Hang on in a previous post you were saying that it's all about respect and a dog will only follow you if they respect you, so this is about leadership, and you were stressing the importance of this.

I on the other hand am saying that the two go hand in hand, you need to establish leadership by controlling resources/activities (not through dominance), AND you need to train the dog.

If you focus on the OP's problem of large strong lab pulling on leash, then in my opinion the approach of establishing leadership AND training, is a practical approach. Of course the OP can go to group training classes, but I would recommend she makes sure the trainer uses positive methods, leash corrections etc. simply aren't necessary.

This is where I disagree and is unfortunately the mistake many dog owners and indeed certain trainers make. A dog with behaviour problems should not be subjected to harsh or punitive methods. For example if a dog displays fear aggression then the last thing you want to do is pop or jerk the leash everytime another dog is present or approaching, this just says to the dog "hey I was right, the presence of other dogs makes bad things happen."

What you do want to do it take the dog through a behaviour modification program by applying desensitisation and counter conditiniong, using both classical conditioning and operant conditioning. By doing this the fear aggressive dog will eventually see other dogs as predictors of good things. Yes, it takes time, consistency, patience, there is no quick fix, but I'd rather have this outcome.

But this does not help change Max's behaviour, he will still display aggression right. So this approach just distracts him, but doesn't change his emotional response.

Unfortunately many dogs are under-socialised and therefore lack social skills, they don't mean to be rude, but they simply never learned social skills. But again this is something that can be trained, and clicker training is a wonderul way of doing this for such dogs.

Positive training methods would work for your dogs, but you would first need to change your mindset and beliefs about what it is dogs need from us humans. In a sense your belief in dominance/pack theory is holding you back.

So I guess on many posts we will just have to agree to disagree.

You might find it interesting to read these two blogs, both have fearful reactive dogs, and they have made great progress with their dogs using positive methods.

Boulder Dog » Blog Archive » Magic “Touch” for Fearful Dogs

Working with a fearful, scared or shy dog

I have suggested these because 90% of dogs display aggression because of fear


Apologies to OP for going off topic

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Thank you for the links, it always good to hear success stories about other people x

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Lilly, Max, Henry and Sammy. The joys of my life!

I have problems with Zeus pulling sometimes. I use the halty to aid me walking Zeus. He's generally okay with me, just my sister and dad moan that he's too strong and pulls.

Doesn't help that my dad takes him out on a extendable lead and lets him wonder off when he gets to the field. *am I right in saying this?*

But he's slowly getting better.

Completely agree Personally, I would try a headcollar with this dog (just to break the intensity of the pulling habit and make it a bit easier on the dogs neck and owners hands/arms) and couple that with some good heel training and I would have thought that would sort it with time and commitment and the headcollar would no longer be needed. Labs love their food so, I would have thought clicker training would be ideal. With some really high value food rewards like liver cake or frankfuter.

Completely agree again. I think that miss diagnosis of problem behaviours- such as aggression when the dog is labelled as a "dominant dog" is very often a massive injustice to our pets. Dominance/pack theory was a theory that was developed observing wolves and whilst there is evidence that there is something in it, much research has been done on behaviour in canines and how they learn etc...
Like you said in cases of fear aggression, negative/punishing methods just reinforce the fear. If a dog is fearful of other dogs and everytime the dog reacts you spray the dog in the face with water (attempting to "correct" the reaction) you very often just reinforce the negative associations with other dogs. Also correcting a dog for a warning growl can also lead to increased aggression in some cases- as the dog *may* skip parts of the aggression scale and show a more severe reaction.
These sorts of problems are sometimes seen with resource guarding- a problem which many associate with the "dominant dog". It has since been suggested that this is not the case and that resource guarding is actually a form of fear- "fear of loosing desired object" (I think there is a book by Jean Donaldson called "Mine!" that my friend says was really good that tackled this problem- not read it myself). Often, correcting the dog when they growl as a warning in cases of resource guarding worsen the aggression as the dog realises that their previous reaction did not work- therefore the use a higher level of aggression.

Like you said behaviour modification IMO is in the long run the best way of tackling fear and fear aggression related problems as it modifies the emotional state of the dog in "fearful situation" and changes the dog's perception of the situation from "something to be feared" to a "positive" situation to be in.

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PMSL!!!

Lots of dogs pull on the way TO the field, but don't pull on the way back... presumably they don't respect their owner on the way there but suddenly respect them on the way back?

And there was me thinking that they were probably not pulling on the way home because they were more tired......

Just out of interest, how many dogs do you have? Are they rescue's or have you had them since a pup?

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Lilly, Max, Henry and Sammy. The joys of my life!

I trained Sky to walk properly from as young as possible. The best way I found was to put her in a harness and everytime she pulled, stop and pull her back until she's beside you.

I don't mind her walking in front of me, but I do not like her pulling at all. She's 6 months and already a big dog so I need the control.

Of course, she still pulls when she wants to sniff something really interesting but other than that, she walks really well.

You should be able to do this with your dog, even though he is now two. Good luck, patience and perserverence will win in the end x

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I've got two - one from a pup, one from the age of 7. How is that relevant?

Lol. Very good point. My dog used to do this when he was younger. Pull on the 10 metre stretch towards the park and but other than that on the way there and back walked well. So he slipped into a state of lack of respect for me in that 10 metre stretch? Not so sure about that one myself. I think he was just keen to get to the park and have a good walk.

He soon learnt to stop when he realised that every time he did pull on that stretch I'd just turn around, so he was better off walking nicely as he knew how to and getting to the park quicker.

I can see where you are coming from goodvic2- but in my opinion "dominance" and leadship isn't by any means the only thing that dictates canine behaviour. Everyone has their own perspective on things though, so fair enough. That's just my opinion on it

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Thing is, taking the "going through doorways before your dog" thing as an example - chances are, if you start making a point of making your dog wait for you to go first, especially if you teach using treats or praise, then the dog WILL start taking more notice of you, become more responsive etc. But it won't be because of any "dominance" malarkey - it's just that you have become more worthy of note. More INTERESTING.

I'm not saying that some aspects of rank reduction etc don't work - simply that they aren't working because of anything to do with dominance. They work because of the training aspect.