Hello everyone,
We have an 8+ month old golden retriever male that has always showed signs of aggression/misbehavior towards us. I was able to have him understand that I have the role of alpha in the household, but my wife has yet to get him to come around. He is absolutely aggressive to her, but we understood it was mostly him wanting to play. He would come up and bite her arm or leg to get a rise out of her. We tried ignoring, saying ouch, etc, etc... basically everything that you could find on the Internet or from a "specialist". I've even posted on here asking for help. It became manageable, but not fixed... which brings me to my current posting...
We just had him neutered at 8.5 months. He is in day 5 of recovery (doing very well), but has become horribly aggressive.. in just everyday situations for a good part of the day. As soon as she is near, he will start breathing heavily and then try to bite her arms, legs, whatever... I realize he's definitely hyper because of the lack of playtime, but this seems out-of-control. I've also noticed that he has really started to refuse listening to commands... and I have to use my "serious" voice to have him react. Could these things be tied to the neuter? He is also showing an erection pretty much whenever I have to use my serious voice and command him, which I usually bring him to a "sit" at the end. He also shows it as he's trying to overtake my wife. And the other side to it is... it's like when this "puppy terror time" is over, he's back to normal for the both of us. He'll lay with her... lick the both of us... sleep on our feet... whatever. Almost like he had to get it out of his system... But the toll he's putting on everything is too much. It's really aggressive to her.
He has been trained... he knows all the basic commands... walks well on the leash... very friendly with other dogs/people (though he's regressing back to jumping up on people... but some of those people cause that too)... and even now with the aggression towards us, he will wait (stay) for us for most situations - like when feeding, we can tell him to wait, put down him food, and he'll wait until he's allowed to eat. We can take rawhides away from him, and there isn't even any growling. He's really a great dog 90% of the time... but the 10% of biting, misbehaving, and sass is really causing a major problem.
He's crate-trained and currently allowed in two rooms of the house. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated as we are in need of major advice to get him to stop the aggressive behavior!
Thank you!!!
-Ryan
