Small Dog/Puppy Aggressive

espencer

 

sillysally

With my pit mix we used a prong to correct her for reacting to other dogs (under a trainers instruction and supervision) and she eventually tried to avoid the dog she was reacting to all costs.  She connected the corrections with the dog in question, *not* her behavior.  If anything, what we did with the prong made her worse.

I'm confused, you used a prong, she eventually tried to avoid the dog she was reacting to but then you say that the prong made her worse? so if the prong help her to avoid the dog then how is that making it worse?

The dog connects the corrections with the owner, like i said in my last post, for animals is virtually impossible to believe that someone will cause pain by sitting or walking 10, 20, 30 yards away

Lets suppose that they actually believe that can happen, an e-collar is the perfect example to show that a dog wont continue to be aggressive to another dog if that other dog is the cause of the corrections, under a experienced professional who knows how to use an e collar, the correction is done by distance and the dog stops attacking the dog, car, etc in question, the dog never keeps going at it "because is making me being in pain", i mean, it even sounds dumb

I agree that your trainer had absolutely any idea on how to use corrections and it was good that you changed techniques 

 

The dog was not 10 yards away, she was very close to her.  This is basically how it was--before going into the class, Sally didn't have many issues with other dogs.  She had been in a couple scuffles with one of my landlord's females, and it seemed that both times the other female actually jumped at her first.  The first time was when Sally first met my landlord's dogs.  Sally sniffed the more submissive one's butt (not touching just sniffing), the submissive one screamed (she apparently does that frequently), and the more dominant one attacked Sally.  We pulled them apart without incident.  The second time we had Sally loose in the barn with us and the landlord arrived and let her dogs out without us realizing.  We heard growling and DH said that both females had Sally pinned up against the horse fence--when DH called her Sally came.  Other than that, she played with friend's dogs and went to the dog park without incident.

When I got into this class, there was one other dog, a female boxer.  The boxer would stare Sally down and growl at her.  After a while Sally responded by lifting her lip at least once.  The instructor told us that since they obviously didn't like each other, we were going to try an exercise.  They had me use Sally's prong.  The other owner and I were to start walking the dogs down an aisle (we were in Petsmart) towards each other.  If Sally was to do anything more than look at the other dog, I was to give her a collar pop.  We would walk them towards each other, and as they got within a few feet (they had been staring at each other the whole way down) one would lunge and the other would respond.  the second she made a move, I would correct, and start again.

Finally, Sally would try to avoid the other female (turn her head away, not want to follow me as we walked past).  However, she became more reactive with other dogs.  The training seemed to create more problems than it solved.