Amax-1

I think it's the best solution as a good dog is a good dog regardless of it's appearance or suspected breed origin and it's not hard at all to conduct a very accurate behavioural assessment and the vet clinic assessment to me is plain stupid.

This is actually correct from a consumer perspective. If the dog is nominated as a cross of two breeds, that's what it should be and if a cross of several breeds, the dog should have been nominated as those breeds or just "a dog".

In all honesty, I am a nervous wreck at a dog park or off leash area envisaging what can happen and trying to assess each dog and owner and is not a place that remotely presents a relaxing atmosphere for me at all. We have a few illegally off leash dogs at times at our local park if I see any walking my dogs on leash, I turn up the street before the park to avoid them and for some reason the one's off leash are the one's the owners can least control as a general rule of thumb. So Which kind of dog park person are you Amax? One who keeps well away from them

In all honesty, I am a nervous wreck at a dog park or off leash area envisaging what can happen and trying to assess each dog and owner and is not a place that remotely presents a relaxing atmosphere for me at all. We have a few illegally off leash dogs at times at our local park if I see any walking my dogs on leash, I turn up the street before the park to avoid them and for some reason the one's off leash are the one's the owners can least control as a general rule of thumb.

Ok, have you ever seen or know of a vet who can train a dog or assess it's behaviour??.......I haven't in 30 years and the worst I have seen are vet behaviourists, in fact there is an excellent GSD trained in scent detection as we speak rescued from one these fools recommending it was untrainable and should be PTS strung out on prey drive......a temperament test needs to be conducted by people who know what they are looking at, otherwise you end up with the same scenario as the appearance based legislation with the dog's future based on the opinion of halfwits for a bold exclamation. She had a very reputable rescue ready to take her on with behaviourists on board should she need it. Aside from my behaviourst rant.........do you see something wrong with the above? Dog's that need a behaviourist attached to the rehoming process are not stable enough to be rehomed and sadly we can't keep them all and a line has to be drawn. There is too much of this "environmental factor", dogs reacting badly because of abuse or poor treatment in a former life......a dog of strong genetic stability can bounce through this quickly with good treatment and it's the dogs who lack the genetic strength who keep skeletons in the closet and carry baggage from past experience that they can't rise above easily. I have had dogs in apprehension roles stabbed, kicked, beaten, belted with baseball bats and so on.....some have never been able to recover mentally from these incidents and some can and the one's who can is in the genetics of the dog. You can't successfully train or rehabilitate what's not in the dog in the first place and people need to understand this. It's not until working dogs in extreme roles that this phenomena presents clarity, so perhaps the dog in your example wasn't as genetically stable as you assumed it was to have failed the vet test?

Best wishes for your dog's recovery......sounds like a good improvement with the passing of blood eliminated :)

Agree, but I'd wait for K9Pro to see and evaluate the dog before notifying. It's possible there's nothing "wrong" with the dog's temperament. Some folk are talking like breeding a dominant bitch is "wrong". I don't see it that way, especially if the dominance is expressed only with other dogs. Neither are breeding high prey drive or dogs that are too much dog for dog parks and that won't tolerate foolish behaviour from other dogs. What's wrong with a confident dog that sees itself as higher up the pecking order than other dogs? Maybe, what this bitch needs is different management. That's where K9Pro steps in. You know better than me but people seem to have this image of Labradors as tolerant teddy bears where other dogs are concerned - that doesn't fit some of the dogs I know and in particular the ones bred to work. That doesn't mean that there's anything "wrong" with their temperament. But they need to be managed and channelled in the right direction. Dogs like this often have a pretty good work ethic! I think perhaps EB has more dog than she originally thought she had. Maybe this dog needs to be channelled towards obedience or RATG. But K9Pro will analyse and advise. This dog, when grabbed by her owner in the midst of attacking the other dog, dropped the other dog and did not, while in an extremely high state of arousal, aggress towards EB. That's pretty good temperament as towards people as far as I'm concerned. Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Some good points raised indeed. I am speaking from working GSD experience here not Labs, but in general many using the term "dominant" can range from a genuinely dominant dog to a fear biter with defensive reactivity, the latter couldn't be further from the truth in terms of "dominance". In GSD's, dominant dogs are not reactive aggressive in fact some are so self confident and so carefree it's hard to create aggression in them for a working purpose unless you try to get them off the lounge or make them do something they don't want to do with physical conflict, then the growling/protesting threatening to bite comes out. Dominant Alfa type GSD's are handler hard more than anything and dog aggressive towards dogs who challenge them for their lead role, albeit around strange dogs they can trigger fights from posturing, but dominant dogs are rarely snappy reactive and usually handlers are first to get bitten by their own dog by trying to physically dominate them. In the case with the Lab retrieving the ball, a dominant dog wouldn't generally drop it's ball to attack another dog approaching, neither would a hard prey driven dog release the prey without severe provocation to loose drive to not complete the retrieve. On the other hand, a nervy dog will break retrieve drive when overwhelmed by environmental insecurity, which may be the approach of other dogs, loud noises or aversion etc where the cracks in a dog's core hardness appear the most when under pressure, again this a generalisation of what you would normally see in test of a GSD, Rotty, Malinois potential hardness in a working role, but the same hardness and environmental stability makes a glorious pet dog too less the dominance for a pet which is a handful. I am interested in Steve's assessment of the OP's Lab as to what was perhaps happening in attack of the little dog?

