Recently I had a discussion with good friends and colleagues about how to handle difficult cases in which two dogs have engaged in extremely serious fights in the home. We found ourselves sorting through what factors need to be considered if re-homing is on the table. This is a common problem brought to behaviorists; I must have seen hundreds of clients who had dogs who did not get along. At all. I don't mean dogs who had minor tiffs, or dogs who were occasionally possessive-aggressive ("My couch! My human!), but dogs who had truly serious issues and were making life at home less than relaxing, if not downright dangerous. Sometimes they had serious, injurious fights, sometimes one dog lived in obvious terror of the other, even though actual fights were rare or non existent, and sometimes Read More
Dog-Dog Reactivity II — The Basics
Thanks for all the great comments about your experiences with dogs who are reactive, whether it's to other dogs, or to people, or other objects. If you haven't read the comments, here's what comes out (at least to me) loud and clear: 1. There isn't any one method that works for all dogs. Dogs are "reactive" for a variety of reasons, including being afraid of other dogs, wanting to greet other dogs and being overwhelmed with excitement or frustration about it. In addition, some dogs seem to be helped by being first taught an appropriate behavior on cue, others do better if allowed to initiate it on their own. 2. The methods that seem to work best for most people involve teaching a dog to turn and look away from another dog, BEFORE the dog begins the problematic behavior. 3. If the Read More
Dog-Dog Reactivity – Treatment Summary
The seminar in Seattle was great fun, lots of good folks and excellent questions from the audience. In the morning I talked about treatment for dog-dog reactivity, and I promised a summary of that on the blog. Here it is, with the obligatory caution that the morning itself wasn't close to enough time to cover the topic in depth, so the summary here will be chapter titles (but hopefully helpful ones). Knowing that I couldn't possibly talk about how to handle every type of case, here are some highlights: REACTIVITY? What are we talking about here? When I use the term I am talking about what we usually think of as "over reactivity," or "reactivity" that we see as inappropriate. After all, a loose body greeting is a "reaction" to another dog, right? In this case, I am talking about Read More
Great Article on Dog-Dog Aggression
Have you seen the latest issue of The APDT Chronicle? It has a fantastic article by Suzanne Hetts and Daniel Estep (both CAAB & Ph.D) titled Safety and Ethics in Working with Dog-to-Dog Aggression. Anyone who treats dog-dog aggression, or who has a dog who might have that problem would do well to read it. (And to stay tuned, Chronicle will have more articles on dog-dog aggression in several issues to follow--Pia Silvani and I are writing one together for an upcoming issue.) One of the important points they make is that dog-dog aggression is often not taken as seriously as aggression toward humans, and yet, it can have horrific effects on both species. No one knows better than they: their Dalmation and Irish Setter were brutally attacked by a loose dog last year, and were only saved Read More
Come to New Zealand?
Hey, why not? Okay, I know, really I do. It costs a fortune to get there, no way around it. But hey, I'm going to do a two-day seminar outside of Auckland on November 27th and 28th, of this year, and what better excuse to take the trip of a lifetime? Besides, the air fare rates just went way down . . . I've been to New Zealand before, and hands down, it is one of the most beautiful place in the world. Ah, it's true, I haven't been everywhere, but I've been in some drop-dead gorgeous places, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Denali Range in Alaska, and the fjords of Norway. All of these places are awe-inspiring, but New Zealand still has my heart as the place I just had to go back to with Jim. I seriously considered moving there when I visited, so impressed was I by the Read More