Agressive when on leash - Page 1

Quit putting her in that situation until you get her obedience under control and do a lot of drilling on leash in other places..

Never submit a dog into a situation that you know is unhealthy or not advantageous...'

Bad habits are hard to break...work on her obedience and socialization on leash...she shoulnt ever be off leash anyway. Only in your property or fenced property of your friends..

A LOT of dogs are aggressive when on leash. There could be several things going on there. I'm going to get reamed maybe for some of my ideas on it but I I don't really care, I do what works for my clients and as long as I'm getting my dogs fed and my bills paid, I'll tell people what they need to know and who cares if I'm going to get laughed at huh? :-) LOL The majority of the time when I see dogs that are aggressive mainly only when on a leash there's a variety of factors going on. You generally have a dog that maybe STARTED OUT wanting to go say hi or go play with another dog (especially if they've been allowed to play uninhibited at the dog park, they think they should ALWAYS be allowed to just walk up and say hi). They get overly excited and act kind of an idiot. The owner sees it and gets embarassed and drags the dog back. Lots of times on a taut leash, and sometimes the owner then corrects the dog. Soon, the dog grows more and more frustrated. As the frustration level goes up, so does the level of aggression (yes it CAN work to our advantage to have a dog with a lower level of frustration tolerance...if they didn't care, how could we get them to bark at the sleeve sometimes? ) So then the owner ups the ante by either correcting more, or react with an even tauter leash, which then feeds into it even more and the circle continues. It can also be added to when every time the dog sees another dog on leash, the owner corrects the dog. Now a negative association is made with the other dog (ie every time I see another dog, my handler freaks out and corrects me, therefore other dogs are bad when I'm on a leash). Or it can be added to by what I call the "hold me back principle" (though I don't see this as commonly in as many clients as some of the other factors). It's a feeling of because they can feel you on the leash, they feel supported and protected, and can therefore feel a little more free to be a bit feistier then they would if they didn't have a nice big handler on the other end of their leash "holding them back". The hackling says she's unsure of the situation, maybe did you do a bunch of correcting her? without giving her the alternative behavior you wanted her to do when she sees another dog or person? You probably in the very least get a bit tense when you see a situation you've had her reat to before, and she can pick up on that as well. Even if just your breathing pattern.

You need to fill the void of how she should act by teaching her what you want her to do instead, and if you ARE telling her what you want her to do instead, then you're making the distractions too big for her to handle and you need to work her on her obedience exercises separate from these areas. Stop putting her in the position to mess up until you have better control over her. THEN you can tell her how you want to act, and treat everything else like a distraction...yet without her making the association of seeing something she gets upset about, and then getting corrected for it. Also, she sounds like shes' reacting fairly strongly to some of these situations...which means there are stress hormones coursing through her. Trying to ask a 1 year old dog that is reacting this way to certain situations to sit still is like asking someone in a panic attack to just sit down and not move. It almost makes them more frantic. I prefer that when I AM ready to work obedience around these distractions, I don't get her close enough to put her over the edge, and if for some reason I'm noticiing she's already gone, then do a LOT of fast obedience exercises in a row so in the very least you're expending some of the adrenaline etc (like pacing when you're nervous, it makes you feel better because you're expending energy:-)) And when you DO get her obedience to the level she can handle those distractions THEN work her near them, make sure it's upbeat and happy, so she's not so tense about it because she's feeding off of you. But she's too young to mess with it at the moment especially if you're wanting to do sport with her?