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The best in health, wellness, and positive training from America’s leading dog experts

Home Behavior Aggression

Aggression

A dog getting aggressive with other dogs can manifest with other dogs in the home, visiting dogs, and out on walks.

Why is my Dog Aggressive with Other Dogs

Dog-aggressive dogs can be discriminating in their choice of targets. A dog who aggresses toward other dogs doesn’t necessarily try to fight with all other dogs.
A depressed dog may have a reduced appetite and lethargy.

How to Tell If a Dog Is Depressed

Depression in dogs typically involves a significant behavioral change. Often starting with a gradual loss of interest in once-loved games. It can also start with a bang with aggressive or destructive behaviors.
Aggressive, disobedient dog problems concept.

On-Leash Aggression

It’s not uncommon for dogs to behave badly when they are leashed and see other dogs – and it doesn’t mean they are truly aggressive. Here’s what to do to achieve peace on leash.

What You Need to Know About Yellow Dogs and DINOS

I grew up around horses. In the horse world, if you tie a red ribbon in your horse’s tail, everyone knows that means your...
aggressive dog

What Causes Aggressive Dog Behavior?

When dogs display aggressive behaviors, it’s rare for humans to consider whatever the dog was trying to communicate. Instead, the behaviors are just considered unacceptable, threatening, and dangerous. Look at it from their point of view, though.

Managing Dog-Aggressive Dogs in the Family

If you do nothing else about the aggression between your dogs, you must scrupulously manage their movements and activities. Every time your dog successfully engages in a behavior that you don't want her to exhibit, it makes it that much harder to convince her that it's not a useful behavior strategy. Every time your dog aggressively communicates to another canine family member, it increases the potential for unresolvable aggression between the two and serious injury to one or both.

Fear Aggression in Dogs

Fear-related aggression most frequently appears between the ages of eight to 18 months, as a young dog reaches maturity. This may be because increased boldness tends to come with maturity. But it's also likely because, over time, aggressive responses are reinforced; the scary stimulus (most often a human, when we're talking about aggression issues) backs off. Initially, a fearful pup generally tries to hide from scary humans by moving away, perhaps crawling under a chair.
Dog aggression modification is a long term behavior modification best performed by professionals.

Qualified Professionals for Dog Aggression Modification

Mild aggression cases might involve a dog who growls and might even air-snap

Dog Breed Stereotypes: Inaccurate and Damaging

Poor agreement was found between visual breed assignments and DNA results in 14 of the 20 dogs (70 percent). Moreover, there was low inter-rater reliability, meaning that the dog experts did not show a high level of agreement regarding breed assignments to the 20 dogs. More than half of the evaluators agreed on the predominant breed in only seven of the 20 dogs (35 percent). These results provide evidence that physical appearance is not a reliable method for breed identification.

Aggressive Behavior Information

It has become all too common to see lists of breed bans in multi-unit residences as well as municipalities. Books could be written about the drawbacks of breed-specific legislation (BSL), but suffice to say that all dogs have the potential to bite and no breed has 100 percent benign membership. The bully breed" lovers among us (count me in) would point out that many of these dogs are model citizens and great companions."
can dogs be racist

Could My Dog Be Racist?

Almost as soon as I walked into Boomer's house I could tell his owner was nervous. This isn't all that unusual when meeting a new client for the first time. I always have my new clients put the dog in another room so we can get acquainted with each other and have some time to chat without being distracted. Very often, the clients are uneasy during these initial consultations; I've grown accustomed to it. After all, often they have agonized over acknowledging their dog's issues and their decision to call in a professional. But after a few minutes, I could tell there was something more. I'd been called to help her dog with his reactive behavior. She related that he lunged and barked at some people as they walked by. During our discussion, she seemed unusually pensive and was having difficulty making eye contact with me. So I pressed, Is there anything else you need to tell me? Whatever it is

Latest Blog

Rehoming Your Old Dog

Rehoming a dog due to loss of income, loss of a home, or another extreme circumstance is understandable. In other scenarios it's less clear if rehoming is the best option.