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About Dog Aggression
Why Reactivity is Often a Warning Sign for Aggressive Behavior in Dogs
If you are learning about dog aggression, you could be forgiven for thinking reactivity is the same as aggression. It seems like the terms are often interchanged. However, there are differences: reactivity in dogs refers to an overreaction to a stimulus, such as another dog, a person, noise or even touch. On the other hand,…
Controlling dog aggression by using a dog muzzle
Dog aggression can be stressful for pet owners. Ensuring the safety of your dog and others is crucial. A dog muzzle is an effective tool in managing aggressive behavior. A well-fitted muzzle can provide peace of mind, allowing you to handle your dog with confidence in various situations. However, while a muzzle can prevent bites,…
How anxiety relates to dog aggression and why we need to treat it
While you may think your dog is aggressive because of the neighbour’s black dog or the guy wearing that crazy hat, it is now believed by the scientific community that anxiety or uncertainty underlies most dog aggression (1). That anxiety or uncertainty in dogs underlies dog aggression is not immediately obvious. As a result it…
What you may not know about rewarding a dog’s fear or aggression
Can treats reinforce a dog’s fear or aggression? A recent blog comment sparked an interesting question in response to our article, 5 Harsh Realities of Treating Dog Aggression, which we thought was worth a blog post. The question came after a statement that treats can’t reinforce (strengthen or cause it to repeat) fear. The poster…
5 Harsh Realities of Treating Dog Aggression
On the surface treating dog aggression – if not a simple fix – can at least appear to be relatively straightforward. Teach your dog to do something that is incompatible with aggressive behavior. How hard can that be? Well, after the initial cycle of excitement and enthusiasm, there is the inevitable wake-up call to reality.…
Training your aggressive dog to pay attention might help improve dog aggression
Training your aggressive dog to stop paying attention to something else and shift their to you will likely help to improve dog aggression. People with generalized social-phobia that have been trained to pay attention to non-threatening positive material and ignore threatening material, showed significantly greater reductions in self-reported, behavioral, and physiological measures of anxiety than…
The World’s Worst Dog Aggression Advice
Everyone who has a dog seems to have an opinion on how to handle dog behavior problems and aggression is at the top of the list. Here is some of the worst advice for handing aggression in dogs that you should avoid. Being dominant, being “pack leader”, “alpha”, “top dog”, etc.. Act like Cesar Milan…
The importance of getting your dog’s attention at the earliest stage of aggressive arousal.
We and our dogs are unable to pay full attention to more than one thing at a time. Outside of dogs that are aggressive toward their owners, it means that if you can hold your dogs attention, they will not be attention to whatever else he is becoming aggressive towards. Dogs that are not attending to the threats…
Crazy dog at the door? Trick or treat!
Hallowe’en comes every year. If you have a dog that goes crazy at the door, Halloween is a nightmare. At best you can hope to take your dog somewhere else where there are no tricker-treaters (good luck!). Or perhaps you can hide out in your house with the house dark as if no one is…
Do treats reward aggression?
This dog was about to be euthanized because he was aggressive to kids and dogs. See what happens when you blow in his face and watch what happens when he gets rewarded for this behavior in this video by the late Dr. Sophia Yin. This is a must see for anyone who is counter-conditioning. Training Aggression? Counter-conditioning…