Leash aggression

[Jennifer Hughes]

I'm new to Doggie Bag, although I posted several times on Doggie Door before its unfortunate demise. It's great to see the same names here though.

Tanna, my 1 1/2 year old mix (border collie/sheperd? cross) has a bad case of leash agression. We rescued her 8 months ago and she has some herding issues that in general are improving. However, in the last few months she has begun to pre-emptively snarl and bark at other dogs (particularly small ones). She has never bitten a dog and doesn't seem to be interested in that, thank goodness.

This happens ONLY on leash. She is fantastic with all dogs off leash. She doesn't pull on her leash at all unless she sees another dog (or rabbit). We employ NILIF and she has attended several rounds of obedience classes. We socialize her with other dogs ALL the time (hours at the dog park daily) and she gets more than enough exercise (runs 10 km with us 5x/week), long walks everyday...

I've been reading and reading and reading myself into the ground. I understand this can be largely a handler problem, or a result of several incidences with rude dogs that I might not even have realized.

Her rude behaviour is stressing us out. We click and treat her whenever she is quiet on leash near another dog, which is rare. I keep a threshold distance from other dogs, which helps - she notices but doesn't go nuts. I try to let her sniff other pooches and praise the heck out of her but invariably she snaps. I've also gotten a Gentle Leader in the last few weeks, which has improved her behaviour noticeably- when she lunges, her head turns and her body must follow, and then she stays a little quieter and I'm able to click and treat her.

My questions are: what should I do when she snaps and barks? What else can I try to get her leash issues under control?

Help!

[Jo Russell]

Hi, Jennifer. I'm not a terribly experienced dog person, but have amassed a body of knowledge due to reading and reading and reading on the subject, so what I'm going to say may seem tangential and you're free to take it with a pinch of salt.

I remember reading on Turid Rugass's ( http://www.canis.no/rugaas/ ) Q & A page some suggestion that dogs can be stressed by too much exercise and that behavioural problems can sometimes be addressed by reducing exercise and even socialization. This thought seems to go against everything that's more commonly known about dogs, particularly those who are known to be high energy, but may be worth a try.

So, my suggestion is to try spending more time doing mentally tiring things with your likely highly intelligent dog. I'm sure you can find mentally stimulating games (you may already be doing some of these?) by running a search, or perhaps someone else will type some ideas in this thread. Maybe you could try it out by choosing a couple of days each week to be "rest" days, with no park visit and no long runs. Maybe just a short walk when not a lot of stimuli will be encountered, or even no walk at all if you have a yard.

Hope this makes some sense and is at least food for thought. Good luck.

[Amber]

That actually does makes sense to me, Jo. Tanna may be overstimulated and just need a few "down" days with the family.

[Jennifer Hughes]

Thanks for your suggestions. I thought of the over-exercising and we cut back quite a bit for a trial. No difference. We changed around the dog park visits so we were only going once or twice a week (we are back to that right now in fact) - small difference. She's happiest if she gets in a good exercise session daily and mopes a little if she doesn't. :-) She gets lots of down time every day too. Hangs out while I'm working at home. I probably made it sound like we are running her into the ground, but I don't believe we are. Some weeks are quiet, some are really active. We do play lots of "mind games", sometimes in lieu of heavy exercise sessions. I'm trying to teach her new tricks, and we play hide and seek, and she gets a little twisty disk (name??) stuffed with treats that she has to figure out to get the treats out of.

Tanna doesn't seem to be displaying any signs of stress, from over-exercise or other causes.

Any thoughts on using the Halti/Gentle Leader for her leash aggression?

Thanks again.

[Amber]

I've never used one because my dogs don't really pull while on lead...actually one doesn't move AT ALL while on lead, which is something I need to work on myself, lol!...but I have read that where ever the head goes, the body must follow. If this is the case with the Gentle Leader, this may help Tanna on her walks. Do you redirect her attention onto you as soon as YOU see other dogs coming does Tanna usually see them coming first? If you could redirect her attention by a command of "Look" or something like that, and treat her as many times as necessary to get her to not snarl or bark at the other dog.