Are dogs aggressive? Do they form hierarchies? Where do you fall into your roll of a dog’s hierarchy and are there ways to do a better job then you’re currently doing?

Aiden Bindoff post on dog aggression addresses some interesting issues worth considering.

Personally, I think one of the best thing you can do for helping set youself up as a better leader for your dog, is to set up LOTS of rules that your dog has to follow to get what he wants out of life.

Rules like:

• Hold down stays on bed while eating dinner, instead of begging at the table
• Sit down, or obey a command before you pet him, making him earn his pets
• Training him to stay away from the door when guests come over to avoid chaos, etc.

Do any of these things guarantee your dog will never have a dominance or dog aggression problem, no.

But I do think the more rules you set up, and the more structure you put into your dog’s life, decreases the likelihood of aggression problems ever occurring.

For some reason the world seems to think that the only way to cure dog aggression issues is with dominance.

The people who defend this position like to argue that dogs are decsendants of wolves, and that the Alpha relationship in a pack of wolves, is why we should use domination to make our dog’s think of us as leaders too.

But the APDT has published on their website that they feel this approach is off base, and back it up with their own counter argument that you should go read if you’re the kind of person who’s been brainwashed into using dominance by some particularly popular TV show trainers.

Go read their statement here:

http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/2009/11/08/dominance-training-position-statement-by-apdt/

>>> My Thoughts:

The APDT says that you can not use the observation of wolf behavior to explain dog behavior, as you can observe chimpanzee behavior to explain human behavior.

But I’d like to caution people reading this statement and offer my thoughts.

I believe the APDT is using this argument to say you can’t explain ALL behavior, and not some behavior.  And I think they’re right about how Wolves do not determine who the alpha of the pack is by how dominant a dog or person is to them, and instead rely on social structure and support from one another.

But they do have a leader, and knowing how they determine who the leader of the pack is, I think is something worth studying and applying to your dog, especially since how they really do it is NOT with aggression.

To understand where we come from genetically, and what our DNA has been hard wired into us to do, is an important thing and not to be completely ignored.

Just my two cents.

What do you think?

I really love this collection of articles I found from ClickerSolutions recently, and thought I’d point you in the direction of one particularly good article on dog aggression.

You can read it here:
http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2002b/aggression.htm

It’s a guest article from Karenn Pryor on three techniques she’s used to help calm dog aggression while travelling around at all the seminars she holds, and teaching dog trainers.

In her events she, a hi percentage of her audience has dogs, so she’s always using her audiences dogs to help teach things.

Invarialby, this means she runs into dogs with issues, and has developed an interesting perspective on how to handle and address those issues on the fly.

It’s a great little article and worth a quick read.

As you read the article, pay attention to some of the things that she doesn’t go into great detail about, but are still crucial… for example, Replacement Behaviors are often a very good way to help overcome dog aggression issues.  And Karen makes lots of little comments that show how she’s always thinking of what the dog wants out of an interaction with something, and then creating a compromise that allows a dog to still fill the satisfaction of feeling something out, but in an acceptable behavior.

Interesting stuff!

This may seem cute, but it's actually training this dog to nip

Have you ever heard of the famous Marshmallow test done by Stanford university that suggests that self-control is the number one determining factor to whether our children grow up to be above or below average?

If you’ve never read up on that study, it’s fascinating and can teach you a LOT about what it takes to teach puppies to stop nipping and control their emotional urges.

In their study, Stanford university took children into a room and asked a child to sit in a chair with a Marshmallow in front of them.  The instructor then told the children that if they waited for him to run an errand, they could have two Marshamallows when he came back.

But if they ate the one in front of them they would NOT get the second Marshmallow.

Whether or not the children were able to resist the inner urge to just gobble up the Marshmallow or not, was an incedible predictor of how successful those children’s lives would be, how much money they would earn, and how happy their marriage would be.

The reason this experiment was such a big predictor of these childrens’ future success, is because there is one trait that all successful people have in common… the ability to delay immediate gratification because they realize it earns them long term gains.

Well guess what, this applies to dog’s as well!

The better your dog is at remembering to keep his emotions in check, and realizing that waiting can get him BIGGER rewards, the happier and easier your life with him will be.

Luckily for us, we can build delayed gratification, or what i call, “Urge Control” into our daily training excercises.

