13 months and starting to fight :(

As the title says....

Hugo has just turned 13 months, from birth he's been he's been going for daily walks and playing with lots of dogs, infact I've posted on how do I control him being too playful and running from dog to dog.

These last few days he has started to get nasty with other dogs and is going in full on fighting/pinning dogs down, he's still his playful self but when other dogs yaps at him instead of continuing to play or turning submissive which he has always done he is turning nasty.

Instead of giving the dogs warnings by barking or growling he's going in straight away.

I've now bought a muzzle and hope he nips it in the bud.

Will he grow out of it when he matures ?

The muzzle may well be a bad idea as it may make things worse. This is something you will have to work on with him and may well take a while for you to get there. Try the Watch Me command when out on walks, watch for his body language to change, the link below will help with this.:

http://staffy-bull-terrier.com/dog_body_language

Try not to show that you are becoming anxious when out on walks with him as he will pick up on this and probably react quicker, keep your calm and keep talking quietly to him.

Are there any particular breed of dog that he seems to react too ? Is it males or females have you noticed ?

As Kathy says, a muzzle may well make him anxious & that'll cause more problems.

However, please bear in mind that some staffords do become dog aggressive.

Is he actually biting, or just pinning down? There is a very real difference.

Thanks for your info, I think I'll put the muzzle on hold.

@ kathy - not sure about the sex, but I think it could be males and I notice its with medium to large dogs. (German Shepard tonight)

@ Caryll - my partners father says he pinned a dog down which I didn't whiteness, but I have seen him jumping up towards the German sheppards throat trying to bite. He was making a weird growling noise as if he had become possessed.

The only reason I asked is that my old Stafford Bandit was absolutely dog aggressive. There were two dogs he'd tolerate - one he was brought up with & the other was a very submissive little bitch. When he went for a dog he wanted to kill! It was full on & he bit wherever he possibly could. He never tried to pin down, he just launched!

Dempsey, however, makes a lot of noise & will try to pin a dog down, but he doesn't actually bite. He's dominant & a little aggressive with it, but he'd actually prefer not to bite unless he's challenged.

A dog that is just dominant is actually quite easy to manage & control, whereas an out & out da dog needs careful handling.

You can work with it but need very keen control and another dog that isn't aggressive to help out. If you don't have any experience with it, you might want to talk to a trainer. Some dogs are just more DA than others. Some can be trained and some plain don't like other dogs and you are coming to that age when your Hugo is going to be letting you know which of those he is. Is it all dogs?

Im 99.9% certain that if we went to a field with 1-20 dogs there he'd be soo excited and would want to play all night long.

Every dog (big, medium or little) we walk past he greets them with a sniff while wagging his tail very fast, I have to literally drag him away from them.

I don't think he will ever be nasty to all dogs, what's happened has totally shocked us and is totally out of the blue.

Have you any idea what the body language of the other dog was like?

If Hugo is a confident boy then another dog 'eyeballing' him would probably tip him over the edge!

Caryll wrote:Have you any idea what the body language of the other dog was like?

If Hugo is a confident boy then another dog 'eyeballing' him would probably tip him over the edge!

The other dogs are aggressive to Hugo first, before he would just either keep on playing or be submissive towards them.

Now he just drops his gloves and dives straight in.

For instance the other day we were walking ( hugo off lead) in a wooded area, a jogger come our way with 2 spaniels, the one spaniel carried on running with the jogger and the other stopped and started barking at Hugo, Hugo wanted to play but as soon as the spaniel started to bark Hugo took the standing tall stance with years pinned back ready to dive in untill I grabbed him and walked him on.


Today Hugo jumped up on my mate (nothing nasty), then his German Shepard pup (10 months) come up and started growling and barking at Hugo, Hugo seemed to switch and went mad lunging at him as if he wanted to kill him, though only 2 minutes earlier he was playing nicely with him.

I don't think Hugo likes being told off, he doesn't like getting told off by me.