Jealous Dog?

[alexis]

CHarlie is a staffie. We have had her since she was 6 months old and she is now 2 and a half. She has always been friendly with other dogs apart from one dog who insisted on biting her neck and attacking her every time he saw us and then she retaliated but made lots of noise and pinned the other dog down and never did any damage. Apart from this one dog ( a male staffie pup of 20 weeks of age) she has been fine.

In March she had surgery on her knee and for a while since then she was only allowed very short walks and on lead only and we didn't really meet other dogs. Since OH has been working longer hours we no longer meet any of the friendly dogs we used to and there are some not very friendly dogs around where OH lives so we have been avoiding most dogs.

There was one dog called Cassie who she has played with for a long time and been fine. Last time we met her OH was stroking Cassie and Charlie got in between him and attacked Cassie, knocking out one of her teeth which took us all by surprise.

WE met Cassie again on Monday and things weren't too bad although Charlie did snap at her for barking at her and when I stroked Cassie she got between us and snapped again but then went back to playing with her ball.

Ideally I'd like to stop anything like this happening again and realise that it would benefit Charlie greatly if she could walk with some other dogs. However we are restricted in that OH works shifts and sometimes long hours in SW London and his housemates often walk Charlie (on lead) and that Charlie often comes up to Liverpool to see me and we don't know anyone with dogs here.

So has anyone got any advice? DO u think she is behaving like this due to jealousy/possessiveness of us?

Thanks

[Muriel]

First thoughts - aggression is most often due to pain or fear, as she's had surgery and agression is only since then, I'd suspect some residual pain? If it's not that, then Bach Flower Essences are very helpful with fears and all emotional problems, they just gently help the problem to be worked through. Obviously you need to work out what the fears/worries/emotions are first, but picking the wrong remedy does no harm, it would simply bouce off the system. As she's been attacked at least once, Star of Bethlehem could be helpful as it's for trauma. They work way back, even to something that happened years ago.

 

The other possibilty that strikes me is - does she think she is leader of the pack? If so, a simple demotion program will sort that.

[K9Fran]

When I first got Missy she tried to tell me who I could and couldn't fuss. So we worked on rewarding her when she was a distance away from the dog who was being fussed and slowly reduced the distance at which food reward would keep her calm. Nowadays she's mostly fine, but if that 'look' flashes across her face I stop fussing the other dog and turn my back on Missy to signal that I disaprove of her reaction.