Build Urge Control Into every Day
Activities With Your Dog

When we weave the concept of Urge Control into all of our puppies training drills, the result is a dog who remains much more calm and emotionally stable in situations like:

• Staying calm when the doorbell rings
• Not rushing to gobble up food dropped on the floor
• Staying off counter tops
• Not nipping during a game of tug a war
• Being less aggressive on a leash towards other dogs
• Remaining indifferent when children accidentally irritate them
• and a host of other situations

One of the simplest ways I recomend people teach their dog’s Urge Control is when they first get their puppy and are working on how to stop his nipping.

Understanding Why Your Puppy is Nipping

The thing you need to determine when teaching a puppy how to stop nipping, is the main driving factor for why the puppy is nipping in the first place.

In most cases a puppy is nipping for one of two reasons.

1. He is teething and finds relief from nipping and chewing on items.  In this case, I recommend using a technique that I call, Cataloging Chewables which is all about how to stop destructive puppy chewing.
2. He still thinks nipping is a fun way to play with you just like he did with his litter mates.

With puppies that are nipping because they think it’s a fun way to interact with you, we need to set up an environment where we take what the puppy wants (interaction with us) and hold it hostage against them.

This means that we set up a new rule for our puppy that he can fully understand.

The New Rule = “Playtime STOPS when you nip”

This means that you can play with your puppy all you want, but the second he nips you, or mouths you harder then you are comfortable with, simply stand up, and ignore your puppy.

It is not necessary to yell, swat or say no.  The fact that you’ve given him the cold shoulder is sending him the strongest signal possible.  Nothing else could be communicating your new “rules of engagement” better then by taking the thing he wants more then anything else in the world, (YOU) away from him when he nips.

Now Here’s What I
Want You To Do Next

Because this Urge Control drill is so effective, I want you to go practice it on your puppy right now.

Most clients of mine see a dramatic change in their dogs behavior within a matter of minutes.

After a handful of times of getting up and abruptly ending playtime with your puppy when he nips, you’ll see the little wheels start turning in his head as he realizes that you only stop playing with him when he nips.

Try to ignore your puppy for about 15-20 seconds after he nips before you resume playing with him.

If you’ll go spend some time today practicing this drill you should see nearly instant results.

But Your Work is NOT Done!

Urge Control is something that needs to be built into all aspects of your dogs life.  Urge Control needs to be a rule your dog lives by, not just something to stop only nipping.

Sure it can be used for just that, but it can be something so much more when applied to all areas of your dog’s life.

So after you go try out this Urge Control technique on your dog, and see for yourself how effective it is, I want you to come back and sign up to receive a copy of my Hands Off Dog Training program that can show you how to finish up the other areas of your puppies training that need work.

You can pick up a copy of my Hands Off Dog Training program here.

One of my favorite techniques for training dogs not to bite is based on what I call the Pursuit of Pain Principle.

The Pursuit of Pain principle states that under certain conditions you can actually condition any living, breathing creature to actually feel the desire to Pursue pain.

You’ve seen this principle at work lots of different times, but were probably never aware of it.

One of the most common examples of this principle is in football.

The next time you watch a good football game, pay attention to what the announcers say.

They’ll often use words like, “This guy just LOVES to hit people”… or “he loves to lower the boom on linebackers”.

Certain activities condition the body to enjoy pain

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever strapped on a pair of football pads and played the game at a competitive level or not, but I can assure you that when two football players colide it is a painful experience.

It does not “physically” feel good to ram your body full speed into another human being.

So why do you hear announcers say that some football players LOVE to hit people?

Because it even though it doesn’t feel good physically, it DOES feel good EMOTIONALLY!

The emotional satisfaction of physically manhandling their opponent is a higher emotional reward, then the physical pain they have to endure to achieve that result.

In a way, football players have been trained to LOVE pain.

They’ve been conditioned to love it starting at a young age.  When young people start out playing football the pain isn’t very intense, because the other players are not as strong as adults. But with every passing year players get bigger and stronger, and the amount of pain tolerance it takes to play the game increases….

Yet the players don’t seem to be bothered by that…. hmmmmm?

The Pursuit Of Pain Principle
Is All Around Us

Many women pursue pain in exchange for emotional rewards

Think about how certain women will continually go back to a man that beats her.  Even though the physical pain of being beaten by her spouse or boyfriend is painful, the EMOTIONAL pain of being alone is for many, worse.

