If he is getting nervous take him farther away from whatever is scaring him. Physically block whatever he is afraid of from getting near him. If he trusts that you won't let anything bad happen to him he will become more relaxed.

 

2) Work on counter conditioning. When he sees another dog he gets extra special treats shoved in his mouth. The point is for him to associate other dogs with something good. If he is too worked up to eat the food you are too close to the other dog and need to back up.

 

Correcting a dog like yours can make them worse.

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Hi there! I hope that you have since found a way of helping your boy. I can just add a little to all of the above - my bc was attacked while on lead by a bull terrier approx 2 years ago (she was also 2 years old at that stage). It really gave her a huge knock - more mentally than anything else. I had to go back to basics. Pure basics. She had to learn how to walk on leash again and I had to bypass the area where she was attacked for months. I swear she knew exactly where it happened...! I made her focus on things she was really good at and enjoyed - like retrieving. She was so bad at one stage that while playing on one end of a rugby field and noticing another dog on the opposite side (more than 100m away) - she would come running to me with tail between the legs - even though the other dog was not even interested in her or coming in our direction.

I immediately focused her attention on whatever I could work with around me that was positive. Throwing the ball in another direction and praising her profusely. I was guiding her into doing things she enjoyed and was good at and rewarding it. Ignoring the negative (i.e. the other dog) and without a fuss just carrying on as though nothing is wrong - but at the same time not placing her in any danger. After months (yes, there is no quick fix...) she would be fine with other dogs coming closer and won't come scampering up to me. She now will run with other dogs and is almost 'normal' again.

So in a nutshell - back to basics. Focus attention on things they are good at and enjoy and praise profusely. Build the confidence slowly.

Best of luck - I trust you will both come out winners on the other side!

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... we walked the two dogs first before coming back to my house for them to romp, they played and ran for 15 minutes before my dog started snapping. Nothing I saw provoked it. My dog humped the other dog a lot, something he never does.

 

I wonder too, if in the past he humped his collie friend in excitement and the Collie snapped at him or growled at him and it was all good fun, until he got hurt when a different dog snapped and growled at him, and so this time when Collie buddy snarked at him for being rude, he freaked out.

 

Humping another dog in play is not usually a sign of dominance, in dog language its usually rude excessive horseplay (unless of course its about sex). Real dominance is expressed in slight posture changes, hard faces etc.

 

It would probably be in his best interest if you intervened to any humping activity and put a stop to it.

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