# Dog aggression on walks



## SampsonNeiss (Dec 27, 2012)

I have broke down and decided to post on here. My 1.5 year old white shepherd Sampson is perfect on walks UNTIL he sees another dog (fenced in, walking, at a distance, wherever). When he sees another dog, he gets on his back legs and growls and barks, trying to do whatever he can to get that other dog (not in a playful way). I have tried everything I can think of. Gentle leader, he gets right out of. Easy walk, doesn't stop him. Treats, pays no attention to treats he is so focused on other dog. Prong collar, works some what, but still doesnt phase him enough. I have been bit multiple times because he bites out of reactivity. If I put a treat out in front of his nose while he is "acting out", he bites my hand. I have tried easing him into dogs, by turning around when he starts acting up, but he still can not make it past another dog without acting out. This started around 11months, so it has been a long process. It is starting to get warmer out, so of course more dogs out. I have two other dogs that are not the least bit aggressive towards other dogs. I have walked him since he was 8 weeks old. He has been around other dogs that are family or friends' dogs. I did not take him to obedience training as a pup which I am regretting big time now. Not sure what options I have. Will he break out of it with age? Any other solutions? He is not aggressive at all while at home, just very full of energy and playful like a normal shepherd is. Thanks for the help!


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## kjdreyer (Feb 7, 2013)

It's not too late to get help with training! I'm no expert, but it sounds as if you need one to see what's going on with the dog, and to help stop that behavior. Until then, do you have another option for exercising him? It might be a good idea not to give him any more chances to get this behavior entrenched until you have gotten a trainer's help with how to work with him. Any chance you could take him to an individual run at a dog park? Good luck!


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## Twyla (Sep 18, 2011)

At home with us, Woolf is very much the playful GSD. At 3 1/2 yr, I still call him the overgrown puppy. Woolf is very DA. Just mentioning that the difference in behavior can exist.

Locate a trainer experienced with aggression and working breeds or a behaviorist. Get their eyes on your dog, determine what you are dealing with - FA, leash aggression, over excitement etc. Then begin with training, 2 goals - his obedience and ignoring dogs, handler training 

Drop the head halter and harness; the head halter can break, the harness can be backed out of. Look for a martingale to use. Put the prong collar away until maybe later in training.

To avoid the bites he is giving you, you will need to watch his signals to redirect his focus _before_ he reacts. Once he reacts, as you have seen, food isn't going to get his attention. With Woolf, if I mess up and miss his cues, I get him out of the situation because he is not going to pay attention to me while that other dog is to close.


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## SampsonNeiss (Dec 27, 2012)

There are not any dog parks around unfortunately. I played fetch with him at the city park in the snow when nobody else was out and he did great. That wont happen now with all the people enjoying the warm weather. I will try to look for a trainer and pick up a martingale to see how he responds. Should I avoid the situations as soon as I see him start to lose focus on me/ interest in food? Thanks for all the help!


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## Sri (Apr 25, 2013)

SampsonNeiss said:


> There are not any dog parks around unfortunately. I played fetch with him at the city park in the snow when nobody else was out and he did great. That wont happen now with all the people enjoying the warm weather. I will try to look for a trainer and pick up a martingale to see how he responds. Should I avoid the situations as soon as I see him start to lose focus on me/ interest in food? Thanks for all the help!



Hi.

Yes avoid the triggers as much as you can till you get a good trainer. Some articles that have helped me in the meantime:

Aggression & Some Reasons Behind It | Suzanne Clothier

Understanding Thresholds: It's More than Under- or Over- | Suzanne Clothier


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## Amurphy26 (Jul 22, 2012)

I'm working on this with my own dog and I would definitely recommend getting a trainer but here's a few things I've learnt over the last year

- be careful with trying to distract with treats. You can end up accidentally rewarding the reaction. It can be the same with walking in the other direction when the reaction has already started. Dog barks and lunges and is removed from the stimulus. The reaction worked! I've fallen into this trap myself.

- Find a way of controlling the dog during the reaction. I have to use an all in one lead called a Gencon. My dog can't get out of it at all and I can practically hold it with one finger when she's going crazy. Obviously the idea is she shouldn't be in situations when she can go crazy but life happens. Knowing I have control over her makes me less anxious and more confident. 

- teach the 'watch' and 'look at that' command. I've been doing this for a couple of months now and have found it really effective. I see a dog in the distance and if she hasn't seen it I say 'look at that'. She looks at it, looks back at me, gets a reward and we walk away from the dog. The idea is to keep her calm and reward her for looking at me. 

- 'leave' another good one for reactive dogs. If you can get a good leave you're half way there. 

