Leash/Protective Aggression

[LTDan]

Hello, my name is Dan and I have a 7 month old female DSD named Molly. She is very obedient with me and trainers I've been working with, but I'm learning the meaning of "loyal to a fault". Most trainers are calling it leash aggression, a few others protective aggression, but when she is with me others can not come close. When she was younger she would hide behind my legs and growl, but with more confidence now she is lunging out at others. She has not "bitten" to draw blood, but has closed her mouth on the trainers arm before I could call her off. She didn't snap at him or even leave marks, but showed a lot of aggression in going after him and she has worked with him before. When he has the leash, he is the one she protects (not from me, but other strangers).

Lately with the obedience work I can get her to hold a down/stay behind or beside me and have had conversations with people who I instruct to ignore her. They don't look at or talk to her and that works initially, but I guess when she gets frustrated by this she will go from 0-60 with someone she's been ignoring for 5-10 minutes. She doesn't lay there tense with hair raised, she lies there docile and in control and then seemingly out of nowhere wants everyone else away from us. She's very food driven and with treats and a lick-a-stick I can have friends and other trainers buy her affection, but for some it's only as long as they have the food then she aggresses.

I lean towards leash aggression because when I drop her at day care from time to time, I walk in, take her off leash in the lobby and she hasn't shown any aggression to the staff, one girl even picked her up when she came in after not being there for over two weeks. But when I have other trainers work with her and one took her in on a leash she was aggressive towards the staff there. At the vet they ask me to muzzle her when they take her from me, but after I hand off the leash and they take her in the back they always return her to me without the muzzle and they love her. I'm not quite confident that she is completely safe off leash, but it is definitely part of the issue.

I'm not out of ideas or training yet and have been reading BAT techniques and now have a basket muzzle, but was wondering if anyone else had experienced something similar and the biggest question I have is what is the best way to introduce your dog to people so she can see you are comfortable with them and she should be too. Also, I didn't intend to do any bitework with her, but would giving her an outlet for that bred drive and giving her the discipline to differentiate targets do any good? Not sure if that is something I want to do, but I was curious. Thanks in advance for any help.

Dan

[alspyce]

If she started out by hiding behind your legs, my first gut instinct is that it's fear based and she has figured that since she can't literally run away, her only other option is to stand and fight. I don't think it's to protect you---more a fight or flight response. Since others here are much better at this type of thing than I, I'm sure someone can give a more informed opinion.
I would think if you worked on her just sitting at heel position and have people walk by, around, past you without even looking at the dog, or interacting in any way, and then praise for holding her position without reacting may help. I don't allow the initially "hiding" behavior, I just go on with another command as tho I didn't notice anything scary, and that I expect them to do the same.

[Dutchringgirl]

Sadie never hid behind my legs, but she is insecure and will bark at certain people untill she feels more confident, so I am not sure what advice to give you other than what Chris said about just putting her into a sit/ heal and let people walk by and hold her attention. I take the girls to town alot and just ignore everyone, I have the girls sit and just hang out and watch people go by.

[leih merigian]

I agree with Chris, that this sounds fear/defense based.

I'd work on an extensive counter-conditioning/desensitizing program with her. That would, of course, mean keeping everyone away from her (or at her sub-threshold distance), including your trainers, until she's comfortable with the much closer distance of someone being right up next to the both of you. That doesn't mean you can't work with your trainers, it just means they have to keep the proper distance, until/unless she reaches the point where she can deal with it.

Let me know if you need more details about that kind of program.

good luck.

[Drizlaru]

Also, I didn't intend to do any bitework with her, but would giving her an outlet for that bred drive and giving her the discipline to differentiate targets do any good? Not sure if that is something I want to do, but I was curious. Thanks in advance for any help.

Dan

You NEVER teach a fearful dog that biting is an outlet for anxiety, unless you plan on keeping her in the muzzle for the rest of her life. Because every time she gets anxious, and goes over threshold, she'll go for a bite to relieve stress (it can get to the point where there will be no warning, only bite). Which could be devastating if the object of her anxiety was a young child. Just my

[LTDan]

Thank you all for the help and your opinions. I'll continue the process of desensitizing her to others and work the positive association with others as well as reinforcing her healthy reactions, or even non-reactions to strangers. Special emphasis on looking for her queues the she is uncomfortable and wants some distance. I'll let you know if something in particular has more of a break through. Thanks again.

-Dan

[Choochi]

Dan I think it would really help you if you could find a trainer to help you with this. Not the trainer you have worked with because if they're dumb enough to let your reactive dog bite them, I seriously doubt their training abilities in this situation. Ideally you want a certified behaviourist or some one with significant experience in applying positive methods to this type of cases and more importantly with a high and established success rate of doing so. There are tons of people who say even guarantee they can help, yet have no results to prove so and only end up screwing up your dog even more.

CPDT would be where I would start looking.
http://www.ccpdt.org/