I’ll start off by saying that he has a bad past life. He was obviously abused by his previous owners and straight up abandoned in the woods. He has bad anxiety that he is on Prozac for, and it seems to be helping for the most part.
Lately he has been grabbing random shit and snapping and growling when someone tries to take it. He’ll grab the stuff off tables and counters to chew, so it’s not like he’s finding random stuff on the floor.
Last night he grabbed tape off of a table and when my sister tried to take it, he bit her hand. It wasn’t hard and barely left a mark, but it is still incredibly concerning. I was the victim of a severe dog attack as a child, so any aggression is not okay. I don’t want to have to get rid of him because he’s my baby boy and I love him so much.
I have no idea how to stop this behavior. I’ve never had a dog act like this. It started in August and has gotten worse in the past month because our living conditions changed. I broke my ankle/leg and I’m laid up for a while at my parents’ place.
Do y’all have any suggestions?
How did you assert your dominance? I don’t want to be rough with my dog and make him more anxious.
Do not listen to this guy. This is such a dangerous, outdated and bad advice that will only scare your dog and worst will make him bite you. Get some real help with professionals in your area. Abused dogs are really hard to train so please stay away from advice from strangers on the internet.
Oh yeah. I’m not going to do anything to traumatize my dog. I just didn’t know if there are ways to assert your dominance in a non-aggressive way.
I did occasionally do nose thwaps, not hard, but it was what I was taught. It was rare though, and I doubt it was actually necessary. I would growl, and if necessary storm after them and loom over them. That would always get the roll over belly up surrender posture.
I’ve tried that and he would just get very scared. I don’t want him to be scared.
I see. I would think about a tiny amount of it being okay. Not very much at all, and once he surrenders, then you can immediately take back the desired object and withdraw. Then like, a couple minutes go by so nothing is confusing, and you counteract the fear you just used with some lovings, since you got what you wanted, and you want to reward the obedient behavior.
Basically employing just enough fear to halt his aggression, but then no more, and going back to using just positive reinforcement.
I’m no expert, incidentally. This is all just old anecdote from my youth, and now I’m getting away from that into more theory and shit, so I’m getting even further out from my wheelhouse. Kinda just waiting now for another Lemming to tell me what a dumbass I am, and explain more modern dog training methods. lol
Not gonna call you a dumbass when you’re open about this being anecdotal only, but yes, all of the ‘assert dominance’ stuff has been pretty thoroughly debunked. At best you’ll get a dog who fears you just the ‘right’ amount to behave how you want them to when you are there, but they don’t have any actual skills and the behaviour does not transfer well to other people and situations. And if their new anxiety does overcome their fear, the resulting behaviours will be much worse than what you started with.
Do you have any literature recommendations that might cover the latest understanding?
Not on hand, I’d just be googling for it at the moment. I did recently save a super informative comment about the history of the training schools of thought, I know it’s not an actual source but it should provide enough to search for if you want to go deeper. Comment link: https://possumpat.io/comment/2354604
Thank you. It’s good enough for me, I don’t own a dog, so it’s more just a curiosity thing.