Aggressive Behavoir

[Nita]

Well it seems like Jerry our 19 month old boxer is just a going concern to us lately. With his chewing probs..(on health board)and now his newest behavior. We had issues with Jerry regarding separation anxiety and we have conquered this finally. We started going out and leaving him home alone for small periods of time and now we are able to go out for longer periods without him getting too upset. BUT......now he has taken to jumping, growling and biting when anyone goes to leave him. He has become a bully!! I have separted him and put his leash on him in an area away from us when he has shown this behavior and taken his freedom privilege away from him for up to 3 hours. ( Time out) When someone comes in I have finally conquered the sit!! So as he won't jump on them. But the other day my neigbours little boy (3 yrs old) came over to see him in the yard and when he went to leave he started running and Jerry agressively went after him and pounced on him. He knocked him to the ground and nipped his back. I was mortified!!! Needless to say Jerry was put in his time out for the night. Jerry is a good dog, and we have shown him nothing but love. If you read my profile on Jerry you will see how important he is to us. I am afraid we may have to do something drastic if this behaviour doesn't stop. We can't understand where it is coming from. He bit my arm the other morning as I was getting ready to go to work, and he left a bruise. Please - any information anyone can give me I would appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Nita

 

[Krikkit]

Hi Nita, I'm sorry you are having these problems :( A question like this is very difficult to answer online as so many things need to be taken into consideration.

I would recommend that you consult with a Behaviorist ASAP, the sites below may help you find someone reputable and your vet may be helpful too:

http://www.avma.org/avsab/default.htm

http://www.tufts.edu/vet/petfax/index.html

http://www.inch.com/~dogs/behaviorists.html

The books 'Culture Clash' and 'Dogs are from Neptune' by Jean Donaldson are both excellent resources and may help you. The Agressive Behavior Mailing list is a very good resource as well, details are here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agbeh

As you know when Jerry is likely to exhibit this jumping, biting and growling, is it possible to confine him before people leave so he has no chance to perform / reinforce the behavior?

Wishing you all the best, I hope you are able to find a behaviorist to help you out with this.

Sharon

 

[Nita]

Jerry with the attitude!

Poor Jerry, he has certainly been having a tough time lately. Yes, we are going to take him to see someone regarding this behaviour. I think we may have to crate him until this behaviour stops. When anyone is around him he is wonderful, playing and happy, it's just when you go to leave him...WOW!! Talk about attitude! I will certainly let you know how we make out. Thanks for your reply
Nita

 

[monty'smum]

Nita, I hope you can sort out Jerry's problem. You've actually highlighted a problem, whilst not yet as serious as yours, that I have occasionally with Monty. He too hates me to go out and leave him. He accepts it when it is in our normal routine but anything different and he acts very similarly. If I put my coat on he gets very excited, jumps up and barks, there's no nipping or biting though. AS much as possible i just try to ignore him and leave as quickly as possible. I must say though he is used to a routine and this happens only when his routine is altered which has to happen sometimes. I'll certainly keep more of an eye on him as my teenage daughter has started to go out more and more and he's started doing this to her too.

 

[jjones]

we continue to have the same problem with our dog maddie.The only two times she shows aggression are when we try to place her in the cage (if it is a different time than her normal routine) or when my husband and I try to leave-it is almost comical-we try and escape through different doors in the house. Lateley we have been leaving with food-a turkey slice-we open the door and right as we are attempting to leave we show her the food and give her the sit command-she sits, we give it too her praise her up and down and leave-all within three seconds. I don't know if it is the right thing to do, but it has been working for us. We have learned that trying to push her off or yelling makes it much much worse, we try to be very calm when we do this and not feed into the bad-it has improved a lot. We got caught up in the negative, yelling, holding her by the neck and sometimes even kneeing her off of us, but she was way too quick and cling on harder and feed off of our anger-she has become somewhat better, sometimes all we have to say is sit and she does it!!!Hope this helps

 

[EMWAZ]

In my research this is one of the best site I've found. Most of them just describe the behavior, this one gives solutions. I specifically looked under aggression and domination.

[http://www.marin-humane.org/html/behavior.html#Leader]