Hi All,

To cut a very long story short, I went to Scotland this week & took my dog with me, to see my dad & French stepmother who have a French bred Briard, I have an English bred one. Their dog (unneutered) has always had a problem with other dogs and will literally attack any dog that comes near him, this, alledgedly, was as a result of another dog attacking him when he was 6 months old. He is very calm and a lovely natured dog inside the house (think..butter wouldn't melt) but is also very protective of his family, my dad, stepmother and 2 boys aged 6 & 8.  In France, they are bred to be "sharper" and are not as docile as their English counterparts.

My boy has just turned 2,(unneutered) think docile, as laid back as you can get, anything for an easy life, their dog is 2 1/2, they are very close in age, which is a recipe for disaster without the conflicting personalities My boy is very immature and puppylike (my fault) I have never wanted him to get into a conflict with another dog and he lives very happily alongside my GSD bitch.We have recently trained him to leave other dogs alone on walks and NOT play with them until I give him the command ;)

The upshot of this is, my stepmother is not convinced that Douglas (their dog) is aggresive with other dogs, she thinks that he is dominant but as long as he knows that the other dog "knows its place" then he will be ok! BIG mistake, We always keep the dogs apart when we are there because of the disharmony, ie, growling behind doors and Douglas fighting to get to my dog :rolleyes: eg, when we are in the lounge at night, Douglas has to be kept on a lead (at their will) to stop him getting at mine, Murfee is off the lead as when he comes into the lounge he totally ignores Douglas and lays at my feet and sleeps.  On the last day, the kids left one of the outside doors open and Douglas got out into the garden where my dog was playing. To start with, (the kids went indoors on my instruction) it was just me and the 2 dogs, Douglas barked and snapped at mine, My dog barked back then they sniffed each others rear ends and Douglas went to go back indoors until my step mother appeared at the door then he came out again and started jumping on my dog who immediately went down onto his back into the subserviant position but Dougas wouldn't let it go and started to bite and row, mine "screamed back" and also started to bite in defence. The conclusion was, my OH got badly bitten by our dog as he was separating them, (my fault, I panicked and went to stop them and my OH stepped in front of me) He has 4 puncture wounds in his leg that really need stitching. My stepmother pulled Douglas off by the ears and sent him indoors while mine was still laying on the ground making a lot of noise. ( No damage, THANK GOD)Before the fight broke out they were circling one another with mine trying to hide behind me, with Douglas following TOO closely. But the point is this, Douglas didn't really want to start anything until one of his family came out. Is he really aggresive or defensive? My stepmother has berated him before, for growling at other dogs and made sure that he is always on the lead so that she has control, not easy now that she is ill. He now snaps and bites without any warning and I think that he has learnt the wrong behaviour, IE, if I warn by growling I'll get into trouble so I will just bite !!!!! This post is really more about Douglas than my dog.

Tohme, I would really appreciate your psychology on this. I know that you berated me in an earlier post for not having sufficient control over my dog when he wanted to play with other dogs and this, I have now corrected by going back to basics with training. But my dog is not the problem, Considering we are going to move up to Scotland soon, and with the way that things are going I will be having more to do with the lovely but misunderstood Douglas and I want to start using my own way of dealing with him. There are many things that I have noticed with him but am not in a position at the moment to correct. When we move there very soon I will have responsibility for Douglas and the boys as well as my own dogs and daughter due to my stepmothers illness so it is imperative that I can "educate" the dog and take him back to the basics of training, some of which, I don't believehe has ever received :( :( Basically, my stepmother got him with all of the good intentions, to train, show and use him as a search & rescue dog (she has done this before with another breed) but because of circumstances her life is now very limited and her illness is terminal so he has been rather neglected :(

Hi there

Firstly I am sorry to hear about the way the fight ended, as you said things seemed to be going well before your step mother appeared!  I would imagine that Douglass was not socialised a great deal as a puppy and did not learn how to communicate with other dogs.  With your step mother present he gets extremely jealous whilst another dog is around or getting her attention.  As he is the only dog in the house (and is probably quite spoilt?) I imagine he is used to having all the attention to himself and is not used to sharing if you like.

