Why is my dog aggressive/ anxious and how do I fix it?
Anxiety
Symptoms of anxiety include behaviour such as reactivity/ aggression, fleeing/ hiding , vocalising, inappropriate urinating and defecating and being destructive. Therefore, to prevent your dog from being ‘aggressive’ you also want to avoid them being anxious which you can do so by following the advice below.
CHOOSE THE RIGHT BREED
Every breed was bred for something but expecting your dog to then get about 1hr of exercise a day and otherwise be a couch potato when they were bred to do a job all day, will lead to pent up anxiety and unwanted behaviours. Therefore, it is critical you choose the right breed for you to avoid anxiety and unwanted behaviour.
GENETIC PRE-DISPOSITION
Having chosen the right breed for you, you need to make sure they have good genes as if it’s in the genes you can work so hard to get everything right, but it could still be a real challenge.
Therefore, ensure you meet the mother of your dog (ideally both parents) and ensure you are getting your dog from a responsible breeder who breeds for health and temperament not looks or just because they thought it would be a nice thing to do.
SENSITIVE PERIOD OF SOCIALISATION
0-12 weeks
A dog that has had no exposure to a certain stimulus at the completion of the sensitive period is highly likely to be fearful of it for the rest of its life. A dog that has had some experience to this stimulus will generally deal with it marginally better but if a dog has had ample of positive gradual exposure to a stimulus during the sensitive period then they are shown to be confident and composed in the presence of the stimulus.
Therefore it is critical to gradually and positively socialise your dog during this time and beyond.
Big mistakes to make early on include keeping your dog indoors till 14 weeks because you are worried about vaccines but secondly over socialising your dog as that is not gradual positive exposure. That is sensitising not desensitising.
Of course, you probably have no influence 0-8 weeks until you get your pup home but note it is critical your dog is not taken from its mother and siblings before 7 weeks (8 weeks legally). Red flags for me when choosing a pup include not being able to see Mum, Mum being reactive and all the siblings already gone. During this period your pup should be getting plenty of tactile touch, enrichment and gradual positive exposure to environmental changes.
Learn more see below and you can send the attached article to your breeder to give them advice on what they could be doing before your pup comes home to you.
Choosing the right Litter and Pup
Therefore, be super careful about which litter you choose and also which pup from within that litter. Book a pre ownership consultation for help with this.
CHOOSING A RESCUE DOG
When choosing a rescue you can think about some of this stuff. For example does the rescue have the information on what the early part of the dogs life was like?
Has the dog had a DNA sample so you know what Breed traits you might get or is it obvious?
My other tip is dogs who start anxious then begin doing something more serious about their anxiety in adolescence and sometime worse into adult hood if they practice this unwanted behaviour. Therefore if you get a 4yr old rescue or older, you have a much better chance of knowing who the dog actually is rather than getting a worrying surprise a few months later.
Also a training issue like recall is fairly simple. A behaviour issue like reactivity is likely to be a life long commitment to helping your dog get it right.
Again I highly recommend booking an appointment to advise you on what dog is right for you.
DIET
Imagine feeding a child nothing but junk food and seeing how calm and relaxed they are. Same goes for dog’s and kibble is essentially that junk food. So get your dog on a good diet:
EXERCISE & ENRICHMENT
It is essential your dog has its daily exercise and enrichment needs met. If your dog is pulling and jumping up, mouthing and destroying stuff and lunging at other dogs and you are trying to get away with 1hr of interaction a day then of course you will have problems. Imagine a 3 year old being told to sit still for 23 hrs of the day.
If you need help with getting your dog needs met and knowing how much they need, get in touch. Our 2hr country park walk may be just the ticket….
A CALM PREDICTABLE ENVIRONMENT:
Having a calm predictable environment and routine at home is important to produce a confident independent dog.
Imagine trying to sleep and relax but door’s keep slamming, people keep coming and going shouting etc…
“Social environments lacking order may prevent a dog from establishing a coherent system of prediction control expectancies, thereby impeding its ability to adjust effectively. Social interaction that lacks adequate predictability and controllability may cause modal activity to become progressively perturbed and reactive. Without an orderly incoherent foundation of standard or normal expectancies, the dog is not only deprived the calming effects (secure mood) of somatic reward and enhanced comfort and safety, it is also barred from advancing to an organisation of learning and adaption conducive to cortical reward eg surprised, and freedom, that is, behaviour liberated from reactive adjustments. According to this hypothesis, uncontrollable reward and punishment, that is, aversive or appetitive events occurring independently of the dogs initiative or ability to control them, gradually leads the dog to become increasingly dependent, insecure, and incompetent.” (Lindsay, 2005).
