
Mmm....
He doesnt now (shes just been spayed... and is a Deerhound so that was NEVER happening much to his disgust!)...
He is confident in all the er, wrong places - he is a bratty little ratbag who bullies everyone and thinks he oughta... cos hes the one with the balls! To put it bluntly!
I am normally pretty averse to neutering for behavioural reasons... but I do intend to have another bitch in the future (who may be bred from but if not, in any case will be a deerhound and wont be done until shes mature).
My other males... are losing their patience with him. They tolerate him and ignore him to a certain extent but certainly my staffie x boy WILL nail him to the floor if he pushes things too far and Errol STILL will not back off! It is like he is driven to push and push and push at boundaries when it comes to who has the rights to what and when...
This all sounds like I let him behave like a little monster - I dont, he responds very well to time outs, but hes SO sharp... a point in case, he was bullying Rocky for a chewy bone a while back, getting right up inhis face and shouting at him... So he earnt himself a time out for this (and they are done properly, to the point for a count of ten, no faffing around)...
After four goes at being timed out... did he stop bullying and demanding? Did he heck - he just did it silently! (At which point, Rocky had had enough and ROARED at him!)
In some respects such as this, he is super confident and a persistant little beggar and it is extremely hard not to read that as 'I have the balls and I am king of whatever'.. (cuz he is, and his bestest friend is my young bitch who until a week ago, was the only entire bitch in the household).
In other situations hes not as confident, particularly meeting strange men - but instead of shying away and removing himself, he chooses to approach the situation head on and leap in barking and jumping and so on...
Obviously again this is not something we allow him to do... we have been managing him and only allowing him to meet people who have been prewarned to ignore him and certainly NOT make eye contact or point fingers at him or bark at him (yup, someone did that!), and distracting/rewarding him for nice quiet behaviour.
This is working pretty well.. but he still has some fairly brattish behaviours and I was contemplating a suprelorin implant to see how that affected things..
One thing I cant quite fathom out - if we are out with him and come back in.. . his immediate reaction ot the other dogs is to run at them growling, hes not apparently afraid of them since he chooses to run at them (though I know thats not a guarantee), but I cant quite fathom out what he wants to achieve here... he just barges into them going GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and its definitely not a play thing (that involves play bowing, floor slapping wit the paws, bouncing back and forth and yipping....

)
Gah I am making him out to be a total gitbag and ost of the time he is lovely, cuddley, fun to train and be around.... just sooooooometimes he does earn himself the nickname 'devil boy' and I do wonder if this is because he is the 'only real man in the village' pmsl!