The fact is we all know people who continually ask for and even pursue physical pain, because it brings MUCH more EMOTIONAL relief or EMOTIONAL pleasure.

And surprise, surprise, this is true with animals as well

Animals Can be Trained To Pursue Pain Too

In some very interesting studies, scientists have discovered that they could train rats to Pursue the Pain of electric shock.

To do this the scientists had to take an Emotionally valuable item, typically food, and first train the rat to pull a chain to receive the food.

Once this behavior had been trained, they then ran a small electrical current through the chain that would mildly shock the rat as he pulled it.  The shock was initially not painful enough to warrant going without food.

But the scientists discovered that if they increased the level of shock the rat received slowly enough… over time they could condition rats to go back and pull the chain to get food while putting up with extreme levels of shock that would knock them backwards.

Just like the young football player who has been conditioned his whole life to willingly tolerate more and more pain to receive an emotional reward, rats can be trained the same way.

Why You Should Inflict Pain On Your Dog!

The reason I’m bringing all of this up, is because the infliction of pain is one of the two largest contributers to dog bite attacks in the world; the other is fear.

Typically the pain I’m talking about is caused accidentally, like when a toddler jumps off a couch and lands on your dog; or bites his tail, or accidently falls off his bike and runs into your dog.

In these instances, your dog can be suddenly put into a lot of pain, and out of instinct, bite to protect itself.

This is why I believe that you have a moral obligation to use the Pursuit Of Pain principle on your dog to increase his pain tolerance to the point where he can simply shrug off hi levels of pain.

In order to help prevent dog aggression towards children, I teach a concept called Toddler Proofing.

Toddler proofing is a training process that gradually sets up situations where your dog is exposed to very low levels of pain, like a slight tail tug, while receive VERY hi value treats at the same time.

Most of our clients find that with practice, they can get their dogs to actually become excited about receiving low levels of pain.

This is obviously a topic that requires a LOT of precision and must be understood fully before implementing, so I’m not going to cover it in complete detail in this blog post.

But if you’re intersted in learning how you can use Toddler Proofing to increase your dog’s pain tolerance threshold to reduce the risk of accidental dog bites, then you should invest in my Hands Off Dog Training course.

>>> 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?

Roughousing with littermates builds great 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

When you’ve got a dog with food aggression issues, also known as ‘resource guarding, it’s important to start addressing the problem right away.  The strategies I’m about to share with you are perfect for brand new puppies, as well as dogs who’ve just started to develop food aggression issues.

Please Note: If your dog has SEVERE cases of food aggression, you should seek the help of a trained professional by doing a search in google for dog behavior specialist, or dog trainer.  This article is not meant to be the replacement of a professional trainer.

Also make sure you check out the type of training that the trainer you find uses.  There are many different methods for training dogs, so it’s important to choose a trainer who uses positive reinforcement, and not electronic collars or punishment.

If you’d like to tackle your dog’s food aggression issues yourself, here are three things you need to do:

1. Train your dog the ‘Leave it’ command. One way to train this behavior is to take something your dog likes, like a piece of cheese, and let your dog see you put it under your foot.  Most dogs will try to dig out the food from under your shoe.  Make sure to keep the cheese covered until the dog gives up.  When your dog is no longer trying to get the food out from under your food, say “good boy” and let him have the food under your foot.  If done early in a young puppies life, this stops dogs from ever developing dog aggression issues.The reason this technique is so powerful is it teaches the dog that there is an APPROPRIATE way to get the things he wants, and that he doesn’t have to growl or bite to prevent you from taking things from him… he just has to obey.

   If you’d like to see video of exactly how this behavior is trained, I dedicate a video on how to teach the “Leave It” command  in my course, Hands Off Dog Training program.

2. Train your dog the “Drop It” command. The drop it command is easier to teach then most people realize, and is another MUST train behavior if you want to prevent your dog from developing dog food aggression.  It is also based around the philosophy that you just need to teach your dog an appropriate way to get what he wants, instead of biting.Here’s an example of how this works:

   Let’s say you have a dog who is chewing his bone and will growl, or nip at you when you reach down to take it.  The reason the dog growls is because he values that item HIGHLY.  Most pet owners will yell, swat or tell their dog that they are bad for growling or biting.  But this is not a very effective strategy, and only makes the dog try to protect “His” property harder… often escalating the aggression.

