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Hi Teresa,
Thanks for the info – the attack she was involved in was quite nasty, small white fluffy, puppy farm kind of dog, very old and quite aggressive in it’s behaviour, barking at Manny, pulling on the lead towards her. She was off leash and unfortunately she wouldn’t listen to me when the dog started barking at her. Despite stopping for a second as i ran a few metres backwards as soon as i looked back at Manny she took that as a cue to continue her charge at this little dog. She definitely ran at it with the intention of attacking it which was most distressing part. She sees little (or timid, she’s attacked a dog that tried to move away from her while she was sniffing it) dogs as prey and i really want to change that if i can. There has been one of two little dogs that don’t bring this prey drive (if that’s the right term) out in her, the only thing i can identify is that they don’t bark and stand their ground when she runs to them, the others either bark at her or run away and she chases them.
She’s fine with a muzzle, we got a basket muzzle similar to the one in the video straight away and she wears that all the time when we go to the park although i still don’t let her off the leash.
With de-sensitizing her, the difficulty is finding dogs who aren’t walking. I’ll keep working on phase 2 obedience but what is the best strategy to decondition her to small dogs? My in-laws have two Maltese X shitzu, should i work with them and ask that they simply use their dogs as a distraction? How do you de-condition dog aggressive dogs when you rehab them? Otherwise i can’t think of a way that i can find a dog, get a distance away and do obedience without the dog either constantly moving away or closer to us.
The other difficulty is she refuses food when we step outside the house, she loves sticks and balls but that doesn’t work with the muzzle. Or should i keep the muzzle of when she’s training on-leash?
Sorry for the millions of questions, i really want to get this right and i can’t have another stuff up if i’m training her around other dogs.
Dan
