Our Angel turns devilish.....

We have been having a problem with our 20 month old girl, Roxy. She is a mix between terrier/spaniel mix. She is only about 20 lbs. We do a lot of socialization with her, and other dogs. In most situations she plays well with other dogs, and she will be a joy for us, and the other dogs. There are certain situations where she will seem to get aggressive, and try to scare off other dogs. The biggest situation we will see is when she has a ball in her mouth, and she either drops it, or some other dog drops the ball. When that happens, she will go at the ball hard, and will go after any other dog that tries to go after the ball. She would never do anything(like biting or anything), but she will just attempt to scare the other dog off. Most other dogs, will just let her have it, because they don't care as much as she does. It usually only happens with items that can only be possessed by one dog(ball, little toy). If there is rope or something, she doesn't mind sharing that with other dogs, where they can play tug of war. Usually when I see the behavior, I will yell at her, and I will give her a swat on the bum. This definitely does not seem to deter her from doing it again later. Since the behavior happens so infrequently, it is hard to know how to react when she does that. I was going to try talking to a trainer, but I thought I would post the problem on this forum.

We had started taking her to a doggie daycare once a week, to break up her weekdays, which had been going okay. The last two visit's, the gal's running it was saying that they had altercation with roxy, and so now they have asked us to not bring her there for a while. The way the doggie daycare works, she is usually getting 1hr of play time, to 1 hr of rest, for all 8 hours during the day. My wife and I are sadden that she got kicked out of there. She had only gone like 4 times, but we know that she loves it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Sony

Here is something I got off the web:

http://www.critterhaven.org/aggression.htm

Perhaps it will answer some of your questions. I have a 20lb terrier mutt (Fenway) who will growl when I try to take a toy away from him or if another dog trys to take a toy away from him. When we paly tug o war, he growls. He has NEVER bitten, gone after me or another dog or even showed his teeth - he just growls. Because he doesn't go after other dogs or me, I let him growl all he wants. I even growl back.

I would play with her and praise her when she plays nicely. But as soon as she "acts up". I would just stop what you're doing, ignore her and go into another room. After about 30 minutes, I'd go back and play with her. If she plays nicely, praise her. But again, if she "acts up", just drop the toy and go into another room. She needs to understand that her bad behaviour isn't going to be tolerated. I wouldn't swat her butt or even yell at her. I'd just ignore her. I'd like to hope she'd get the picture.

It's a shame she got kicked out of doggy daycare. I firmly believe in socializing dogs and daycare is a good place. Fenway goes 2-3 times a week. If you happen to be able to socialize her with another dog in the near future, I would closely watch them. If she's playing nicely, praise her! If she goes after the other dog while they're playing with a ball, I would separate them and take the toy away from her. After awhile I'd give back the toy. If she plays nice, praise her. But if she "acts up" take the toy away.

I don't know if the above would work. I'm no expert. Did the doggy daycare people have any suggestions?

Good luck.

No they really didn't have too much in ideas. They were trying to be nice about it, and said that we would need to take a break. They did say maybe to try working with a dog trainer, or something. We are going to do that this weekend. We will see what happens. Thanks for the response.

It sounds like she is posession guarding. Be sure to work with her a lot, playing with her toys with her, practicing bite inhibition with ropies, and don't tolerate growling towards you. Some dogs cannot get over this with other dogs, if she's a rescue there could be issues in her past with dogs stealing her food/posessions. Ask the daycare if she could possibly play with no toys around, or only ropes and large sharable toys like you said.

yeah, she is definitely possesion guarding with certain items. When she plays with us, she would never growl, or do anything that would be preceived as aggressive. It will only occur with other dogs, and furthermore only a special few dogs that want the ball as much as she does. If another dog has a ball and is trotting around, she would be fine, and she would follow and wait. If the other dog were to put it down, then she would lurk and wait for the other dog to be distracted. If Roxy would go for a ball that has been layed down, and the other dog went for it at the same time, then she would jump at the other dog, and growl a whole lot, to try to deter the other dog. She was from a pet store, so I don't know if she had problems like that before. The day care's position is that they don't want "special needs" dogs :) ; where they can't do certain things, because roxy doesn't like it. I guess I can see their perspective. We are supposed to meet with a dog trainer this weekend, to see if they have some good techniques. I'm starting to think that this behavior is more of a symptom, then the actual problem. We don't have really good obedience with Roxy, in a busy situation, where if her attention is focused on something else(off leash), it is difficult to get her to focus on us, and listen/obey. Maybe the problem is more that Roxy needs to know that listening/obeying is the number one thing. I don't think that is the case with Roxy. We have taken her to puppy obedience class early on, but then we have been bad about keeping up the training.

Thanks for all your help.
-Sony

aw, it does sound like she's a sweet dog, growling does not always mean she's being aggressive... it's usually just a warning, and totally common in dog language. I'm sorry I dont have any good advice. Being a ball crazy dog, Gonzo can also be a brat with other dogs chasing his tennis balls and he'll bark at them. He's a total show-off. The only way we prevent that is just having plenty of tennis balls at the park, so if a dog steals his he knows there are others around. Obedience could help a lot, as far as your being able to control her when tennis balls are involved... once she has a solid recall, you can call her to you and distract her if you sense a scuffle coming on... I hope you find a solution :) A behaviorist/trainer would have much better advice for you!