   Instead of making our dog feel like he has to protect an item we want to take from him, or he’ll lose it forever… we need to change his thinking.  We need to teach him that giving up things he loves means he gets even more rewarding things.

   This is done in a training environment where we can control what the dog receives.  To start, give your dog something that he only ‘kind of’ wants like a ball for example.  Tell your dog to ‘drop it’ or reach down to remove the item from your dogs mouth while saying drop it and take the item from your dog.  Because we’ve chosen an item that your dog values very little, your dog shouldn’t be  bothered that you’re taking it from him… and as soon as he lets you take it say ‘good dog’ and give your dog a treat.

   Done repeatedly this teaches your dog that giving up things in his possession means he gets MORE good things!

   As your dog becomes better and better and giving up items he likes, start asking him to give up higher valued items.  By teaching your dog to give up higher and higher value items every day, always getting a better reward, you can reprogram your dogs brain to respond to your drop it commands instead of feeling like he has to protect what he has and keep you from taking it.

   If you’d like to see a wonderful video on how this is done, I’ve created a step-by-step training video for how to do this in the membership section of my website.  To get a free 30 day trial of my dog training video membership site you can sign up here: http://thedogtrainingsecret.com

3. The third and final technique for reducing your dog’s food aggression is simple and often VERY effective.  Get your dog fixed.  There are many studies out about how many behavior problems, as well as health problems can be fixed or avoided all together by getting your dog fixed before they reach puberty around 6 months of age.  It doesn’t always fix the problem but it’s a very good idea.

For more information on how to fix your dog’s behavior problems, check out my Hands Off Dog Training program at http://www.thedogtrainingsecret.com/tips

Fixing a dog’s aggression towards other people or other dogs while on his leash is a problem that many people try to fix the WRONG way.

Most dog owners try to train their dog the way most of us were trained by our parents when we do something bad.  We yell, scold or swat our dogs for doing what we think is an inappropriate behavior.

While this is sometimes an effective training technique, you should be aware of what’s REALLY happening when you use negative punishment as a training technique for dog’s who are aggressive towards others on their leash.

What most pet owners aren’t aware of is that when you use punishment you automatically program the brain to ALSO feel a negative emotion.  So while you may be able to train a dog to not growl at another dog by beating him, you may have enhanced the negative emotions your dog has for the other dog approaching… in effect, creating dog aggression where it normally shouldn’t exist.

What’s really happening when you punish a dog for acting aggressively while on his leash is to SUPPRESS his outward display of emotions.  Or said another way, you eliminate the WARNING signs your dog gives off when he gets upset.  This increases the likelihood of so called, Random biting attacks where the person being bit couldn’t tell the dog was upset until it was too late.

This is why I’m a HUGE advocate of what I call Emotion Training, where you reprogram your dog how to feel POSITIVE emotions instead of negative ones.

If you’re interested in learning more about Emotion Training and how it can be used to re-program your dog’s aggression issues towards others in his environment, read my free report titled, Reprogramming the K9 Mind.

Most dog owners don’t even realize it’s possible, or how easy it is to train.  And to those skeptics who don’t think you can train a dog’s emotional reactions towards things in his environment I like to share a story from a great dog training book called “Control Unleashed” by Leslie McDevitt.

In her book, Leslie tells a story about how she trained her dog to stop chasing squirrels by turning the act of her dog seeing a squirrel into a cue to turn around and look at her… instead of chasing the squirrel!

Most people would think this is impossible, but she outlines a very common sense approach for how she trained this behavior that is worth picking up a copy of the book to learn.

This training philosophy works off of environmental cues that you can train your dog to recognize.  In cases where your dog get’s aggressive on his leash, think about what would happen if you changed the rules on your dog…

What if instead of your dog feeling the urge to get protective of you when on a leash, you started giving him a piece of cheese every time he saw another dog from a distance?

You may not notice a change the first or second time you gave your dog some cheese, but if you consistently tossed your dog a piece of cheese EVERY time he saw another dog for the next month, most dogs start to realize seeing other dogs can be a good thing.  Many dogs will even start to get excited about seeing other dogs because they realize it means a piece of food is coming their way.

Of course there are a hundred different ways to apply this method of Emotion Training dog fixing your dog’s aggression while on a leash, and if you’re interested in learning more techniques and strategies for fixing your dog’s leash problems make sure you read my report, Reprogramming the K9 Mind.

