Regardless of the size of your dog, it’s critical to take steps in the beginning to prevent dog aggression.  There’s nothing worse than having your dog bite someone.  It’s embarrassing, it’s frightening and it can cause your dog to be taken away from you and lose its life.  Why deal with that kind of angst when the solution is actually quite simple.

There are different types of aggression but many of them stem from the same thing, a lack of socialization and preparedness.

Fear aggression while it can stem from trauma often comes from a dog not knowing how to deal with a situation.  Dominance aggression comes from a dog who is confused about his relationship with the family and preparation aggression comes from a dog that is quite simply not prepared for what life has to offer.

Basic training like sit, stay, and heel are a good foundation to truly protect your dog from aggressive behavior consider undergoing a toddler training regimen.

Jeff Kinsley of SoundAnimals.com says, “Toddler training is where we do behaviors that maybe don’t have a medical or grooming purpose and they may not even seem like they are all that enjoyable for the dog.  However, toddlers especially may be more apt to do them like yanking on the tail, pulling on an ear, pulling on the fur, grabbing on the dog, charging up to the dog which again some adults even will do these things with dogs they don’t know.”

He uses food as a source of pleasure for the animal thus making the dog both accustomed to having hands on them as well as associating the handling with pleasant experiences like cheese or hot dogs.  While it may seem like a good idea to have children in on the training process, with toddler training how you approach it depends largely on the age, size and temperament of your dog.

“If the dog is older,” says Tinsley, “and is objecting to some of these things, you’re definitely going to want to leave the kids out of the process at the beginning until the dog will allow people to do all these things without any objection and that we start slowly back with children.”

Kinsley also recommends making training into a game.  “With younger dogs that are just going through this toddler training process for the first time, I definitely encourage people, especially if they have young kids to play games with the dog.  Simon Says is a great game.  Simon would be one of the adults holding a handful of high value treats, like again chicken or cheese or something.

“They’re Simon and they tell the kid Simon Says pull the dog’s tail.  And when they pull the dog’s tail, the dog gets chicken.  They go through a little process, obviously with the understanding that we’re not going to be hurting the dog and that we’re just going to be getting the dog used to these kinds of behaviors.

Socialization plays an important role in raising calm and non-aggressive dogs.  Whether you have small dogs or larger ones it’s important to expose your dog to a wealth of experiences.  Take them to the park, take them to the city, take them to the dog park, to visit your family.  Take your dog to the dog daycare, let other people walk them, feed them and so on.  Let your dog become accustomed to as many sights, sounds, situations and experiences as possible.

The more prepared they are the less likely they’ll be to attack out of fear, lack of social preparation or even dominance.  Training, toddler training, and basic dog obedience training will go a long way toward raising a well adjusted dog who can handle just about anything.

We want to thank Jeff for that valuable information!

In the Hands Off Dog Training Formula I have a dog obedience training video that I believe is critical to ever having your dog behaving in your home.

And I don’t mean if he’ll sit or not bite, that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about behaving himself when you aren’t there… and training your dog HOW to behave in your home so you aren’t always having to keep an eye out for what kind of trouble he might be getting into.

When I taught my dog these 2 skills, my life with him got infinetly easier.

These two skills are…

1. The ability to disengage from ANYTHING he was currently doing and back away, or “Leave it”
2. The willingness to drop ANYTHING that he has in his mouth

If you’ll take the time to teach your dog these 2 skills, it makes all the difference in the world.

He’ll drop baby toys he wasn’t supposed to have, he’ll leave people alone if you need him to, he’ll back away from people who are afraid of dogs, and it does one other thing…

It teaches your dog that YOU are the boss.

That he can’t just get into anything he wants to.

He learns that there are rules, and that it’s in his best interest to follow them.  And you may not realize this, but teaching something as simple as “Back Away” or “Drop It” actually helps establish you as the leader of your household… but in a way that isn’t dominating.  A leader your dog can respect, because we taught him the skills with positive reinforcement, and he understands what you mean 100%.

And there is a natural instinct in dogs to do what I call “Fill The Void”.

“Filling The Void” is when a dog looks around his environment and says to himself, “hmmmm, there is nobody leading this parade.  And if somebody doesn’t start leading, I’m going to have to fill that leadership void.”

It’s an instinct that in the wild keeps dogs alive, but as pets can become incredibly annoying if we don’t understand what’s going on.

And to understand what’s going on, is a bit beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll give you a quick summary of the main points.

You see dogs speak “dog”, which as it turns out is a COMPLETELY different language than english.

It’s a NON verbal language.

It’s a language where tone, and pronounciation do NOT matter.

It’s a language of observation of their surroundings, and it’s genetically hard wired into them because of their past history of descending from wolves.

They can’t ignore this language.  It’s in their DNA to obey it.  And if we as their owners don’t learn to speak a few “words and phrases” of wolf, we’re going to end up with a hi maintenance dog.

Here’s an example that shows you how just making the littlest of mistakes with your dog, tells your dog so much about you, without you ever realizing it.

A leader of the pack checks out new territory before everyone else.

So I ask you, do you make your dog sit before you walk out your front door 1st?  Or do you let your dog run out first and then you follow?  What do you think that says to your dog in “Wolf”?

It says that sinse you don’t know how to make me sit back while you check things out, I need to fill the void and start to become a better leader of this house.

So how does this relate to “Back off” and “Drop It”.

