Greys Behaving Aggressively Towards Excited Dogs

[Guest goldfishngreys]

In my neighborhood there is a Golden Retriever who is very hyper. When she sees my girls, she starts play bowing and darting around on the leash. My two start growling and if one bumps into the other, the growling/snarking gets redirected to the other grey. One of my girls also does this pouncing/rearing up and batting at the dog (is that play?). While this is going on, I’m also pulling on the leashes because I feel that they want to charge after the golden. After a minute of this, the dogs calm down and meet (they just sniff each other briefly and move along). They only seem to do this with dogs that are excited and bouncing around. Are my two just trying to “correct” the rambunctious behavior or do they really want to attack? I don’t want to avoid the neighbor as she is nice and her dog doesn’t mean any harm (plus it would be hard to avoid her). Should I keep muzzles on them during walks? Not sure what to make of all this. Thanks for any advice!

[msjpk]

Do your grey's sit? Can you have them sit and stay until everyone calms down.

I have my Lou do the "watch me" with a treat when we walk and he starts his snarking behavior. I know handling 2 under these conditions is difficult. But best to have a plan so nothing happens. Perhaps having the golden keep his distance until he calms down. Good luck!

[krissy]

Summit will often snark at dogs that start snarking at him first. Other times he just gets really excited and his "snarking" and excited "let's play" behaviours are often kind of similar and I've only recently been able to accurately tell them apart (we've only had him a year). In either case, you may want to avoid tension on the leash as some dogs are leash reactive. I know with my boy that it is more effective for me to ask him to "leave it" or "watch me" than to put pressure on the leash. The first two are usually met with attention on me (this is after a certain amount of training of course) and the second sometimes results in snarking (probably only about 30% of the time).

 

It's also tough when you have TWO dogs you need to work on. Maybe ask your neighbour if she would meet you somewhere with just one of your dogs. You can ask her to stand a little ways off (the closest distance that doesn't result in excitement from either dog) and reward your dog for staying calm and responding to simple commands. Then walk a little closer. Meet up another time with your other dog and do the same. Over time you should be able to get closer and closer without inducing excitement. The key is that any time you decrease the distance between you and the other dog it should only be as much as you can without producing excitement. If your dog gets excitement, put more distance between you until she is calm and reward that.

[Guest Vers]

Here's an article by Suzanne Clothier that may have some pertinent information: He Just Wants to Say "Hi".

 

krissy has good suggestions. A couple of other things to try: teach your dogs, "look at that, now look at me", learn to redirect their focus or give them a task to do before they are over-excited. If you could enlist your neighbor to walk her Golden parallel to you rather than allowing her dog and yours to meet head on, that could help as well.

[Guest goldfishngreys]

Thanks so much for all of the advice. The article by Suzanne is spot-on! I never thought about "rude dogs" from my own dogs' point of view. I will definitely pay more attention to my girls as well as working on the "watch me".

[Guest june]

Here's an article by Suzanne Clothier that may have some pertinent information: He Just Wants to Say "Hi".

 

krissy has good suggestions. A couple of other things to try: teach your dogs, "look at that, now look at me", learn to redirect their focus or give them a task to do before they are over-excited. If you could enlist your neighbor to walk her Golden parallel to you rather than allowing her dog and yours to meet head on, that could help as well.

 

Love the article by Suzanne Clothier! One of my girls is terrific meeting other dogs, people and children. The one exception is obnoxious young dogs that jump on her. If I am approached by someone with a pup like that I warn them ahead of time to please keep their puppy away and tell them what will happen if they jump on her. She always stands quietly by my side and makes no attempt to approach the puppy. I figure they have been fairly warned!

[Guest Greyt_dog_lover]

You can usually see the bad ones comming a mile away. The dogs that are hyper, jumping, jerking on the leash, barking whinning. I will simply keep my dogs moving along so that they cannot meet. I will walk right past them ignoring them. My dogs will take lead from me and ignore the offending dogs as well. If we are at a meet-n-greet or other place where escape is not possible, I simply tell the owner that if they allow their dog to get close to mine, their dog WILL be corrected. Sometimes the owner knows what I am saying, most often they dont. I have had a few times where people have young puppies and I tell them that their puppy is exhibiting inappropriate behavior by jumping up on my dog and my hound is going to do what a momma dog would do. I have had a few people that have said, "really? my puppy needs some manners".

[krissy]

That was a fantastic article! I bookmarked it for future reference.

 

You can usually see the bad ones comming a mile away. The dogs that are hyper, jumping, jerking on the leash, barking whinning.

 

I think it depends on the individual dog as well. Summit is much more tolerant of these loud, noisy, excited dogs than he is of the really quiet dog who approaches him slowly, head on, stiff legged, tail up, ears forward. Two different expressions of rudeness. One more acceptable to my dog than the other. (Don't get me wrong, if that hyper, jumping, leash jerking dog jumps up on Summit, he's going to get snapped at and told off at some point.)

 

Personally, our biggest problem is huskies with blue eyes. Summit sees those blue eyes from 20 ft away and just goes ballistic. I swear he thinks they're demon dogs. I've always wanted him to meet a greyhound with blue eyes and see if he has the same reaction.

[Guest Amber]

Do you mean that after the jumping around, your two greys meet nose to nose with the golden and just greet normally?

 

If that's the case, perhaps they are just getting over-excited and over-eager to meet, because the golden is exciteable and worked up too?