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Since these forums are designed to answer based off of the information in the course and how to solve the problems ‘foundation style’. I would definitely classify this as dominance aggression and possibly skipping steps in the aggression cycle which is technically what some people may classify as the neurologic part since going directly to ‘kill’ mode is not common and scary . When people get killed by their own dog it is almost the same exact thing you experienced. It is very misunderstood by most veterinarians since they don’t generally nerd out on ethology but it is fairly common in dobermans.
But always when you break down the events that lead to the aggression in cases like this it falls into definite pattern of dominance aggression. In the case it was triggered by anticipation of correction from you. The attack on the other dog could have been triggered by something as subtle as something with the body language or trying to lead the direction of the walk.
There are few streams that can help. The ‘schenkel on submission’ lecture is actually relevant because it helps make sense to how simply ‘dominating’ him by holding him down wont necessarily prevent a reoccurrence. There is also a stream on shelter dog triage which talks about the ‘category 5’ dog which is very helpful. Also the ‘dominance aggression’ stream of course. I have had to work with quite a few dogs like that and they are absolutely the highest difficulty rating and dangerous cases. In my opinion, and this is just an opinion, it is not unethical to euthanize a dog that turns on the handler with a relentless attack for minor reason.
That being said some guardian breeds are designed to fight harder the more they are fought, in those cases you need to look at the handling. For instance a hard prong collar correction on an adult guardian breed with high fight drive on a handler without proper bond would be normal to trigger an attack with certain dogs. Those dogs usually are not suitable as pets though for the average person. So lots to consider.
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