- basic obedience and scent games are great for keeping your dogs attention when there are other dogs around. Even if another dog seems really far away, it's a great place to start because your dog will be able to relax with a dog in the background.

I know what you're going through but there are ways of working through it.
Good luck.


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## Harry and Lola (Oct 26, 2013)

I think in your situation you would be best to manage the situation rather than fix it at this stage.

I would try and not put him in the situation where he is too close to another dog when he is on lead, cross the road, turn around go the other way, do whatever so that there is enough distance between him on lead and another dog so that you can at least keep walking. Find out what his comfortable distance is to begin with.

I know this will be frustrating and annoying for you, but if can do this for a while until he is at the point where he no longer reacts with the distance between him an the other dog, then you can start training him to ignore other dogs a little closer.

This may take lots of time, consistency, trust and control, so if you feel you can't do it then you may want to engage an experienced trainer/behaviourist to help you.


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## luciano (Apr 7, 2014)

*i got a puppy*

i have a puppy and dont know if its a german shepard. the people who gave me him,told me that hes a gsd but i really dont know so im asking everyone what does a puppy look like


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## scout172 (Sep 14, 2013)

We gave Scout a shock collar when he was little and it goes up to 10 the hardest but every time he growls or barks at another dog we give him a small itty bitty shock. (a one) Now he never needs to use the collar its just sitting on my counter. :roll eyes: If you don't want to do that try firmly scolding. That seems to work with Scout.


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## DJEtzel (Feb 11, 2010)

I would avoid aversives for this. He's being reactive. Totally normal.

work on Look At That training hardcore and you will see great results.


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## SunCzarina (Nov 24, 2000)

I think this can be fixed and it's not too late to start training! I used to do foster care, had quite a few PITA young male GSDs with no manners. 

For right now until you can get him in a class, you have to be preemptive. 

Learn to read the dog's body language, a stiffening of the leg, pricking of the ears. When you see in that split second before he reacts. You have to get in his head 'be nice' 'leave it' whatever you want to use. When he reacts, NO BE NICE and keep walking.

If you have to, body block him before he can react to the other dog and if he does react, sternly tell him NO Not Acceptable! while you make him back up. It takes a while and repeated often.

I would stop with the treats. By treating him when he's reacting, I hate to say you're feeding the monster. React, get treat, react more get more treats. No treats.

One other thing to remember is your feelings when he reacts. It's hard not to think or tense up Oh there he goes again, telling another dog off. The dog feels this. 

Stay upbeat, don't let his bad behavior bother you! Laugh to the other dog walker 'excuse my puppy, he's trying out his big scary dog act' KNOCK IT OFF, leave that dog alone, be NICE.

You might have some luck with playing music on your phone too.


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## enh811 (Jan 23, 2014)

Ah! I'm having this same issue with my girl. She just just turned 7 months yesterday. She started doing this around 4 months. She loves people& kids. But does not like any other dogs. We took her to obedience classes at 10 or 11 weeks and she did great until 4 or 5 months. She started reacting to other dogs. She doesn't get to the point where she bites me. I have been working on the watch me command, I use the phrase be nice (which she is told when playing with our other dog) I use leave it (which she knows).... 
She does like our older dog & our friends dogs who have huskies... She has warmed up to them & plays well with them. That's about it though. 


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## Amurphy26 (Jul 22, 2012)

At 7 mths old having been in your situation I would advise doing everything you can now as it's just going to get worse. Keep going to training classes with the aim being getting control in high distraction situations. You don't want to over stress her but she has to know you are in control not her. 

'Watch' and 'leave' are the best things I've ever trained for this. We're not there yet with her but we're getting closer. 


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## Chip18 (Jan 11, 2014)

Post eight; "Who pets my Puppy or Dog" is what I did for my guy with "serious" people issues, and in the process, dog issues never appeared so I never had any need of the "Dog reactive Dog" threads. "Who pets...." taught my dog how I expected him to behave "period!"

So other dogs was never a separate issue to be deal with. On a recent walk. I stopped to speak to a neighbor, she had three guys behind the fence bark. bark. barking! My guy stood calmly behind me never made a sound! After a couple of minutes of "no" response from him, the three shut up!

I continued to speak to the neighbor and all dogs stood around calmly! I was actually surprise the three yappers shut up, when they could not get a response from my guy??


http://www.germanshepherds.com/forum/general-behavior/431289-new-dog-very-challenging.html


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## Baillif (Jun 26, 2013)

DJEtzel said:


> I would avoid aversives for this. He's being reactive. Totally normal.
> 
> work on Look At That training hardcore and you will see great results.


I wouldn't, and routinely fix this in less than a week.


