Amax-1

Higher displays of aggression on lead is generally due to the dog having no flight path if the situation gets too challenging, when off lead they can run away from their demons so the stress induced by the encounter is less. Typically her behaviour sounds like a response to feeling insecure. Another factor for on leash aggression is the handler becoming tense anticipating that the dog will display the behaviour and the dog senses the handlers stress and thinks the encounter is more threatening than it is and lights up with a higher level of aggression to ward off the perceived threat. Because the threat retreats, walks on by......they learn that she scared them off and continues the behaviour because it works.

OMG - for once I am in complete agreement with you on that. Levels of reactivity, bite thresholds and bite inhibition MATTER. So does the overall size of the dog in terms of the damage it can do. Absolutely it does matter in the family pet market and IMHO needs to be taken into consideration and addressed as part of a dog attack enquiry. The best of owners can drop the ball for second and if they own a dog on a hair spring trigger to react in aggressive attack, these horrific incidents will sadly continue. I applaud the breeders out there who work on temperament and stability in the pet dog market. When I think of some of the GSD's bred 20 years ago and what is bred today in terms of improvements in environmental strength and soundness of temperament is a testament of how good breeding practices produces good dogs.

I haven't blamed breed at all, not sure where you got that idea from other than defence reaction because you own one. What I have said quite clearly is they way some of these breeds and crossbreeds are bred loosely speaking by people who lack the knowledge to be breeding dogs in the first place. There is no question that the owner of a dog is responsible for it's actions, that's a given, but my point in this is the ownership of a dog who is not possessed with sharpness, fear and reactive aggression takes a lot less vigilance for inexperienced owners to prevent situations as occurred in this attack. The fact is that all dogs don't bite and attack people mismanaged or not. There are plenty of massively irresponsible owners out there who grossly mismanage their dogs who don't bite people because they essentially own a good environmentally stable dog in the first place.

Perhaps the mother shouldn't have been bred is my immediate thought? Dominant alpha type dogs are not dog aggressive in the slightest unless challenged for leadership by another dominant dog wanting that role. Sounds more like the Lab has a low threshold to defence drive like her mum is where that came from.

The fact is, people do purchase dogs like these mentioned for home protection and intimidation factor and when they have attacked and hospitalised a child, the reason for having these dogs in the first place needs to be considered. We need to be mindful of the market strength of especially BYB Bull breeds purposely bred on aggressive dogs to cater for people who either can't buy traditional protection breeds as the breeders won't sell to them or they won't pay the price for a quality dog and if someone does want a couple of dogs aside from a pet to offer some protection factor, dogs bred BYB on powerful breeds are easily accessible and cheap to attain with many purposely bred on the history of aggressive ancestors. Environmental factor is too often accounted for dog attacks where the dog involved been of greater genetic environmental stability, the attack wouldn't have happened in the first place. Too many people don't take into consideration the character and temperament of the dogs involved in attacks blaming environmental factor where in fact in many cases the dog in question wasn't of sound enough temperament for the pet market in the hands of inexperienced owners. Too often the owners of attacking dogs claim that the dog has never shown aggression, perhaps not that their experience allowed them to see, but I will guarantee if the dog was assessed by a competent trainer or behaviourist, they would have seen aggressive behaviour in the dog manifesting which the owners have misinterpreted until the dog did attack by then is too late when someone has suffered injury as the result. .Any dogs especially large dogs of a guardian breed history need to be examined for soundness of temperament more so with BYB's and random crossbreeds as the breeders of these dogs are generally making puppies. Breeding for temperament and environmental soundness takes years of breeding experience and knowledge of ancestry as any dedicated breeder will tell you, merely putting together a pair of dogs to create a lucky dip litter is hardly breeding for temperament is it? Unsocialised dogs facing a new experience can do three things basically. 1:Do nothing. 2:Flee from the unknown in fear. 3:Perceive the unknown as a threat and respond aggressively. IME, the dogs who react "out of the blue" are dogs not so stable in environmental strength that their true character has been masked by heavy socialisation. An unsocialised dog who doesn't react to new experiences either by fight or flight will always be the dog of greater genetic environmental stability. In a breeding program, not socialising dogs is often used to breed on dogs who exhibit genetic soundness over dogs who's apparent stability is the result of training/socialisation. For a pet dog, socialisation is a must and good practice, but my point in regard to this is good genetically sound dog in character doesn't need socialisation to prevent adverse reaction to new experiences as they simply don't care what's new due to their extreme in self confidence, that is they see nothing as scary or threatening to cause reactivity.

