Hey everyone, I just came across this site while deciding what we should do with our 3.5 year old male chocolate lab. As a backstory, we have two chocolate's (8 and 3). When our younger pup turned about 1 he became agressive towards other dogs and some children. We have broken up multiple fights with the younger attacking our older dog. We worked through the aggression, figuring out what possible triggers are ( food and growling appear to be top 2) and we avoid placing him in those situations, and for the most part we have had no aggressions between our two dogs living together. He will still see a dog out on a run or walk and start growling and trying to go towards it, but we are able to redirect him. All that is fine and manageable. We now have an almost 2 year old little boy who is in love with the dogs. He is always playing with our older one and trying to play with the 3 year old. The 3yr will usually tolerate him, but will growl so we try to keep them apart and constantly monitor him. This morning he went after the two year old out of nowhere. Thankfully he stopped immediately when we yelled, but he did break skin. No major injuries, just a scared little boy... Thank God. Am I overreacting to wanting to re-home him? I feel like all the trust we have been building with him is gone. I know this is my fault as an owner. I don't really want to be reprimanded for allowing the dog near him, because we have slowly acclimated him over the two years and he was doing fine before this. Is there anything we can do to avoid rehoming our pup? Sorry for the long post. Just very on edge over the whole ordeal. Thank you, Joel
Hi Joel and welcome. No-one is going to tell you off, don't worry. I can understand why you're feeling upset, it must have been very scary for you all. I think your first point of call should be to see a good behaviourist who has lots of experience with these sorts of issues. It sounds like your dogs are on edge and that's not a good situation for a child to be around. What do you do when either of your dogs growls? For now, I would keep your child away from the dogs, until they can have a proper assessment. The growling is a very clear warning that your dog is not happy with the child being near him, and that needs to be respected. I appreciate it's not always easy in a busy family home. It's very unlikely that your dog went for your child without giving any warning signs, but sometimes we're not very good at seeing them, as they can be very subtle and we are busy getting on with our lives. Normally there are lots of signs that precede even a growl. You definitely need to see a professional, but I'd also recommend having a look at www.stopthe77.com and the Dog Decoder app to have a brush-up on some canine body language signals. The Stop the 77 site also has little songs you can sing with your child to teach appropriate ways of interacting with dogs - I think every parent should watch it. Good luck, and please do let us know how you get on.
Thank you for the reply! Seeing a behaviourist sounds like a good idea. Would you keep both dogs away, even though the older one doesn't growl or show his teeth at him? Thank you for suggesting the stopthe77 videos, I was unaware of the pulling back with the hugs. Definitely will be keeping an eye out for that. What we have been doing with the dogs growling at each other is stepping in and asking them both to sit. We don't really move one of the dogs away, because we were under the impression that would teach them that growling will get the desired effect of the dog being removed. The growling between dogs has significantly decreased. I can only think of 1 instance where we had an aggression we had to pull apart in the past year. It was very bad before this while we were learning the triggers for our younger pup. As far as growling with our son, we will step in and make sure to remove him from the situation and try to show him "nice hands" and how to interact with them, while still not taking him completely out of the area. I'll check the suggested resources to see other methods that we probably don't use. The goal is to not relocate our pup... Thank you again! Joel
I think that I would probably keep both dogs away in the short term at least; the event will have left everyone a bit unsettled and it's possible that you could end up in a situation where trigger stacking occurs with the even the older dog; this is where several incidents which, although not enough to cause a reaction in themselves, will add up and make a dog (or person!) act out of character. This is often the precursor to a dog bite, and it can be hard to spot because no one thing on its own makes you sit up and take notice. Sometimes, in hindsight, you can say "yes, that upset him yesterday, then this happened this morning" etc and work out the events that led up to the bite. At the time, it can be hard to appreciate them all. Just give it a couple of days to a week for the stress hormones to die down in you all. It can take several days for hormone levels to return to normal after a stressful event, so best that everyone can just chill out to allow that to happen. Yup, hugging is something that humans love to do and many dogs actively dislike. Draping over you, leaning on you, these are things that dogs tend to enjoy as far as contact goes (as I type, I have one dog snuggled up against my right side and another resting her head over my foot), but a simple and easy rule of thumb is to only use one hand for petting your dog at a time. OK, so it seems that you're actively trying to stop the growling, which is fine, but I would suggest that maybe your approach could do with a little tweaking. I prefer to think of it not as "how do I stop the undesirable behaviour?", but rather, "how do I change the dog's emotional response so he no longer reacts in the undesirable way?". I hope you can see the difference. Basically, growling is really clear communication that the dog doesn't like something. The last thing we want to do is stop the dog telling us that, because it means that, without that option for letting us know he doesn't like it, he may feel he has to escalate to the next level. Similarly if we don't respond to a growl, then he has very little choice but to escalate because growling isn't working. Do you see? Instead, we can look at it as, what is it he is uncomfortable with, and what can I do to make him learn it's OK? I'm not in the position from the other side of the internet to tell you how best to go about that in your particular case, but that's where a good (positive methods) behaviourist will come in. One word of advice, make sure that your behaviourist uses modern methods, and doesn't still subscribe to outdated ideas of "being the leader/alpha/dominant member of the pack", which has all been debunked. Using intimidation or physical punishment in this sort of case is very dangerous and has been shown to actually increase incidents of aggression towards family members. If you have any questions, feel free to ask
I'm sorry to hear you have problems with your younger dog, particularly when your little son is involved too. It doesn't make a relaxed household if you are constantly worried about the situation. i can't add anything to the good advice you've already been given, but do let us know how you get on.
