Dog park aggression and good, positive ways to react.

Today at the dog park there was a dog who seemed to have a big issue with being territorial of his things and shared areas that he thought were his. One thing I can say about this is that you should NEVER pick your dog up if you think there is going to be an altercation. This is turning the guilt to your side even if your loved one gets hurt or further pestered. You see while all of our first instincts is to want to get our babies out of the problem we are actually making them more vulnerable in the other dogs eyes. We pick he or she up and the other dog thinks, hmmm he can't move right now very well or run away, its a great time to jump up or go after him. Whether a dog is playing or attacking another dog it is never the answer to pick up your dog. 

I would also like to talk about toy-aggression or your dog being possessive. When Shamus was just a little baby at 3 months old he came to me with food aggression along with, toy aggression. What I did personally was whenever I fed Shamus I would go towards his food, he would growl. I would say loud and firm, SHAMUS SIT! Having already taught him sit and down and wait he was easily agreeable. You may have to work on it with your loved one or may not. Either way I kept repeating that. The split-second he would growl or become uncomfortable I would command him to sit. Once this was instilled in him, I could control him and take his mind off of that and onto obeying his master and sitting down and waiting to eat. After a few days of this I started getting braver. I would command him to sit and wait to eat. Then I would move his bowl a couple feet in any direction away from him while commanding him to wait. Then I would say ok once the bowl was moved and he would scurry over. I repeated this periodically and randomly for a couple of weeks. He has never had food aggression since.  Minou can attest to that. She frequently will try to eat his food and when he comes jogging over she'll intimidate Shamus away from his own food. Not fair so I give her a friendly mist from the spray bottle and that's that! =P