Are you saying out of interest, that a dog growling around the kids should be treated as nothing to be concerned about due to aggression not seen in your dog's growling, or put it down to just play and she'll be right?

That's unfortunately the reason why this poor little boy was attacked from people who refuse to accept dog behaviour where aggression is involved. I don't expect anyone who hasn't trained dogs to bite people on command in law enforcement roles to understand the concept of aggression.....neither did I understand it when preventing bite potential as a pet dog owner until training dogs to purposely bite and apprehend offenders.

The growling is resource guarding in attempt retain or win the tug, the tugging against the dog is what switches on the growling. Dogs of different temperament and character will switch on the growl at different levels of pressure, where a dog who resource guards food aggressively will also show a threshold to growling or snapping to guard or win any resource that the dog finds valuable IME. In other words I am yet to find a dog with a high threshold to growling on the tug to be an aggressive resource guarder, however with good training much of this can be modified in behaviour, but in relation to pet dogs biting people who are not trained, the low threshold dogs will bite more readily than the high threshold dogs by genetic character.

Actually, I have been fortunate I guess given that playing tug with potential service dogs and raising puppies for that line of work has extended into people asking me for demonstrations and teaching the game of tug with owners of many breeds. Growling on the tug is sign of pressure that exceeds play....play and excitement in prey drive exhibits high pitched yaps and whines which to date I am yet experience anything different from any breed, not that I have played tug with every breed of course, perhaps there are some breeds who growl in pleasure and if that's the case I will stand to be corrected from the people experienced with growly breeds. Growling in general terms is a precursor to bite aggressively, and although they will all growl eventually dependant on pressure applied and threshold at which a dog switches into defence drive, early growlers on a tug toy with little pressure I have found in the breeds I have tested and taken an interest in the phenomena, have also been the dogs more prone to resource guarding with an aggressive response. If you watch a dog carefully playing tug; on the initial bite and tug there is no growling, then as the dog tugs harder and the handler tugs harder against the dog, the growling begins......then if the handler releases the pressure where the dog starts to win......the growling stops. The growling is actually the dog switching into defence drive to retain and win the tug, in other words protection mode of the possession is what the growling indicates.

Have you tested this ? I have had resource guarder who were excellent working gundogs. Yes, I have tested two Labradors and a Golden Retriever who were resource guarders along with many GSD's assumed to be caused by upbringing and environmental factors and not a temperament fault of the dog. I don't know that resource guarders are ideal in gundog application that the reliability of release of retrieve is as good as dogs who don't practice the behaviour? Resource guarding food in GSD's spills over to other prize possessions in prey with a natural avoidance of release, that is a resource guarder of food in bitework training shows evidence in other areas for example dogs who resist the "out" command and show aggression from forced release of a prey item. Commonly in pet dogs, the food resource guarder will project the same behaviour in play when attempting to remove of have the dog drop a toy, the dog will growl in protest of release. Dogs who don't resource guard with aggression don't growl by default in games of tug, they just pull and tug in silence. Growling in tug games is not a sign of strong nerve as the growl is a fear display of loosing their item, where a display of confidence is silence, that is the dog generates it's energy into the power of tugging, not threatening the opponent with a bite should they win. The greater the nerve strength a dog has, the higher the resistance the dog has to act aggressively and bite. Plenty of members here on the forum will have dogs of all breeds, shapes and sizes who a pretty bomb proof in all environments and are bite safe with people, animals and kids which demonstrates the stability of these dogs in excellence of nerve strength, temperament and character. It's dogs like this who should be bred on to produce family pets to reduce bite statistics IME. :)