STANDARD FOR RESTRICTED BREED DOGS IN VICTORIA Dog breeds of suspected restricted breed origin may be required to undertake a mandatory companion animal temperament test. Should dogs of suspected restricted breeds fail such a test, the dog may be seized. That's all IMHO that the restricted breed standard needs to be. Unsuitable temperament is what bites, not the bloody dogs tail whether or it's pointy ended and hangs near the hock joint.....thus is just stupid stuff. A couple of years a ago, a friend of mine wanted a GSD that was a bit sharp and would bounce around a bit and bark with intent as a deterrent to intruders entering his property and the dog he got may bite someone entering if the owner wasn't there to control the dog. The reason he wanted a sharper dog as a stronger deterrent was his red nose Pit girl wasn't a guard dog's boot lace.....when she sees people approaching, she wags her tail madly to greet them with not a peep out of her.....she's a nice dog great nerve, great pet, no problems at all, no aggression have I ever seen in her and I know her pretty well. In Victoria, this dog would be seized and PTS, you could not argue that she isn't of a restricted breed origin, but she is great dog and will blitz any temperament test that could be thrown at her. I have seen plenty of Pitty types and Bull crossbreds with massive aggression which I would shed no tears over them on the green dream, but they are character faulty dogs in the first place........it's temperament and character that matters, not what the dog looks like or what breed origin it is, it's either suitable for a companion animal or it's not!!

I agree totally on the genetic component here, but the problem is if only more breeders would work with their buyers feedback to collectively breed better dogs. Too many crack the shits at the suggestion of perhaps they got it wrong in the breeding pairs and blame the buyers for incorrectly raising their puppy resulting in a no win situation for all concerned.

Wishing him all the best that he pulls through with your prompt care. Can I ask how old he is and when he was last vaccinated. I've heard of vaccinated dogs contracting parvo before and it frightens me. To think that heartless man next door let his puppy die a slow death without any veterinary support makes me sick. Many have told me that Parvo is not usually dangerous in adult dogs of medium to large size if they have been vaccinated as pups? Not sure how true this is but I do know of one adult GSD who tested positive for Parvo by stool culture with no visible symptoms of illness?

Sorry, I though you were referring to the dogs involved in this attack. No idea what the breeding was on my old GSD, but if he was bred for aggression, it didn't turn out as planned as the dog over 12 years showed excellent environmental stability. There are many breeders of GSD's I have tested apart from their ears stick up, there is not much else reflective of the breed standards in temperament and character unfortunately, but there are plenty through mindful breeding who are producing consistently good dogs.

What you are seeing is a stress response showing your dog is feeling insecure around other dogs and what a dog will do is what ever it takes to relieve the stress if it escalates over threshold, either retreat (run away) or fight (attack). The problem is exposing her to this stressful situation if she does blow over threshold by the body language displayed, she is likely to attack more so than retreat and once she learns that attacking lowers stress levels fast, she will make attacking other dogs a default behaviour at threshold peak.

