Red Zone Dog

Tanya writes in to the Dog Whisperer group (Yahoo):

("I wish I could have Cesar over to my house to help me know how to fix my dog. He is extremely, extremely, RED ZONE aggressive toward people who come to my house.  If he were not restrained he would bite people in the face, it is that bad. A few years ago, my daughter who lives in Hawaii came for a week.
He was muzzled and hit her hard in the face on the first day. He would have mauled her terribly if it were not for the muzzle.
I ALWAYS let him know that this behavior is unwanted by me, but he goes from 0 to 10 instantaneously and I just don't know what to do.  Tanya")
 
Reply:
Hi Tanya.
You’ve got a serious issue here. This is a disaster waiting to happen and I shudder to think what might happen if your kids invite a friend over and your dog gets loose.  Desensitizing him to new invited members of your pack and changing his perception of being the guard dog is imperative. Here’s some ideas;
• Have the crate set up in the common room with flaps (blankets, sheets) on all four sides, in the up position.
• Muzzle your dog and have a leash attached.
• Have another family member invite a guest to enter.
• Instruct the guest to totally ignore your dog and just talk normally right there just inside the door. No talk, No Pet, No eye contact by anybody to the dog.
•  
• At the first sign of aggression or barking, you control your dog and snap the leach saying “Hush!” Again, “HUSH!”
• Put him in a sit position and say “hush”, all while ignoring your dog and paying complete attention to the guest in a calm friendly manner.
• Maybe some finger bites timed perfectly with his barking or growling to get his attention to being quiet and calm. Or maybe some knee and foot touches for touch control and distraction.
• You join in with the conversation with a casual, calm, and confident voice from all.
•  
• If he continues to bark and growl take it to the next step of control, the crate.
• You take the dog to the common room and put him in the crate and say “hush”
• Invite the guest to the common room and talk confidently and calmly totally ignoring your dog.
• If the aggressive behavior continues pull down the flaps covering the cage.
•  
• If the aggressive behavior continues, play some music, loud and continue making small talk with the guest, in the common room.
• Make sure the guest is in an active mode of conversation with confidence in the voice.
• Sit down, relax and continue talking.
•  
• When the dog eventually stops barking and growling, hopefully the same day, turn down the music a notch.
• If the dog remains calm and quiet lift up the back side-flap covering of the crate.
• Then walk over and sit down and continue talking.
• If the barking resumes put the flap back down and crank up the music still ignoring the dog completely.
•  
• Step by step remove all control devises as the dog begins to cooperate.
• (The subliminal message to the dog is for him to be seen and not heard. This is your house, your guest, and he is to accept it or lose privileges. “Hush!!!)
•  
• As he begins to understand this new rule of the new Alpha-In-Charge you can remove the flaps, turn down the radio and walk around like you own the place.
• Have your guest walk around while talking and then bid farewell and leave, then release your dog.
• Ten minutes later repeat this whole sequence starting with the door bell.
• Then do it again, then again.
• Do the same thing with a different guest.
•  
• Repeat over and over again until eventually the dog accepts his new roll position in your pack.
• Continue these and other techniques that work for you for the rest of your life, as needed.

Good luck and persevere for victory.
Dale Davis

PS
Hi again Tanya,
I just had a thought about your situation. How often do you use the muzzle? Frequent??? The appearance of the severe aggression might just be a result of the muzzle itself. Dogs learn bite inhibition by socializing with their litter mates in mock fighting and learn to control the pressure of their bite. Even the herding dogs that bite the hind legs of sheep do so only as a pinch for control.
But when you put the muzzle on your dog it prevents the him from opening the mouth and there-by short-circuits his ability to control bite inhibition. The dog might then learn how to use his muzzle as a fist to punch with, and without his ability to control bite-inhibition he could easily escalate in rage. This might appear as extreme viciousness but in fact might just be an adaptation on the dogs part to nip with a punch, without control.
BEWARE! I’m not suggesting that just removing the muzzle will reinstall the bite inhibition.
Dale Davis

RED FLAGS

Ouch!!! That hurt my feelings. And it all comes down to our ability to read sign. In reflecting back on that day, I do remember reading strong signs of authority coming from that lady. The way she walked towards us with an air of superiority and the tone in her voice when she called her dog told me that she meant business. And the way her kids followed submissively behind her indicated to me just who wore the pants in that family.

I can relate to ignorance with people for they know not what they do. I’ve been ignorant myself so many, many times in so many, many situations throughout my sixty plus years of living. And I can relate to arrogance with people too, for I deal with that myself, often. Sometimes it’s hard not to be arrogant, especially when your as gifted as I am. Ha, ha, ha (that was a joke, followed by a belly laugh, ) LOL. Which brings me to my point.

