QUESTION:
I have a dog who seems insecure or has a lot of watchdog behavior in him. He will growl and bark when people come to visit. On a walk the other day, he snapped at someone who crossed the street to say hello to us. Of course, it makes me nervous wondering whether he may cause someone harm eventually. He’s escaped the leash a few times and then he will run straight at people while jumping up and growling. I’m not exactly sure how to deal with this behavior.

He’s a 21 months old German Shepherd Dog. My husband and I have discussed whether it’s safe to keep him as we have a 7 years old son. He’s fine with our son, but the other day a friend of our son came over, and the dog run straight into the boy’s face with his hackles raised from head to tail and growling. He seems aggressive at times. We’ve had many similar experiences. Is this normal behavior, and do you have any suggestions as to how we can deal with this problem?

ANSWER:
This is normal behavior for a dog who has become insecure with people, and I train dogs like yours every week. Either he has been punished and scolded for jumping up on people, so that he has learned to associate people with unpleasentness, or he has had his leash jerked, with the same result. There may be other causes as well, but these are the most common ones. Of course there are ways to train your dog, and I prefer the ones I have developed because they seem effective with lasting results, and they are fairly easy to carry out.

However, in order to learn to do it right you will need help from a trainer. First and foremost, you need to make sure that the dog is prevented from jumping up on people. This is done by 1) keep him on a leash, on adequate distance to people, 2) block the doorways so that he can’t get to visitors, 3) do not keep him tied up alone outside, and 4) increase the distance to people when you’re out walking, and other practical efforts. The purpose of these efforts is to remove the dog’s opportunity to jump up on anyone. Simultaneously, you need to start training the dog. The goal of this training is to teach the dog how to behave with people, and even more so, to teach him an alternative behavior – that it is possible to walk away from trouble than scaring scary things away.

The dog may have begun this not so pleasant behavior in a period where both dogs and kids can be rather difficult to deal with, and he has probably had his behavior reinforced in some way rather than subdued. Also, if you have taken him to a class, this may have caused him to act the way he is. Unfortunately we see many examples of dogs who learn to act out during dog classes because the expectations are too high and the circumstances with many dogs close by, noises, humans, etc, gets too much.

Fortunately it’s not too late. If you can protect the dog from the problematic situations during a period and start training him, things will get better soon. In addition, I advise that the dog is examined for potential stress problems in order to get a complete picture. That’s why finding a trainer is necessary, but it need to be one that will not use punishment during training as punishment will most certainly convice the dog that humans are in fact dangerous.

Turid Rugaas