Given that you were told mum was a bit dominant, there is a good chance mum was dog aggressive and passed the trait to her progeny and your girl in character is much like mum. All that you can do is work with what you have and desensitise her to other dogs as much as possible which I am sure if you are consulting with Steve, he will provide the mechanism to achieve that. Don't beat yourself up over it, dogs like people are not all the same and are not all perfect in the way we would like them to be :)

I think it would be safe to assume that the dogs weren't trained to bite kids. My better GSD's trained to bite adults on handler attack won't bite kids, in fact they won't alert on kids at all, yet I have had several of not so stable character who will bite kids given the opportunity as different characters react to different stimuli in perceiving threat. We can't ignore the fact in this case that the dogs DID attack and injure a child which is beyond potential to attack and bite, they DID attack and injure a child, so putting it down to environment/training causing otherwise stable character dogs to attack as they did and disregarding genetics would be a naïve approach to lessen the likelihood of further attacks of this nature IMHO. Regardless of the fines imposed or the level of onus placed upon dog owners in law, no dog owner is perfect or exempt from error or misjudgement even with the best of intentions of providing excellence in dog management, we have all dropped the ball with our dogs at some stage and when that happens with the ownership of a dog with genetic propensity to bite people, bites, attacks and mauling's will continue to happen and the worse thing is, there is a victim in there too who deserves a safe environment free of unprovoked injury from dogs that needs to be seriously taken into consideration. In the early days of training dogs for protection before training techniques advanced to accommodate the use of prey driven dogs to protect with greater levels of control, we used defence driven dogs with low bite thresholds as they arrived genetically pre-trained to a point and were easy to polish them into fierce fighters, but they had massive control and liability issues with trust worthiness of zero as to who and when they would attack. They would most certainly do the job of apprehending offenders, countering handler attack and preventing entry into property, but in the pet market they were attacks and mauling's waiting to happen and from that experience dogs like that have no place in the pet community in my sincere opinion on the matter.

I have seen a few quite large male Kelpies in black and tan and pure black resembling working line GSD's at a quick glance.

They're also up there with obedience. Obedience (or biddability) is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence. My friend has Border Collies and they are very obedient, they're definitely NOT any smarter than my Fauves however. A lot of the intelligence rating is based on how quickly a dog can be trained to complete a task or exhibit a desired behaviour from what I can establish.

Not that I had envisaged an Asian specific fear of dogs, but 3 or 4 years ago an Asian woman freaked out in complete hysterics at the sight of my GSD at a shopping centre, she literally ran away screaming after turning a corner and being confronted by me and my dog at heel about 10/15 metres away. The dog an operable apprehension/protection trained dog on the job was in his rights to light up at the commotion, but he looked at me strangely I recall awaiting command. I was thankful my dog didn't light up and behaved himself, not sure how this poor woman would have reacted if the dog thought he should deal with her although he was well restrained and controlled. I agree that most people are scared of Shepherdy looking dogs and the funny part is they are more scared if a GSD is muzzled........perhaps they think if the muzzle fell off the dog "would" eat them??

Border Collie, Standard Poodle and GSD are usually the top 3 of dog intelligence ratings. Not that I have had much experience with Poodles, but Borders and GSD's are certainly up there in the smarts for sure and certain :)

My youngest GSD 4 year old looks like his granddad who I owned for 12 years especially his head side on, the shape of his upper muzzle and the way he hangs out his tongue and the ear set is near identical. What the resemblance reminds me of aside from fondness I have for granddad is when I worked granddad I was 16 years younger wishing I was as physically fit now to work grandson as I did granddad in the day :laugh:

Common sense would assume by most that dogs attending a dog park would be dog safe and wouldn't react aggressively when approached by other dogs as the nature of a dog park is a bit of a free for all for dogs and isn't a place where strict supervision and restraint is expected. If the poodle approached the Lab on the street at large poodle was off leash, Lab on leash then the poodle owners are 100% at fault, but at a dog park I don't think the owners of an attacking dog have much leg to stand on for attending the park with a DA dog in the first place. To claim that the dog has never shown aggression before is irrelevant when it has by fact, just attacked and injured or killed another dog! Someone experienced with aggression is a must as "one off" behaviours are the most difficult to address the cause which needs deeper scrutiny into other behavioural areas that a good trainer/behavioust will test and and see as contributing factors.

