>>> Aggression Question from a Reader:

Chet,

I’m having a problem walking our 11 lb. terrier/chihuahua mix. I’ve just begun to do your exercises involving the clicker and treats. When we take her out, she’s fine and does not pull much, but when there is another dog around she goes bonkers. She will growl and pull very hard on the leash. This may be fear agression because she really likes some dogs and loves people. How do we handle this behavior? Please give us some tips.

Thanks,
Jo

>>> My Comments:

Jo, I’m glad to see that you’re already actively training your dog with the clicker training techniques we teach in our course for how to get your dog to stop aggressive pulling on his leash.

However, I don’t think your dog has a Leash Pulling problem…

I think your dog has something my old College baseball coach had, “Little Man Syndrome”!

Little man syndrome is typical of smaller males who feel that the only way to get others to notice and respect them, is by being scrappy, hard nosed, and aggressive.

They treat of everyone in their environment as a threat, and while they often get what they want, they tend to have a lot of people hate them.

We’ve all known people like this, and when we’re around them, we spend the entire time wishing they’d just stop trying to tell us how important they are.  Don’t they realize if they’d stop boasting people would treat them nicer?

Sadly, they have no idea that being nicer to people is an option!

They have so little confidence in themselves and in their ability to get along with others, that they construct social defense mechanisms to make sure nobody can get close enough to hurt them.

And I think this is what’s going on in your chihuahua, Jo.

Your dog does not have confidence in his own social skills, and is easily feeling overwhelmed.

He’s responding to your Leash Training commands beautifully because he doesn’t feel threatened when others aren’t around.  But when you try to take him into situations that make him uncomfortable he doesn’t have the confidence needed to continue obeying you.

So here are 5 tactics that can help your dog overcome his “Little Man Syndrome” and develop more confidence in his social skills and less aggression towards other dogs.

5 Tactics To Cure Your Dog’s
“Little Man On A Leash” Syndrome

Tactic #1: Applying the “Rough House” theory

The Rough House theory helps explain why dogs who are raised from a puppy around LOTS of other dogs, almost always have social skills.

In his book on child psychology, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child, John Gottman shared the results of study that seems to show evidence of several parenting factors that determine the liklihood that a child will make friendships easily and often, or whether they’ll be more of a loaner in school.

Gottman did this by studying a group of children and as they grew up, and making observations of how their parents interacted with their children.  He then took this data to try and construct an optimal way to raise a child.

And Gottman discovered something fascinating in his research.

He discovered one thing a parent does to their child that increases the likelihood that they’ll be social.

Guess what it was?

The children who’s father’s “Roughhoused” with them regularly were the most likely to grow up with excellent social skills and the ability to make friends!

Why Does Roughhousing Increase Social Skills?

The reason Roughhousing increases social skills is because it allows a child to experience a wider range of emotions, and facial cues, and to learn what they mean by receiving lots of instant feedback.

Children learn to read when they’ve hit their parent where they shouldn’t, what types of facial cues mean the other is having fun, and when it’s time to calm down.

And children who don’t get this type of Roughhousing play with their parents don’t develop the same ability to read the facial cues of their peers.  This “Lack of Knowing” what others are thinking causes them to be slower socially, leaves them feeling awkward in social situations and results in them making less friends.

And it’s my belief that this is why it is so much smarter to buy a  puppy from a breeder who allows the mother dog to raise a puppy herself, along with its litter mates.

If you’ve ever seen a litter of puppies playing together you know their’s one thing they do more then anything else, Roughhouse!

This Roughhousing is not just play, it is vital social skill developement that helps make sure your puppy will grow up with confidence in his social skills.  So he’ll have the ability to look at another dog and KNOW the intentions of that other dog.

My own dog, Bauer has this ability.

He can spot a dog with bad intentions LONG before I know the dog has bad intentions… and simply stay away from that dog.

And he can also tell a dog who has GOOD intentions.

I believe that it is this ability, the ability to read subtle facial and body cues of other dogs that gives my dog the confidence to enter into social situations and not feel like he has to be on guard.

So if you’re reading this to prevent leash aggression in dogs, I recommend only buying puppies who are raised by their mother and litter mates.

Tactic #2: Only Allow Play with Well Socialized Dogs

This tactic might sound super simple, but don’t let your dog hang out with, or be around dogs who don’t have good dog to dog social etiquite.

You wouldn’t knowingly let your child hang out with thugs and drug dealers would you?  They’re a bad influence right?  And you know that letting children hang out with peopel of bad influence increases the liklihood that their bad behavior will rub off on your child… so good parents do their best to make sure their children associate with other good kids.

Well dogs are the same way!

If you want your dog to learn the social rules for how other dogs want to be treated, your dog has to learn that from other well socialized dogs.

This means you need to be ANAL about refusing to let your dog play with other bad dogs, and find a group of pre screened social dogs that your dog CAN hang out with and learn from.

I call this, increasing your dog’s social IQ, and have written about it in the past so I won’t go into it here.  But the key to advancing your dog’s social skills is to get him around a LOT of other good dogs…. because it’s a skill YOU can’t teach him on your own.

You’ll need the help of a few fury, butt sniffing friends

And don’t think just one other dog is enough.  I exposed my dog to several hundred other dogs, both bigger and smaller as I was teaching him to interact with others.  The more the merrier principle is definitely at play here.

Tactic #3: Don’t Let Your Dog Be Protective

Another common mistake I see people make with their dog’s who have dog to dog aggression issues is that they don’t realize the dozens and dozens of ways a human can accidentally communicate to their dogs that they are NOT in control of the situation.

Our dogs look to us to lead the way throughout their daily interactions, and they do so in ways we don’t realize as humans.

Things like where we allow our dogs to sleep, how we feed them, and how we look at them all determine what our dogs are thinking of us.

A great book to read up on that talks about these issue is The Culture Clash, by Jean Donaldson.

This is a complex topic, that can’t be done justice in a little bullet point on a blog post, so go get the book and become an expert and NOT violating the miscomunication that happens all the time between you and your dog that you never even realized was going on.

Many of my clients have followed this books advice and seen dramatic differences in their dogs.

Tactic #4: Re-Program Emotional Reactions

The 4th tactic for curing “Little Man on a Leash” syndrome is for dog owners who realize that their dog has missed out on the previous tactics, especially tactic #1 and tactic #2, and are wondering if those social skills can be relearned by older dogs.

Luckily they can!

But the only way to help your dog become less aggressive towards other dogs when he’s on his leash, is to first help him be less emotional at the mere sight of other dogs.

If your dog is extremely nervous, scared or territorial at the site of other dogs while on his leash, then his mind will be in survival mode, and NOT learning mode.

So I like to teach my clients a series of mind reprogramming techniques that you can use to change the emotional reaction your dog has to anything!

To help teach you these mental reprogramming techniques, I’ve written a free report on this topic that I’d recommend you read, called, Reprogramming the K9 Mind.

In this report you’ll discover how a dog’s mind works, and how simple it can be to reprogram negative emotions like growling at other dogs to emotions of excitement.

The report walks you through a series of exercises that allow you to practice changing emotions in a controlled setting with your dog in less then 15 minutes per day.

If you’re serious about fixing your dog’s aggression while on his leash, it’s a definite must read report, and costs nothing to download

Related posts:

1. Fixing Dog Aggression On Leash
2. Training Away Your Dogs Aggression
3. How To Stop Puppy Nipping Using “Urge-Control”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Dog Aggression, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.