If you’re concerned about your dog’s aggression with children, then I want to introduce you to a technique for reducing dog aggression with children that I call, “Toddler Proofing”.

Toddler Proofing is a technique for re-programming a dogs emotional reaction to your child’s touch, or presence, from feelings of aggressiveness to feelings of excitment, or at the very least… tolerance.

I recently did an entire interview on this concept with professional dog trainer, Jeff Tinsley in my “Experts of Hands Off Dog Training” interview series that you have the option of listening to when you order my Hands Off Dog Training program.

In that interview Jeff talks about how he’s used “Toddler Proofing” to get dogs who growl, or nip at children who pull their whiskers & tails, or who climb and jump on your dog, to stop being so upset by your child’s behavior and actually look forward to it in many cases.

The secret behind why Toddler Proofing can be so effective for fixing dog aggression with Children is because it uses a process of giving what I call, “Hi Value Emotional Rewards”, to your dog when your child is doing something irritating to him BEFORE the dog can experience the aggressive emotions.

Here’s how Toddler Proofing works:

Step #1: Make sure you know what your dog loves more then anything in the world. In order for Toddler Proofing to work, you need to have a Hi Value emotional reward.  For some dogs this could be food treats like cheese or meat.  For other dogs it might be to chase a ball.  You’ll be using this reward as a way to interrupt the normal emotional pattern your dog experiences when you child goes to bother him.  So make sure to have this reward handy.

Step #2: Start small! Don’t try to get your dog to accept all sorts of behaviors from your child all at once.  Instead pick a behavior that only mildly bothers your dog.  For this example let’s say that the behavior we want to work on is allowing your dog to tolerate his tail being pulled without growling.

WARNING!!! You should NEVER do anything that puts you or your child at risk of being harmed by your dog.  These techniques are for mild cases of aggression.  If your dog is dangerous, or you’re afraid of being bitten you should not follow these instructions and should instead consult a professional trainer in your local area to help you with your issues directly.  There’s simply too many factors for considering your safety that this article cannot address.  So please be careful.

Step #3: Reward your dog while “slightly” bothering him. If you wanted to train your dog to be more accepting of “Tail Pulling” start rewarding your dog with a treat while you lightly grab his tail.  When first grabbing his tail don’t pull it, just lightly grasp it.  Make sure you reward your dog with a food treat, or other reward at the exact instant you grab his tail.

This FORCES your dog to feel an emotion of excitement for a reward instead of aggression when his tail is being touched, instead of feeling aggression.  Done repeatedly this will reprogram your dog to get excited about having his tail touched as more often then not it leads to a reward.  In effect, you’re reprogramming his emotional mind!

Step #4: Slowly add more discomfort. When your dog willingly lets you grasp his tail ten times throughout the day without growling or showing signs of aggression, it’s time to increase the discomfort.  This needs to be done SLOWLY & CAREFULLY.  Don’t push your dog past his comfort zone.  Instead, just try grabbing your dogs tail slightly harder, while continuing to reward him with food treats.

If you notice your dog is bothered by this harder grasping of his tail, then BACK OFF, and squeeze lighter.

The goal is to slowly teach your dog that having his tail grabbed is a good thing.

By continuing to reward your dog for having his tail grabbed while receiving a treat, you’ll be able to continue to increase your dog’s tolerance threshold.  If done correctly you can increase the tolerance threshold of how much discomfort a dog can feel before acting aggressive substantially.  This is why Toddler Proofing is such a wonderful technique for fixing dog aggression with children.

In many cases Toddler Proofing like techniques have been used on working dogs like seeing eye dogs.  In these cases the trainers need to train the dogs to tolerate having their tails stepped on or run over by wheel chairs.  These handlers need their dogs to not bite their owners who might accidentally cause them pain.

If you’re interested in learning about the many different ways that Toddler Proofing can fix dog aggression with children, then consider my “Expert Interview Series” that’s available as an add on purchase to my Hands Off Dog Training program.

By using Toddler Proofing strategies correctly, you can effective fix dog aggression towards children for whisker & tail pulling, touching of their feet, and all sorts of behaviors that children do to dogs that bother them.

Here’s hoping this helps reduce your dog’s aggression towards your child!

Play the video below to learn how to program your dog to come EVERY time you call him… no matter how distracted he is, or how bad he doesn’t want to come


Enjoy The Video!

Chet

P.S. Click here to learn more dog training techniques!