My dog barks and gets antsy around other dogs. What should I do?

Question

My dog has been attacked by 2 large dogs while he was walking with me. I don't know if his barking instigates it. I wanted to take him to work with me, where there are other dogs. Should I do this, or not? I want to socialize him. He's a 6 month old pug/beagle.

He starts training at petsmart next week, so I'm hoping that will help. We've had him for about 2 weeks.

Answer 1

Get the coffee can. Fill the can. Shake the can to distract the dog. Scold the dog.

Answer 2

Have you walked him since? What is his behavior to the dogs you see on a walk? Sometimes an incident like the one you had is bad enough to frighten a dog into not liking other dogs, but more often than not i find that it's the OWNER that is more scared than the dog - and this triggers the dog into behaviors that scares the owner even more!

For example (i use this one a lot) my aunt and her dog, Guinness. They rescued Guin about five years ago. He was very shy and timid - would jump every time there was a loud noise. After about a year they began to see changes (for the good) but then began to complain that he was aggressive to other dogs on his walks.

So they hired a few trainers. I began to work with him myself when the trainers apparently did nothing to help. Finally i figured out that his problems centered on his home territory (neighborhood.) At my house he was basically unresponsive to dogs - i have been able to introduce him to a few and after an initial growl and bark he would be perfectly fine.

So i worked with him at home. Lo and behold i figured out part of the reason he gets aggressive when he is walking (both with them and at his neighborhood.) Their next door neighbors have their dogs on an invisible fence, and every time my aunt walked past them the dogs would charge at Guinness, who didn't KNOW they couldn't get to him. This provoked a response from my aunt (fear) which also provoked a response form Guin (Fear and need to protect.)

My aunt said that the dogs had been doing that since they got Guin. A different (better) trainer later confirmed that his reactions were based on FEAR and these charging dogs were probably the cause of it. So i started to help out with walking him and found that if i ignored the dogs charging (at direction of trainer) Guinness wouldn't respond (other than to hide behind me.)

Theory: If YOU make any response to seeing other dogs, YOUR dog will pick up on it and act accordingly. IF YOU see dogs on walks and think "omg he was attacked, what will he do?" then your dog is more likely to respond aggressively becuase he senses your nervousness.

Support for theory: My walking means no response from me, which means no response from Guinness. My aunt walks him and she can't help but think "he did this..." and he almost always has a response to other dogs.

I would talk to your trainer (hopefully you lucked out and got a good one) about the attack and see how he responds to other dogs. If he's fine around them on walks then he should be fine at your work (just keep him on a lead.) Dogs can recover from these incident quickly - it's the human that sometimes needs help!