Well one of the issues that comes up in dogs is with what is called “resource guarding”.  It’s when a dog protects it’s bone or toy or food.  And it can create dangerous situations, if for example a toddler tries to go take a bone away from a dog who’s chewing on it.

The dog might bare his teeth and snap at the child.  And we don’t want that.

So what you can do is follow the instructions that I teach in my “Back Away” dog obedience training video that is one of the things that comes with my Hands Off Dog Training Formula.

It’ll show you how to get a dog to back away from whatever he’s doing, inclucing playing with a toy, eating or whatever.

And by taking a few weeks to teach this skill you’ll be able to show your dog that it’s in his best interest to obey you… and NOT because he’ll get beat or yelled at if he doesn’t comply, but because of how we teach you how to structure a positive reward that overtime is MORE motivating than holding onto that treat, or not letting go of a toy when you need him to.

I’m about to say something that might catch you a bit off guard… maybe it’ll even offend you.

I don’t think your dog even knows how to sit!

That’s right!

I’m suggesting that not one in 50 people reading this blog post have a dog who REALLY knows how to sit.

How could I say this so confidently?

That almost every dog owner doesn’t even have enough control over their dog to know how to train a dog to sit?

Because I think dog owners don’t really understand what sit is.

Most owners think that if their dog sits most of the time he’s trained to sit… but they couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here’s how to tell if your dog knows how to sit.

And if your dog can’t pass all these tests, I’ve got some tips for you at the end of this post that you can quickly start practicing on to help your dog know how to sit better.

Does your dog pass these 5 tests?

1. You NEVER have to push down on his backside to get him to sit
2. You only have to say “Sit” once
3. He’ll sit for you when you have your back to him
4. When you ask him to sit, he sits, NOT lays down
5. He’ll sit at the front door when a new stranger comes over (if you ask him to)

If you’re like most people, you might have made it past the first or second test, but tests 3, 4, & 5 are where you started to fail.

You might be saying “So What!  What’s the big deal about my dog not being a perfect sitter?”

And the answer is, A LOT!

Here’s why:

You see, we all want an obedient dog right?  A dog that will obey us in almost any situation.  And we all hate it when it seems like our dog isn’t listening to us.

We call our dog stubborn, or untrainable.  But is this really the problem.

What if I proposed to you, that if you have a dog who doesn’t listen to you all the time, maybe… just maybe you’ve been using ineffective training techniques that don’t REALLY help your dog comprehend what you’re asking.

And that if you would focus on teaching your dog to REALLY know just a few basic commands, his behavior would immedietly improve, and he’d become more manageable and well behaved.

How do you do this?  And why do so many people get this wrong with their dogs?

Because they don’t know how to prevent what I call “Derailing Cooperation”.

You see, dog obedience training is about getting your dog to cooperate with you… and be on the same mental track your on.  So that when you ask him to do things, you ask them to do things that are within his ability to cooperate.

When your dog cooperates, things run smoothly… like a train going down a track.

But the problem is that not all train tracks are straight and flat.  They have turns, they go uphill, they go downhill and you have to manage the speed of the train to keep the train from derailing.

Teaching a dog to sit is like this.

When you’re working with your dog in your living room, with nobody else around, it’s like a train only going 5 miles an hour on a perfectly flat surface… it’s EASY to keep things in line and running smoothly.

But when you add distractions, doorbells, multiple kids running around, other dogs, and a postman at your front door, that’s like sending a train down the same kind of track I just finished watching Tom Hanks try to ride the Polar Express to the North Pole on… it’s a rough ride.

So you need to understand that EVERY behavior that you teach your dog, even something as simple as training a dog to sit, needs to involve a process of first teaching the dog how to do the behavior, and then increasing the distractions gradually until your dog can perform the behavior even in a chaotic environment.

Your dog’s ability to focus is very much like a muscle that you never work out.

You know how you feel when you finally go to the gym after not lifting weights for months…

You get SORE!  Really sore.

But in that process of getting sore, your body rebuilds your muscles so they are strong enough to handle a bit heavier load.  And if you keep doing this over and over again, you’re eventually able to handle VERY heavily loads with little fatigue.

Teaching your dog to focus is much the same way.  I call this, “Building Your Dog’s FOCUS Muscles”, and you can start working on this today by doing these three things:

1. Stop telling your dog to sit multiple times.If you find you’re always having to repeat your dog’s commands, guess what, he doesn’t know them.  So start from square one.Get yourself some treats and a clicker, lock your dog in the same room with you, and wait for your dog to sit, click… and toss him a treat.  Pretty soon, he should get the idea and start sitting a LOT.When he’s sitting reliable, start mixing in the cue, and then only click and reward when he actually sits.  If he doesn’t do it the first time you ask, don’t treat, take a 5 second break and try again.
2. Change it UP!Once your dog is sitting regularly while you sit there and watch him, take a seat… literally.  Sit down on the ground and ask your dog to perform the same behavior, you might find he doesn’t perform as well, that’s OK, keep at it.  Then try laying down on your back, turning around, and lots of different body positions, even being out of the room, until your dog is sitting every time you ask, no matter where you ask him from.
3. Start Flexing His Focus MusclesWhen he’s sitting every time you ask, now it’s time to add some difficulty.  Take him over to a friends house with kids you know he get’s along with.  And practice the same routine, in this more distracting environment.  Take him to a dog park and practice there too.  After a week or two of this type of training your dog should be able to sit in even the most distracting, exciting environments.

He’ll be more under your control, and ready to focus on his next steps of training, because you’ve now trained him to listen to you in different environments… and that’s half the battle!