Great family dog random aggressiveness?
Question by : Great family dog random aggressiveness?
I have a 6yo Bull Arab whom we got from the RSPCA at 10 weeks of age. When we first got him he took a bit to train out his puppy playfulness that would tend to end up with someone bleeding from somewhere. We just assumed that this was his breed and his playfulness and we could train it out of him with time, which we did, by the age of about 18 months he was the perfect family dog.
He has been declared dangerous on a stage 1 from an incident with a neighbor whom we had conflict with as their children played with him a bit too rough and he jumped all over them and scratched them a fair bit.
The past few months we have noticed some changes in his behavior. We have had to keep him on the lead while walking him now because he runs off and doesn’t come back when called at times unlike how he used to come back at the click of a finger. He hasn’t been listening to us as much as he used to, sometimes I think he’s hearing is starting to fade. I think he has a tumor on his side but do not have the money to get it taken out.
The past couple weeks he has had the most random outbreaks of aggression I have ever seen in a dog. Just today I was letting him rip up a cardboard box as I usually do, and normally when he gets to a point where he’s making too much mess I tell him to back off and he will step back and sit down. Today though, he continued to do what he was doing so I grabbed the box and he was fine for about 5 seconds as we tugged at it but then all of a sudden he ripped his head around at me and bared his teeth like I’ve never seen him do before and let a nice growl rip. I instantly went to smack him on the nose and he snapped at me, grabbing my fingers but once his teeth hit my skin he snapped out of it and went into his submissive mode as though he didn’t know what he had just done. He has had a few outbreaks like this and I’m just wondering what can be a factor for this? I guess I may not have handled the box thing as well as I could have but usually he is fine and just plays around til I lift his legs up and grab it off him. Any help would be great thanks!
And as I’ve learnt from owning many dogs, hitting them does work better than most other treatments such as growling at them or make a high pitched sound as some people and professional dog behaviorists have said. The high pitched sound does work in some circumstances, but if that wore off years ago and doesn’t work what are you going to do, just let it bite you?
What I do when my dog misbehaves, even after hitting him if he does something is make him sit, stay and walk off for a bit maybe change his water, fix his blanket up or something then go back to him and make him shake, lay down and all that other stuff to make him know he has to listen to me.
Best answer:
Answer by Kristin
Some dogs may experience these “rages” due to an illness. there may be something wrong with his thyroid, I’ve seen countless cases of this and it’s easy to fix with medication.
Also, you should never hit a dog. This will only encourage biting since he is needing to “defend” himself from something attacking him.
Always watch children around the dog, they may have done something abusive towards him that has triggered him to be more protective of himself.
What I would recommend is get him checked out for his thyroid, and also ask your Vet if they have any other recommendations on what it might be.
If they find nothing wrong, try to find a good positive reinforcement trainer in your area. They will teach you how to show the dog right from wrong without using “punishment”, such as hitting, choke chains, or shock collars.
Edit: Obviously you’ve never tried a real positive reinforcement trainer since saying “hitting works best” is like saying hitting a child works best. When a dog bites you are to yell “OW!” the same way a yelp would be if a dog bit another dog, and completely disengage in what is going on. Cross your arms. Turn away, and ignore him completely for a number of minutes.
Puppies don’t hit other puppies to get a point across, if a puppy is finding play too rough he will express that by stopping play with that dog.
Hitting your dog, ON THE NOSE ESPECIALLY, is painful as the nose is the absolute most sensitive area of a dog. Learning from trainers like Ceasar Milan who kicks dogs in the stomach, and from Brad Pattison who blatantly goes out of his way to full on abuse dogs is not helpful. You’re simply making the dog FEARFUL, this is teaching nothing.
My mother has been in the dog training business for years now and has used positive reinforcement ONLY, she’s never hit, poked, prodded, used choke chains or shock collars, and has worked with extreme aggression cases that had been trained by countless others and the dogs came around within 2-3 weeks, where people using abusive techniques got nothing from the dog.
Just because you see people abusing animals on tv doesn’t make it okay. Give your head a shake, if you really believe hitting is the answer you shouldn’t own an animal.
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If he showed aggression, bit you and suddenly snapped out of it, that is rage syndrome. Sorry, no cure for that and the dog is dangerous because they, literally, do not know what they are doing when they slip into that mode. It is genetic and is seen in poorly bred Labs; spaniels and other breeds.
If this has just started it could be a brain tumor or a neurological disease but even if it is, the dog is dangerous.
Most big dogs will be tame for a while. But you have to understand like pits and boxers. People would say “Oh, he is such a good dog, he will never bite anyone”. Well it is in their nature to attack. So a big dog like that, I wouldn’t keep around children or let random strangers pet. You should take him to dog training lessons, to associate him with other animals. And people, so he is more comfortable around humans and animals. Your dog sounds like he is confused by his instincts to attack. So when he touched your skin he knew it was wrong. Which is a good sign he is not the “over aggressive type” tha usually get sedated.
Tell the vet all that you’ve posted here and have him look for anything physical that could be the cause. If there is nothing physical to explain the behavior go back to the basics and reinforce the foundation of obedience training.