The problem is that I have conducted some behavioural research albeit not purposely but part and parcel of my line of work from breeding to training and handling primarily GSD's in service roles, that is training dogs to bite in apprehension and protection roles and opposite of that of course is having the control to stop them either in a passive or full drive mindset. I agree that every dog has the mechanical action if you like to slam his or her jaws shut with teeth involved to cause substantial injury to a person or other animal, that is a given, but because of the mechanical factor, doesn't mean that every dog is likely to clamp down on human flesh especially for no apparent reason, dogs do bite for a reason and depending upon how we view the reason determines the result of different opinions as to cause of the bite. A common opinion for example, a dog bit a child because it wasn't effectively socialised and wasn't used to kids? Are we saying it is a good dog but incorrectly raised? My opinion is that the dog has weak nerves from a genetic perspective biting a child in defence drive out of fear as close proximity with a child caused anxiety. I can absolutely tell you that a dog of strong nerve platform completely un-socialised with kids will not bite them as the dog has the genetic self confidence not see threat or suffer anxiety or fear with a new encounter or experience......the dog doesn't care, see's a little human, so what!! Socialisation is a great thing as an aid to environmental stability as prevention of possible unsocial behaviour and fear induced reactivity if the nerve of the dog is not perfectly sound. However, a dog of good stable character doesn't need socialising to avoid bite possibility as they take new experiences in their stride. Another example: Food aggressive Labradors, defensive of their food being something highly valuable. Take the same dog and gunfire test it.......the dog will fail, guaranteed, it won't have the nerve platform to sustain gunfire anymore that it has the nerve platform not become anxious and snappy at someone close to their food dish. The more we make excuses and find reason for indiscriminate bites being a normal reaction from a stable dog, the more we will keep breeding unstable dogs and keep making excuses for the behaviour. :)

In my experience people have a pair of dogs like this for one reason and that's intimidation factor which usually comes with allowing the flexing of some muscle being signs in the dog they appreciate, then one day sadly this happens. It's not a breed bash I am speaking, it's a genetic configuration in dogs like this that people throw together to create a tough factor not unlike they did years ago with GSD's and Doberman and the breeders of these type of dogs are responsible for the tightening and targeting of Bull breeds within the BSL structure as too many are purposely bred for aggression where the aggression is in the wrong place in the dog's character for usability and stability necessary in a family pet. Are you serious with this comment! Surely not. :laugh: I'm trying very hard to look at it seriously but it's impossible. Do you honestly believe that people who own multiple dogs, which might be considered strong or large, only own the dogs to intimidate? Who or what are they intimidating and what kinds of dogs do you think they might have to accomplish this intimidation? Unfortunately, not everyone has the same vision of dogs and their uses as the people who participate in pet dog forum discussions, sad but true. In fact it reached a point in the GSD breed where breeders would actually advertise unsuitability as guard dogs to deter the clowns calling up wanting tough dogs for the wrong reasons and if you have ever bred and sold powerful breeds, GSD's Rotties, Dobes particularly, as most breeders of these would confirm that the amount of clowns seeking dogs for guarding, protection and intimidation are most definitely out there. We can be thankful that the majority of breeders of the more iconic working/protection breeds are careful in breeding A:Sound temperament and character B: Refusing to sell their dogs to clowns who intend to use them for the wrong reasons so what happens is the clowns move on to breed and supply from other breeds of strength which the American Bulldog is part of that group along with Bull breeds, Mastiff's and the like bred on unstable characters and temperament in a BYB fashion to supply the type of dog the clowns admire. The fact is that good stable dogs regardless of breed don't bite kids full stop unless they are severely tormented or abused by the kid in question. Sadly people owning dogs who have bitten kids tend to make excuses for why the dog reacted and dogs who bite randomly without torment generally do so out of fear, good stable dogs don't bite because they don't fear and don't care. Like it or not and sugar coat reactivity into something normal in a dog caused by anything other than unstable temperament and character and you have a dog likely to bite kids or anyone for that matter.

I prefer to train a pure breed with good eyesight if that helps :D

In my experience people have a pair of dogs like this for one reason and that's intimidation factor which usually comes with allowing the flexing of some muscle being signs in the dog they appreciate, then one day sadly this happens. It's not a breed bash I am speaking, it's a genetic configuration in dogs like this that people throw together to create a tough factor not unlike they did years ago with GSD's and Doberman and the breeders of these type of dogs are responsible for the tightening and targeting of Bull breeds within the BSL structure as too many are purposely bred for aggression where the aggression is in the wrong place in the dog's character for usability and stability necessary in a family pet.

I don't believe in dog ownership that you don't know your dog is seriously dog aggressive and what annoys me to a great degree are the amount of owners with dog aggressive dogs who do nothing about training and rehabilitation of dog aggression and lack the vigilance to keep other peoples dogs safe from their dogs predatory behaviour. For some reason of late I have noticed an increase in dog aggressive dogs in a mixture of breeds and X breeds whilst pounding the footpath with my dogs, restrained in a fashion by their owners, but the type of aggression that you are in hope the leash doesn't break or slip from the handler's hands. Dogs injured like this poor Whippet as reported need the owners dealt with in the same fashion as if dogs attacked a person.

