Hi. I just this week finally downloaded the Secrets to Dog Training and find the reading and methods very useful so far! We adopted a female shepherd last summer from a friend's son (now 3 yrs. of age) and things are going generally well - but we are having a growing problem of her becoming territorial and somewhat aggressive towards people. She was completely unsocialized for the first 2.5 years of her life as far as we know.
We have practiced all the items in the Guide to Dog Aggression - we may have slipped up here and there, but are now consistent in what we expect of Abigale. The first time we experience Abigale showing a reaction to people was last Thanksgiving when a child "attacked" her by coming at her face to pet her sliding on his knees while she was laying down beside me. She immediately felt threatened and got up and barked at him. I grabbed her and put her back in the down, but it escalated with barking at another child that started crying. I think from that day, I probably got a bit nervous that she could become an aggressive dog which I'm sure was the true beginning of our problems.
That following Monday, I enrolled her in a training course to try and curb this upcoming nervous aggression, but she was too "reactive" (as she was labeled) to be in a group. We then went to private lessons for 3 months using clicker training but it did not improve her behavior - I think it truly made it worse!! She's not a food driven dog so this training method was difficult unless we were in a quiet area learning tricks. We now are back to following more of the dog whispering type method and it's working better.
My question is: we want to practice having our friends over to teach Abigale that we are the leaders in the house so if we allow someone in, then that's that - she needs to accept it. When we first adopted Abigale whe was veryfearful of people and even though we asked folks to ignore the behavior they would attempt to pet her (which just made her more nervous) and she eventually learned to lunge in at people and bark - which made them move out of her space. Looking back this is a behavior that we should've corrected better then, but apparently didn't do it affectively enough as it has gotten worse. It now has grown into a bigger problem. So - how do we go about bringing a friend into our home and working with Abigale? Our inital thought is putting her on leash and bringing our friend into the house. She will react to this no doubt - so we want her in a sit or down stay during this process. We then plan on bringing her into the room we're in (after all of us have entered) and put her in a down/stay during the visit. We also plan on having our friend walk in and out of the room a few times and telling her to continue the down/stay. If she breaks the down/stay, we plan on stopping her and putting her back into the spot we asked her to be in. We do not plan on allowing her to approach our friend - atleast not for the first visit. She tends to approach people, sniffs, seems fine, but then lunges. I can successfully walk her through a crowd or through town without a single issue, but then she's not close enough for people to touch her.
We brought her to a friend's last weekend and she did lunge out off-leash at a friend. My husband corrected her and then re-directed her attention to playing ball - she LOVES playing ball. She was then fine with the crowd of 3 other adults until one left the room and then came back afew hours into the visit. She reacted to the "re-appearance" of our friend. My husband stopped her and put her back to her "spot"...she complained and whinned, but stayed. It was all a bit eye-opening for us.
She is also reactive to dogs on leash - but is fine in a pack at doggie daycare or with family dogs she's been introduced to.
We excercise her daily (walks, doggie daycare, bike with her using a walkydog, rollerblade. etc).
Sorry - alot of information here, but we've obviously gone wrong somewhere. She clearly does not see us as 100% leaders and feels the need to protect herself and probably us. We want to work on this because she does have incredible potential to be a fantastic dog - I've seen her calm demeanor and know that my husband and I are on the same page.
Thank you,
Marilva
