Parent's aggressive dog- how to handle visiting?

[tmschult]

My mother has a 5 year old mini poodle. She has never trained it properly and treats it as her baby (no matter how many lectures I give her). The dog is very dog aggressive.. and sometimes people aggressive (It has bitten 3 neighbors so far). But it is everyone elses fault in my mothers eyes.

When we visit my parents, our well-balanced, well - behaved, trained boxer has to be gated in the kitchen or outside. It makes me not want to visit! I think since her dog is the problem, her dog should be kept away. When they are together, her poodle will attack Hank for no reason, and we don't want that happening either, and I also do not want my young dog around an unbalanced one.

Anyway- how to handle this situation? I don't want to NOT visit, I love spending time with my parents.. and they live over an hour away so bringing Hank along is almost necessary and we most likely spend the day so it is a whole day where he is kept away.

 

[larrygs]

Our first boxer was sweet to all dogs and any animal, large or small, for that matter. Until we left her with a friend who had a small unruly dog. From that point on she would proactively put small dogs in their place without any warning. Never hurt them, but always caused a ruckus.

I doubt you are going to change your mother or her dog. I noticed your Hank is still a pup. I would keep him away from any interactions with the mini poodle. Too much risk of a lasting imprint you will be unhappy about for a long time. Perhaps a doggy day care or a pet sitter might help for the day of your trip.

 

[Tuff Love]

Too much risk of a lasting imprint

This ^ When Thora was a pup to 1yr old we lived in a row home and the neighbor had a sweet boxer girl and an evil little rescued dachshund. Now being a rescue he certainly could have had a very bruised past and you really had to be careful with him, especially when meeting him for the first time. For whatever reason this doxy HATED Thora from day 1 and since we shared a short, open fence this became a real problem. the doxy would immediately come outside and go bonkers at Thora, who responded with equal dislike and to this day Thora has small dogs issues. She has dog-dog aggression problems to begin with that may or may not be related to that little doxy, but she seriously goes into "kill" mode when it comes to small dogs. It's extremely stressful. I would definitely discourage having your dog exposed to your mom's dog in case he would develop a stigma. Maybe that's not the correct way to proceed, but having gone through what we did with our dog...
My father in law lives an hour away and has a frenchy and a bichon mix and when we go visit we always leave Thora at home because she can't be trusted with the little ones. We just keep the visits a little shorter.