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## DJEtzel (Feb 11, 2010)

Baillif said:


> I wouldn't, and routinely fix this in less than a week.


Lol alright? I routinely see this made worse with aversives. Your point?


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## Baillif (Jun 26, 2013)

Had to have been done improperly or you're embellishing. 

Regardless of that I've seen plenty of people who attempt a counter conditioning program that mess it up and set back all their progress by allowing the dog to continue to practice the behavior. So either way you go if done wrong it goes wrong.


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## simba405 (Mar 14, 2013)

These reactivity threads always turn into a click and treat vs correct the dog debate. 

Op you should get a trainer. The dog is clearly walking all over you. Putting him in different harnesses and collars isn't fixing anything, it's trying to mask the problem. 

Reactivity is fairly common in the breed. Difference is some of us decide to take the long way with treats and teach "watch" and others put their foot down the first time it happens and teach the dog what is acceptable behavior and what isn't and it never happens again. If this were my dog I would use aversives and correct. But given your first post I'd question if you could give the proper and consistent correction necessary so a trainer is definitely your best bet.


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## Baillif (Jun 26, 2013)

Right. A good trainer is going to be where it's at because if you can't get the timing and sequence right for the aversive side of things it's very unlikely you could do it click and treat. Both require knowledge of a correct sequence and things like timing, thresholds, and being able to read a dog are essential and not teachable by text.


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## DJEtzel (Feb 11, 2010)

Baillif said:


> Had to have been done improperly or you're embellishing.
> 
> Regardless of that I've seen plenty of people who attempt a counter conditioning program that mess it up and set back all their progress by allowing the dog to continue to practice the behavior. So either way you go if done wrong it goes wrong.


That is the whole point. It was done improperly, because it doesn't take much to mess up timing and the general pet population does not have any idea what that means. You're suggesting they correct the dog, without explaining what that means at all, and they aren't going to do it right and can easily make the problem worse. 

I've personally never seen a LAT training go wrong. There's only one way to do it right and I teach it in person to make sure owners have the correct timing and are rewarding/marking the proper times. 



Baillif said:


> Right. A good trainer is going to be where it's at because if you can't get the timing and sequence right for the aversive side of things it's very unlikely you could do it click and treat. Both require knowledge of a correct sequence and things like timing, thresholds, and being able to read a dog are essential and not teachable by text.


This is also not true in my opinion. I teach some clicker classes, and lots of R+ classes with marker words and people do not make the same association with timing whatsoever. They can be doing a great job marking and treating, but don't generalize for corrections and are getting nothing across to their dog with misplaced corrections. 

You make a great point that it is not teachable by text, which is why it is so bothersome that people throw out "just correct the dog" - because they have no idea what that means and it's very possible to mess up their dog in a bad way. No one ever created a fearful or aggressive dog with treats, just sayin'. 

(And I know you'll bring up some random scenario where it's possible- those are very extreme circumstances and not the point at all)


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## MaggieRoseLee (Aug 17, 2001)

I'd definitely work on finding a trainer.

And realize this is NOT uncommon behavior. And the reason you don't see it more is cause most people give up so quickly resulting in their dogs living in their house/yard for their entire lives.

DISTANCE is your friend. Once your dog reacts, you lost that round, too late. You need to have a better plan. And earlier plan. Remembering that distance is in YOUR favor and the better you get at working with it the faster your dog will learn. Once they've have exploded and lost their mind you are just in 'clean up' mode and have to realize ZERO TRAINING will be happening.

Have you seen these? (and do the dogs behaviors look familiar?


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## Amurphy26 (Jul 22, 2012)

When people talk about different training methods I think they forget what works for one person doesn't always work for another. 

I know using correction techniques and firmer handling works with my dog, I've seen it done and I've seen instant results.......with other handlers. That made me feel like a useless handler because I just could not do their techniques properly. Some I didn't feel comfortable with but other I was just useless at executing. I had to find a technique that worked for the dog AND me. 

We now do only positive techniques and it's slower progress but it's working for us.

There isn't a technique that can be adopted by all and it can knock the confidence of handlers to say this is how you do it, it works, so just do it. 


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## Waffle Iron (Apr 3, 2012)

I make an effort to introduce Lanee (my 3yo Shepherd) to as many dogs on walks as possible. She's generally very curious and wants to meet other dogs and all goes well. We've made some doggie friends she'll want to go out of her way to see when we're walking now. Sometimes though, she won't get along with a dog she meets - but that's normal. 

But the biggest thing is be confident and don't show your dog apprehension when approaching another dog. German Shepherds have a very good ability to feel how their owners are feeling and they'll react accordingly. Make it a positive experience.


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