What I would suggest is that when you move, you allow your dogs to be in the same room as your step mother, maybe keeping Douglass on the lead and ask her to stroke and give attention to both of your dogs, correcting any bad behavior from Douglass.  This way any growling or jumping towards your dogs can be controlled and dealt with in the correct manor.  I would also suggest that you set some rules in the house, maybe shutting in a room like the kitchen from time to time or even a crate so that Douglass can establish where he stands in the family as the explained kind of behavior is often related to dominance.  I would also get under way with the training to get more control therefore if he does bolt towards another dog you have more chance of getting him to 'leave' or 'down' on command before the situation gets out of hand.

If  Douglass sleeps in the same bedroom as your step mother, or upstairs I would change this as it is the most hierarchy part of the house, placing his bed in the kitchen or front room will be far better.

There are many things that you can do to help socialise him, going to a training class where you can get assistance training and keeping him under control around other dogs.  I would imagine, without passing judgment that when Douglass was attacked he was swept away, or pulled aside from other dogs in the hope to keep him safe and as a result this made him very nervous / aggressive towards other dogs as he learned to fear them!

You need to teach him that not all dogs will attack him, however this will not be an easy task.  I do honestly think that your best option is to enroll in a local training class that understand your situation, and are willing to assist help Douglass learn how to play and be friends with other dogs.  I am sure you will succeed as you have done so with training your own dogs!

Good luck with it all...keep in touch with any news.

Kelly

Hi Kelly,

Thank you for taking the trouble to give such a detailed post :)

The only thing that I will add is that Douglas was socialised a lot as a puppy, he travelled all around France staying in various different places so was exposed to lots of different scenarios. He also used to have a female companion who he used to play with very happily, they had her before they got him, but, unfortunately she was killed by a car last year at the age of 3 :( He went off his food for months and of course, they tried everything to get him to eat and this, I think is when the spoiling began :rolleyes: I spoil my dog and even my family are jealous of the amount of time and love that he gets from me but he would never behave like this as it is totally unacceptable to me. But I will keep you posted if I don't get locked up in a mental institute first :D :D

Hi

No problem, and I know how easy it is to spoil our companions! I too am very guilty of this.  I do think that the best advise here is to seek some expert advise where the situation can be observed and advised upon correctly.

I do hope that you manage to sort things, not only for Douglass but also for you!

Keep smiling :)

Any more advise needed or just a general chat about things please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Regards

Kelly

Hiya Hairypooch

Sorry if I appeared to come on a bit strong before.......... :D

Wow, now where did I leave my magic wand........... ? :)

Quite honestly this sort of scenario has too many permutations for anyone to provide sensible, workable solutions over the net.  One has to observe the dynamics of both the dogs and people involved and exactly what triggers what behaviours and why; unfortunately my crystal ball is in the shop.

If you look on the APDT website I am sure you could find someone to help you on a 1:1 basis but they would need to see all the parts of  the equation and how the dynamics are changed by the presence/absence of various factors.

I am sure that there is a) a way to manage the situation in the short term and b) a way to modify the behaviours of not only the dogs but the humans too :D so that the tension and strain is taken out of this and move forward.

Sorry if that does not appear to be terribly helpful but as I often say, what people THINK is happening and what actually IS happening are not always the same...........

Best of Luck

Hi Tohme,

Thank you for the sensible advice :) As you say, what people THINK is happening and what actually is HAPPENING are two very different things. I think that human behaviour is ALWAYS more difficult to modify than a dog :D

Whatever is happening here you can be certain it is NOT jealousy.  Dogs are not capable of this emotion. 

The problem may have escalated by the appearance of your stepmother and so her handling of Douglas needs to be looked at comprehensively as does any previous encounters with other dogs that could have resulted in or caused Douglas's current behaviour.

If Douglas was, as you say, well socialised as a pup and has had other canine friends this would indicate that he is not, by nature, aggressive.  That ruled out, it suggests that this behaviour has been learned.  If it is learned it can be unlearned or counter-conditioned.  Ideally you would need to know what sparked it off in the first place but if you can't identify the root cause you can still deal with it once you get some 'expert' advice.

I agree with Tohme on this one.  You need the help of someone who can see exactly what is going on first hand.  Things are not always what they seem and one persons interpretation may not necessarily be correct (no offence to you hairypooch - its just the way it is!!).

I hope you get the help you need as it is obvious from your post that you have the best interest of the dog at heart.