I have experienced the same with GSD's, in fact I can tend to pick a de-sexed male GSD from the barrel like body and skinny leg look. The power and resilience lost in de-sexing in a working dog probably not as noteworthy in a family pet is substantial. In 30 years I can honestly say that I have never had typical male phenomena said to be the case with entirety.........training over-rides all of it if in fact these negative behaviours of entirety do exist?. Funny thing is the worse examples of these negative entire behaviours, humping, marking etc I have experienced were from de-sexed dogs both male and female.

I think every dedicated breeding is done on hope given that we cannot engineer the genetic structure to order yet or avoid the curved balls. How does she go in SAR when finding the subject hyped up in drive?........most of the over sharp dogs I have used wanted to eat them at recovery or fire up on other searchers, albeit some were good trackers if you could keep the lid on reactive aggression.

There is probably more toxicity to be chewed on in the back yard than a tennis ball.......I tend to agree that toxicity scares is a good marketing approach for dog products from someone more focused on earning a quid given that I haven't had a tennis ball crazy dog live a shorter life than 12 1/2 years old, the oldest 15? Hard court tennis balls are the most durable we have found!

I've got one of those. A wonderful working dog, heaps of drive, smart as a whip, and I adore her - but she is sharp sharp sharp. I have to constantly actively manage her whenever she is around members of the public, and would never trust her unsupervised with strangers or any children. In short she is WONDERFUL, but she is not a pet. I will likely get another malli when I retire this girl from active work, but will be so very careful where he or she comes from. They're all a little crazy, but some lines are definitely easier to live with than others - breeders (and owners) aren't always honest with you or with themselves - and even if you do your homework Mother Nature can still throw you a curve ball! What a pleasure it is for someone to be honest about their dog and being honest is the only way forward. Have you considered for your next to breed this girl on a male who's even on the dull side, well the dull side of a Mal is still a good driven dog, but one with great environmental stability to counter the sharpness in the progeny? To be honest myself I believe the majority of character/temperament flaws in working breeds in this country is largely attributed to breeders who probably shouldn't be selecting breeding pairs until they gain more knowledge of the dog before them that they intend to breed. I have had a few GSD's like the description your girl which I don't regret as having such dogs who made me a better trainer/handler where responsibility and precise management becomes second nature :)

What I did learn about rescue and pound dogs, if you got a good one straight up from these places, there were great dogs. I have never seen a good dog out of rescue go bad, they just got better with training, love/companionship and appropriate care. I believe a good dog in rescue is a dog who can endure the stress of being kicked around from pillar to post with a bad start to life and I think many who have sourced good dogs from rescue would agree that they proved to be fortunate and worthy finds. I think rescue and pound environment amplifies strengths and weakness in a dog's character and dog displaying good character and temperament at the pound will be a beauty, but the one's who don't whilst you may be able to improve them is unfortunately from my experience a potential character/temperament flaw that the dog is displaying.

I rather feel it is a bit of a stretch to compare working dogs who have been trained and had their natural instincts honed to a fine degree with dogs who have never had any certainty in their lives such as Kirra: Dog mill, Pets Haven, and then two more homes. I totally agree that using "the dog is a rescue" as an excuse is no way to help the dog. Using it as a reason and then properly addressing any problems/issues with that knowledge is the way to help the dog. Many years ago now, we often used to source German Shepherds and sometimes Doberman from the pound to train top train in law enforcement and tracking/search and rescue. These dogs had no known genetic history and some had bitten people and were facing death row and others had simply wandered off and their owners were never located. They were what we call "green dogs" in working dog jargon, that is dogs that haven't been raised or trained for the job and are merely dogs of the right breeds that could be of potential use in various working roles. In those days, a lot of GSD's and Dobes ended up in the pound due to fear aggression and environmental instability and whilst it's true that abuse of a dog can trigger a fear reaction and as a learned behaviour to ease stress upon it's self, the dog becomes a fear biter, but the actual cause of fear based reactivity is what's known in working dog jargon is a nerve deficiency in that particular dog, that is the dog doesn't have adequate nerve structure to get over bad experiences which is in the genetic makeup of the dog. In other words, if a dog has been badly abused and ends up in rescue and still displays nervous or fear reactivity after a couple of days in passive and nicer environment, the dog's recovery is too slow to ever really be trained beyond it's default nervous behaviour reliably. Whilst training can raise the threshold triggering a nervous or fear reaction, training can't put nerve structure into a dog who genetically lacks it in the breeding. Especially where rescues are involved, dog's are often announced as victims of abuse as a reason for fearful behaviour, but in actual fact, the fearful behaviour is caused by the dog lacking the nerve structure for a better word, to get over stressful experiences once removed from that environment. The comment in regard to working dog being able to take different ownership in their stride is usually attributed to the selection of dogs bearing sound nerve structure in the first place which is crucial factor of a good working dog before the training even begins :)

