Hi,

have posted on the forum a few times and received some really good advice. So thought i would pick your brains again regarding my 8 month old male westie. He is dominant agressive and i have been using the 'nothing in life is free' method for the last couple of months which has really helped both inside and outside the house. My main problem with him though is that he is still his barking and lunging towards other dogs. We have made alot of progress here in the last few months (using positive reward techniques) - alot of the dogs in the neighbourhood he now knows and i don't get the agressive barking that we used to get with these dogs. He is really happy to see them, wags his tail etc and wants to play. BUT - if its a dog he doesn't know then we are back to square one. He goes into his red zone and will not respond to me at all. A classic example happened this morning. When i was walking both my dogs this morning, he saw a dog he hadn't seen before which was a few metres away  - he completely lost the plot, barking , lunging etc. and then turned on my other westie (3 year old male - really placid) and tried to attack him. I have seen them using water spray on dogs in the situation but havn't resorted to this yet. Anyone got any experience with this??

will check this thread frequently as i too have a dog like this! sometimes doesnt bother with other dogs or people but sometimes goes balistic and nothing i do will get her out of the red zone until i have dragged her on with the walk and even then she'll keep turning back to look at them!

Off lead she is different - runs up to other dogs in a very forceful manor but then just sniffs them or has a chase and comes back to me.