Hi All, I wonder if anyone can help and I'm sure this question has been asked before. I have 2 labs - 2.5 yr old female and 12 month old male. Female went to socializing training classes and is an angel , we thought with the male we would take what we learnt with the female and apply and all was great until about a month ago . They walk every day in the forest or the fields off lead for approx. 45 - 90 min and are generally well behaved. Most recently our male has started acting aggressive towards random people when out and off lead, for example we can be at the fields and walk past 4 or 5 people with/without dogs and everything's fine and BANG he'll just run up to the next person we see growling and barking at them (nothing more than that as yet) and will eventually return to me on the 'touch' command and get a treat for returning and then for the rest of the week he'll be fine. He seems to do this at least once a week. Any help would be appreciated
It sounds like he is reacting to the sudden appearance of someone at an unpredictable moment. We call this 'Sudden Environmental Contrast' or SEC for short, and it's very common in reactive dogs. It's often the last thing to get rid of when working with a reactive dog and it's the first thing to appear when they develop problems. You will need to work with a force-free behaviourist to help him with his fear of strangers and to ensure he can respond to you and your recall under these situations instead of running up to the people - because the law states that dogs need to be under his control and he could get you and him into serious trouble if he continues running up to people in a scary way... I would suggest trying to find a CBATI in your area: https://grishastewart.com/cbati-directory/
Hi, that sounds about right - have contacted a behaviourist and will take him along to start work on this issue. thanks for your help
Great. Just make sure the behaviourist is force-free and doesn't train using fear or punishment, or it could make things worse...