Humor, or lack-there-of, is one of my biggest RED FLAGS when I need to make quick judgment about somebody’s intent. Ya just can’t fake a good belly laugh at the precise moment in time. It is either real or its phony and when people don’t laugh at all, in the presence of things that are truly funny, then I get suspicious about their purpose and intent.

Now, in getting back to that day in question I will say this: Those pups were funny. Some of the rare antics I saw that day with my Husky and our new friend, the Shitzu pup, was a true gift of natural pleasure. They romped around doing mock alpha rolls and spinning break-a-ways like I’ve never seen before. I remember making comments about the pups doing their dancing rituals and how funny it was. I was hoping that she and her girls might see the humor and/or maybe greet me like a friendly neighbor, but she didn’t.
It may be years before I see some of those precious canine moves again and that is part of the reason I laughed so hard.

I was trying to help her and her two girls see the beauty of how natural wolf behavior can come to the surface in those rare displays of mock fighting with our pups. Oh well, there is always tomorrow, and today is still young. LOL.
Dale

The Puppy's Busy Playing

I just thought of a funny encounter I had a few weeks ago with my dog and would like to share it. I was out walking my dog, Nia, and we looked up the road and saw the little shitzu dog that we’ve seen before.  The dogs have never met because the owners always skittered off, I think they were afraid of my husky; she looks like a white wolf.

But this time the pup was by her self and just sat there in the middle of the road (dead end) and watched us. Nia clearly wanted to play but we stood still.  The dogs observed each other for a few minutes and then we took a couple of steps forward and so did the shitzu. It was unsure of what to do but it clearly wanted to play. Then the lady that owned the dog came out her front door and called for her dog to come. As soon as she took a step towards her dog, it took off down the road in our direction, running. It was playtime and that is all there was too it. Both dogs jumped and pawed each other and ran around in circles as if they were long-lost puppy cousins going to a party. 

It was funny as heck watching them play but soon the lady came walking down the road towards us and she had called for her two daughters to come with the leash. They were around 8 and 12 years old and followed behind dutifully as they all marched down the road towards us. When they got close, they all started using their own positive training techniques of talking to their dog in a high-pitched coaxing kind of language that I couldn’t quite make out. When they finally reached us they all just stood there not knowing how to convince their dog to come back home.

They continued with that whinny baby talk that people do when appealing to the emotional side of dogs, but their dog was having none of it. It was busy having fun playing with my dog. I was laughing, hard, at the canine antics when I glanced up. All three of them firmly stood there with stone faces waiting for something to happen. The mom had to do something at this point, she was getting frustrated just standing there, clearly not enjoying her dog’s fun, but she was not quite sure what to do. I began to feel sorry for them, with all of their unsuccessful attempts to coax their dog to follow them home.

So, I lead my dog on and we all walked up the road together toward their house. The dogs just continued romping around having a good time and those two pups were so funny I was Laughing Out Loud. I couldn’t understand why but I could clearly see that mom and her kids were up tight, confounded, and perplexed at their dog for not paying attention to their woo-woo commands of positive instruction. The young girl asked if her dog if it wanted some dodoes, what ever they are, and then the older girl ask in that high-pitched happy tone, “Do you want a bath?”  I cracked up at that point, made a comment about bribery, and suggested maybe offering a new CD player to the dog. I was still the only one laughing and the dogs just continued to play. LOL.

We finally got to their driveway and I stopped while the mom continued to plead for her dog to stop playing, but the dog ignored her. The mom finally walked around and bent down to pick up her dog but hesitated, she reached out and touched her dog then withdrew her hands quickly. I asked her if she thought her pup was going to bite her and she said no, but that because of me her pup might bite me. I didn’t understand so I asked her if her dog was going to bite me because she was picking it up and she said no because, she then pointed to her daughter. I was totally confused and reiterated what I thought she said about her dog biting me because of her picking it up while pointing at her daughter.  She just looked at me with utter disgust and said, “No! Oh never mind!” She finally got the nerve to bend down and pinned the dog’s neck down to the ground while she slipped the loop of the leash over the neck and they all went home.

I said that the dogs had fun, I had fun, and that we should do it again some time. They clearly didn’t hear me for they just kept on walking while telling the dog something, in their high-pitched whinny voices that I couldn’t understand.  Maybe they were aliens from a distant planet. Clearly, their positive training methods using bribery didn’t work out very well with an earth dog.