On Leash Aggression

Hi,

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have a 2 year old Staffy and while he's fine off leash, when he's on his leash he's become aggressive with other dogs. He's fine with dogs he knows but any he doesn't there's a right commotion and it's so embarrassing. I really don't want people thinking ah god there's that terrifying dog. I love watching Cesar Milan and tried his methods but he just will not listen to me or snap out of it.

It's now at the point where I'm refusing to walk him and my partner will have to do all his walks.

Has anyone got any experience of this and successfully managed to stop it?

Forgot to say, the vets waiting for is a complete nightmare from hell.

So I'm assuming that when you have him on the lead your as tense as anything because of this behaviour, which isn't entirely surprising but... He will pick up on it for sure and this will make him worse.

So what to do. Firstly, try to relax and have some slack lead between you. As you mention, he's fine off lead so I would think it's a combination of feeling tied to you and not being in control of his situation and feeling you tense as well which simply heightens his scenes.

Secondly, can you walk him away from other strange dogs for a while ? This will give you time to relax on lead and trust each other.

The third thing to try is one of two, either distract him with a "Watch me" command until the trouble has passed or use a fave toy or treat to distract. Personally I use my Flo's fave Stix to distract her when she shows too much attention to another dog. Both of these will take time to perfect but with practice you'll get there.

Good idea, I haven't tried the watch me command. This might sound daft, but am I to keep walking or stop to do the command? You're dead right, I'm really nervous waiting for him to kick off, it's so hard not to be. My partner on the other hand isn't nervous with him at all and he still does it when he's walking him. I'd really love to get him sorted as he's so good in every other way and I hate the staffy stereotype that everyone has and really don't want him proving anyone right.

No stop and make him look at you. It's a way of breaking that fixation before he gets to react. The more you practice this the better it will become, hopefully

-Ian- wrote:So I'm assuming that when you have him on the lead your as tense as anything because of this behaviour, which isn't entirely surprising but... He will pick up on it for sure and this will make him worse.

So what to do. Firstly, try to relax and have some slack lead between you. As you mention, he's fine off lead so I would think it's a combination of feeling tied to you and not being in control of his situation and feeling you tense as well which simply heightens his scenes.

Secondly, can you walk him away from other strange dogs for a while ? This will give you time to relax on lead and trust each other.

The third thing to try is one of two, either distract him with a "Watch me" command until the trouble has passed or use a fave toy or treat to distract. Personally I use my Flo's fave Stix to distract her when she shows too much attention to another dog. Both of these will take time to perfect but with practice you'll get there.

Excellent advice the watch me command is very helpful

Another vote for 'watch me'. If you find that doesn't work, the alternative is 'look at that', where you teach the dog to look at the thing - in this case another dog - that worries him in exchange for a treat. They work slightlyd differently but effectively do the same thing - focus back on you and building up positive associations.

Cesar Milan is absolutely fantastic at one thing - promoting Cesar Milan. When it comes to dog training he's not so great. There are elements I go along with such as positive leadership, setting boundaries and keeping consistency. Those aren't exclusive to him though, and the bits that are his method - that bizzarre backward kick thing - and other techniques he uses such as pinning and shock collars are archaic and ethically wrong. He does a great patter over it, but the dog tells you a different story.

My passion at the moment is reading Patricia McConnell books. She's a brilliant dog behaviourist and is fantastic as understanding and explaining the theory behind everything so that you don't just know what but why. Her book 'Feisy Fido' explains 'watch me' really well and also gives you some techniques to teach that help when you have loose dogs coming up to you and stuff like that.