Rachel wanted to know how to stop dog aggression during walks:
Here’s What She Needs To Stop
Dog Aggression During Walks
She writes: “I have been using the prong collar and following your methods for almost two weeks now with great success, especially with walking on a loose leash. I am having a problem that i need your advice on. While on walks, My rescue Tommy seems to be dog aggressive, freaks out with dogs on leashes or while looking out the window and a dog walks by. Tommy starts barking like crazy and lunging and pulling. First of all I am afraid the prong collar is going to hurt his neck with all that pulling, second, when I try to correct him he gets very angry and more aggressive and try’s to attack the leash and if I didn’t stand back he probably would bite me. We go on tons of walks and pass many dogs so this is really a problem. Is this common? What would you suggest?
Thanks, signed, trying to deal with the many problems of a rescue dog, Rachel”
The First Thing To Try When You’re Dealing With Dog Aggression During Walks
Since Rachel had already been using my attention-getter exercise but wasn’t able to give a motivational correction while in the presence of other dogs, here’s what I recommended:
The first thing you should try for this type of dog aggression during walks is to fit him with a muzzle. For some dogs, just putting the muzzle on will work to make them more submissive and less inclined to ignore you in such situations. At $7 for a muzzle, it’s a cheap thing to try, first.
However, my fall-back for this type of behavior, when the prong collar just doesn’t phase the dog in such situations, is to use the e-collar.
What you’ll want to do is: First use the e-collar with my “loose leash/attention-getter” exercise in an area where there aren’t any distractions, so that your dog learns to understand what the “stim” means. After he seems to “get it” then practice in a few different environments without other dogs.
Then progress to working around other dogs.
An alternate way to introduce the e-collar is to put it on a very low setting, one that the dog can just barely feel, and then tap, tap, tap the button until he turns to look at you (you should be moving away when you do this). As the distraction increases, you’ll need to increase the stim level. You can use food initially to get the dog to understand and draw a more distinct contrast between paying attention to you (“I get food!”) and not paying attention to you (“I feel a slight irritation in the form of the e-collar stim”).
So, in essence you– at it’s core– you have an attention problem. Once you get your dog’s attention on you, all of the dog aggression during walks will disappear.