And yet, many don't. It's undeniable. They will show all kinds of avoidance behaviours and warning behaviours including "air bites". Furthermore, how easily a dog can be triggered to bite, how hard it will bite and the likelihood of a bite turning into a sustained attack will have a genetic component. Correct. Regardless of training and environment, if an individual dog lacks the genetic component to fight, the dog will not attack and bite people by default and will generally flee as it's first option. Even cornered many dogs will freeze and shutdown under intense fear and still won't attack and bite for their own survival. I have one of those. In any overwhelming situation, she will retreat to a place of safey and/or shut down. Made agility training a very lengthy process and taught me a LOT about patience and remaining neutral if things didn't go according to plan. I have found the not so perfect dogs are the greatest teachers and without the experience of working through issues our knowledge base would be far more limited if we experienced only the great dogs to work with. My first operational dog assigned was a 13 month old GSD from the pound caught in someone's yard eating their cat food, owners never found, a treasured experience never forgotten. This dog in retirement at 9 years old was used as a therapy dog in the local nursing home, albeit an attack trained dog, his obedience and compliance with command and love for pats and food treats enabled him to cross over into a passive public role. Had it not been for this dogs genetic environmental stability, this career change would not have been possible. :)

And yet, many don't. It's undeniable. They will show all kinds of avoidance behaviours and warning behaviours including "air bites". Furthermore, how easily a dog can be triggered to bite, how hard it will bite and the likelihood of a bite turning into a sustained attack will have a genetic component. Correct. Regardless of training and environment, if an individual dog lacks the genetic component to fight, the dog will not attack and bite people by default and will generally flee as it's first option. Even cornered many dogs will freeze and shutdown under intense fear and still won't attack and bite for their own survival.

No one has assumed anything about a particular breed as the dogs referred to are for the most part crossbreeds of unknown ancestry and Bull breed origin and what Bull breed origin specifically who knows? These dogs are not a breed but a conglomerate mix of anything medium to large in size with a predisposition of aggression which demonstrates a dog "type" not a specific breed. All dogs mismanaged will NOT bite by default as most will flee under pressure in preference to attack. Where traditional guardian breeds fail the most in bitework training is a lack of fight drive, that is they will bite in prey drive but won't sustain pressure from the opponent, some with a minor stick hit will release and back off, some will release and back off if the decoy yells and screams.....these dogs CANNOT be trained to sustain an attack as the genetic component to do so is missing. These dogs in attack who can fight through aversion with high pain threshold, hits on the body etc and won't release which results in a mauling is genetically motivated and has nothing to do with environment. If your perception was true, it would mean for a service dog application, one could merely use any dog of reasonable size with the right environment and training and produce a front line protection dog?. Even using the right breeds who traditionally excel in these roles, only a third of the individual dogs of these breeds have the genetic components necessary for training in these roles. If you can't train all GSD's to attack and bite people for example, how you can train or expect any dog of any breed to is beyond me

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. Maybe I have an over literal mind. :laugh: The do nothing nothing option bothers me. I would expect SOME reaction in recognition of some thing new at least. I am talking neither run away or act aggressively in response to something new, depending on what it is, the dog may investigate it, look at it or sometimes ignore it after a glance but ideally it amounts to neither flight or fight response.

These type of dogs in the attack are extremely common to the muscle flexing fraternity. I have been to countless attendances at premises with such dogs and rarely these days are traditional guardian breeds seen. Once upon a time it was GSD's, Rotties and Dobes, but of late it's been Bull breed mixtures bred on aggressive dogs in large volumes that are easily accessible at minimal cost. It's actually complete nonsense that any dog can be made aggressive if it's not already there genetically. When assessing dogs for suitability in working roles where aggression is a necessity, most GSD's and Rotties fail, that is they are not aggressive enough to be trained for the job. Poor raising and allowing dogs to show aggression creates the problem, but the dog needs to be a dog low on threshold to aggression in the first place for this to work out. The muscle flexing fraternity would be lucky to train a dog to sit on command, so they can't adapt a quality dog of stable temperament to bite someone on command as we can in professional training, so they select a dog with a predisposition for aggression from the BYB's who purposely breed for it is what happens unfortunately. If I had the opportunity to investigate this dog attack, instead of euthanising these dogs and closing the case as they do, I would investigate who bred these dogs and take a look at what they are up to. If the breeders of these dogs were purposely breeding for aggression or mindlessly putting breed mixtures of powerful origins together, it's the breeders IMHO who need to take a share of the responsibility for what they are creating and selling into the pet dog market. It's not the breed at fault, it's the people breeding these type of dogs whether or not they are purposely sourced for aggression or innocently purchased for family pets, non the less if they are high maintenance in control and management to prevent attacks, dogs like this are not suitable for mainstream community living.