Dog Aggression Training
How to Stop Aggressive Behavior.
When your dog regularly snaps, bites or growls you have a behavior problem on your hands so it’s important to begin dog aggression training. Aggression is one of the reasons why dog owners look for help from a professional dog trainer. It’s not only the “intimidating” larger breeds of dogs that are known to be aggressive; any breed can become aggressive under certain circumstances. Although it won’t be cured overnight, you can improve your dog’s behavior.
If your dog is dog aggressive or people aggressive and you need help, call us!
Why Does Your Dog Behave Aggressively?
Aggressive behavior can display as rigid and stiff body language in the presence of a threat, excessive growling, snarling, lunging, baring teeth, and eventually biting. The extent of biting can be mild to severe as well as the frequency. We highly recommend a consultation to determine the extent of your dog’s aggressive behavior and come up with a comprehensive plan to address it.
The aggression is not always directed toward a person. Dogs can direct aggressive behavior toward lifeless objects, such as yard equipment or wheels on vehicles.
It’s important to understand that your dog is utilizing aggressive behavior as a tool and to successfully change that tool, we must understand the driver behind the aggression. Here are the most common reasons:
Territorial Aggression: The dog protects your home or its space from what it believes to be an intruder.
Resource Guarding: Similar to territorial aggression, the dog protects food, bones, chew toys, or another object of value to it.
Fear Aggression: The dog resorts to aggressive displays in an effort to protect itself from a threat.
Defensive Aggression: Like fear aggression, the dog attacks defensively in response to a stressor.
Frustration-provoked Aggression: The dog behaves aggressively when it’s limited to a leash or in a fenced yard. Sometimes a dog may become excessively excited, such as before a walk, and bite its handler. This is common referred to as “barrier frustration” or “barrier aggression.”
Redirected Aggression: A frustrated and excited dog redirects the aggressive energy towards another animal, human, or object.
Predatory Aggression: Prey drive inappropriately directed towards another animal, human, or object.
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Talk to our expert dog trainers. To get started we do a 1-on-1 dog training consultation where we meet with you and your dog to find the best solution. The methods used are ones we determine at the consultation.
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How to Stop Aggression
Jotting down when your dog’s behavior becomes aggressive and the conditions surrounding the behavior plays a significant role in determining your next course of action. There are several ways you can manage the aggression and help your dog stay calm, but it will take consistency, time, and potentially the help of a dog training professional in Raleigh NC.
Check With Your Vet
Dogs that are suddenly aggressive with no known history of aggressive behavior should receive a physical by your veterinary. While rare, physical illness should be ruled out prior to starting a training plan.
Call in a Professional Trainer
If your veterinarian has ruled out a medical issue, it’s time to call one of our professional dog trainers. Because aggression is a serious problem, you shouldn’t try to fix it by yourself. Our certified dog trainers can help you figure out what’s creating your dog’s aggressive behavior and help create a plan to manage it.
We Will Create a Plan
Your new dog trainer will help you figure out the best approach for managing your dog’s aggression. In many cases, we will use positive reinforcement to teach your dog new behaviors.
Dog-to-Dog Aggression: Aggressive displays directed specifically at other dogs, whether on leash, through a fence, or in the home between dogs that live together.
Human Aggression: Aggression directed at people — strangers, visitors, or in some cases members of the household. This is the category that most often needs professional handling from the outset rather than after an incident.
Common Signs of Aggression in Dogs
Aggression rarely arrives without warning. It escalates through a sequence, and most of the early signals get missed or misread as something else. These are the ones to know:
- Growling — a warning. The dog is telling you it is uncomfortable. Punishing a growl teaches a dog to skip the warning next time, which is genuinely dangerous.
- Stiff body posture — tension held through the whole body. Often the earliest visible sign.
- Intense staring — a fixed, direct gaze held on a person or another dog.
- Raised hackles — the hair standing up along the back. Indicates arousal, which may be aggression or fear.
- Ears pinned back — usually fear, and fear is one of the most common drivers of aggression.
- Baring teeth — a clearer warning than a growl, and a later one.
- Lunging — sudden forceful movement towards a person or animal.
- Snapping — a fast bite that may deliberately not make contact. A final warning.
- Biting — contact made, with injury possible.
If you are seeing any of these, it is worth acting rather than waiting. These behaviours have causes — fear, anxiety, pain, illness — and identifying the cause is what determines whether a training plan will work.