Resource Guarding
Finally one of the most common causes of resource guarding is owners who keep taking items off their dog. Therefore, please manage the environment, perhaps with a dog pen to avoid you having to take stuff off your pup and if you do have to take something off them, try distracting with a treat to do so, however in the long run please work towards teaching an effective ‘drop it/ swop it.
If you already have resource guarding problems or to book preventative puppy training.
TRAINING
Okay note training is actually someway down the list.
Training will help you to get your dog’s needs met safely so you enjoy giving the more exercise and enrichment.
The act of training is bonding time and mental enrichment.
Training gives your dog control over positive outcomes in its environment, if for example ‘paw’ always equals a treat and ‘sit’ equals being let outside, then this control and ability to communicate really helps to create a secure dog.
Also if you start training early i.e 8 weeks old when you get your dog home then this is the time when your dog has the most neural plasticity so what they learn will stick. They also learn faster at this time and the act of creating these neural pathways now will mean they will be able to learn more quickly and effectively in the future.
However, note our goal with training is not to create some rigid police dog always on alert. It is to help our dogs to safely be free to do as they please, in the knowledge that they will come back, they will drop that dangerous item, they won’t pull your shoulder out yanking you down the road.
TO BOOK FOUNDATION TRAINING OR BEHAVIOUR MEDICATION CLICK HERE.
Install good habits from the start
Within the training its important to install good habits from the start. Book puppy training for more on this. However as an example, imagine you let your 5kg puppy chase you around, jump up, mouth you but now they are 30kg… they don’t know any different but now you are getting into trouble when they try and play like this with someone in the park.
AVOID PUNISHMENT
Fear and Pain causes anxiety and reactivity. Dogs go through all sorts of fear imprint periods, so that one moment where you yelled at your dog for peeing may for example make them terrified of men leaning over them for the rest of their lives, so now come adulthood they lunge and bark at men giving that body language. So punitive methods must be avoided at all costs.
Please note according to Lindsay (2005) Punishment does not have to mean physical abuse, it could just be the dissatisfaction and frustration of not being able to successfully communicate and thus obtain your basic wants desires and needs to those who have control over them. So again, please train your dog to help them communicate with you.
However, whilst I am not advising the use of punishment, please understand that if it ever is used that it has to happen contingently (at the time of the behaviour ) and consistently so your dog knows what the punishment is for. If you do not give punishment contingently and consistently then this is another example of how a dog may feel it is not able to have control of outcomes in its environment and produce anxiety, reactivity, depression.
For example; your dog runs up to you jumps up and you cuddle and kiss it. Next day same thing happens except you are in a white suit and your dog is muddy. So you scold your dog. This is not consistent, your dog does not know the difference, it wants its kisses and cuddles but now does not know how to get it without the risk of punishment. Also if you left your white suit on a chair and you scold your dog ten minutes later, it has no idea what its being scolded for so this would produce anxiety, reactivity, depression.
“As a result of nurturance (affection and caregiving) and punishment provided on habitually non-contingent basis, the locus of control over significant attractive and aversive events maybe externalised, that is, placed outside of a dogs voluntary initiative. For such dogs, the acquisition of comfort and safety may be integrated and experienced as something that happens to them, rather than perceived as something that they control and produce for themselves. Instead of learning to control such events by proactive means, they simply learn to receive or react to them. Just as the loss of control over aversive events is conducive to the debilitating effects of learned helplessness, the loss of control over appetitive ones can exert a similarly paralysing effect on a dogs ability to adapt.” (Sonoda et al 1999.)
GIVE SOME INDEPENDENCE
Please also ensure you give your dog a certain amount of independence i.e. they should not be cradled by you like a baby all day every day and then sleep with you all night. Some independent time at some point is important:
“Reactive aggressors often show signs of an insecure attachment neediness, often forming an overly exclusive attachment with a particular family member with whom they may feel relatively comfortable and safe or ambivalent but not aggressive.” (Lindsay, 2005)
Day Care
Really this is part of appropriate sociliasation but another reason I see a lot of reactivity is due to day cares and dog pens. A dog needs down time or it can lead to hyper arousal and reactivity. So the non stop playing associated with daycares can be an issue.
Moreover in an enclosed space boisterous dogs can practice boisterous behaviour because the other dog who is not enjoying it cannot get away. If the people in charge are then not skilled enough to recognise the difference between bullying and play and intervene, then the dog who does not wish to reciprocate this boisterous play will give all the polite calming signals it can to stop it but eventually will be forced to escalate to a growl and then bite if it cannot flea.
Enough interactions like this and the now anxious dog does not even bother offering polite calming signals it goes straight to fleeing if it can or lunging, barking and perhaps biting if it cannot.