That's case with most crooks too, GSD's and Rottweilers are their greatest fear. A dog used as a deterrent is to deter crooks, not to deter nice rationally thinking people you would happily invite into your home. Given that dogs are a business hazard for crooks, although the crooks can be pretty stupid in their thought processes, they are not stupid enough not to learn what breed of dogs are more likely to give them grief or what breed of dogs are more likely to have been trained to hurt them. The idea is the presence of the right breed of dog the crooks fear will cause the crooks to leave your property and dog alone, target a different property that doesn't have a couple of "Rockwheelers" floating around in the garden.. Even though a Boxer may look scary to some, the crooks know that Boxers are not used like GSD's and Rottweilers in mainstream protection roles and they can have a go. I if the dog doesn't display strong aggression on the fence, and they will try and hit the dog, throw something at it and the dog backs off, they are in. The only reason they tried it on was the wrong breed of dog at the fence line.....A GSD or Rotty at the fence line more than likely would have encouraged the crooks to move on to a less challenging target. My advice for a deterrent breed against crooks, use a breed that crooks fear the most for the best opportunity of staying safe :)

The moral of the story folks; Don't tell a breeder that you work full time and the problem is easily solved :laugh:

Far from it. Fighting and instigating conflict is not an exclusively hormone driven behavior in the slightest. The border collie was also named as the initial instigator of the fighting and now the CD is jack of it. Not surprised. I'd be more onto the BC as the problem child not the CD despite him being the potentially stronger of the two. I think the more far reaching problem here is the BC. Call the breeder and ask about why the temperament has gone south and is such fight prevalent in their lines. If you got it from a backyard breeder that can explain some of the temperament. I've seen anti social BCs, they do exist. Not every BC is a roll over softy and some are instigators and finishers of some good fights. Let me guess, the border is inside and the CD outside? That too can account for the BC growling and lunging through the door - he's all big and brave defending 'his' territory. You need to get on top of this dog ASAP, he should not be doing this at all through the door no matter what is out there. I think you're throwing problem child status on the wrong dog. Separate and get a proper assessment of the dogs. I totally agree with Nekhbet's view from what has been told. Having had my share of GSD's who fight each other and getting bitten a few times breaking them up, the key is getting control of the instigator which to me sounds like the BC also. I have found over the years that very few commercial trainers are good at remedies for family dog fights other than advising separation which of course from a safety aspect is correct advice, but a trainer experienced at solving fights within the home are generally very successful. Often the instigator is the weaker dog and the problem is when the stronger dog has had enough of the unfair aggression towards it, the stronger dog will finish the fight with serious consequence. The weaker dog worries about it's pack standing where the stronger dog doesn't care unless provoked and challenged to fight. The instigator needs to fear the owner/handler and learn consequence from starting a fight, a concept badly lacking in modern training regimes unfortunately. To stop inter-home fights the offending dog needs to learn that aggression directed towards another dog in the family results in a fight from the leader (owner/handler), a fight the dog cannot win. I won't go into specifics of how it's done as it's a specialised field of training, but it can be done to restore tranquillity in the home assessing the right trainers experienced at correcting such a behaviour :) As a side note: I have only ever found fights to be elevated with entire males in the direct presence of a bitch in season, other than that scenario entire or desexed makes no difference. Usually desexing is accompanied with training and the desexing is warranted with success. I disagree with that and believe the training that accompanied the desexing had the greater impact on behavioural modification.

That's exactly what they do :laugh: Because dogs interfere with their criminal activities, they do size dogs up and when the possibility of getting bitten in the process is potentially high, it's often all that's needed as a deterrent for them to move onto an easier target.