Remember that it’s the sum total of a dog’s stress that pushes him over his bite threshold, so the more of his stressors you can identify and get rid of, the more you’ll ease tensions between your canine family members. Stress in dogs can happen anytime and be anywhere. The more stressors you can remove from his world, the less likely it is that he will use his teeth – the canine equivalent of pulling out a. To resolve aggression issues between your own dogs, you’ll want to identify not only the immediate trigger for the aggression – fighting over a meaty bone, for example – but also everything in your dog’s life that may be stressful to him. From that perspective, “snow aggression” is a real possibility: With recent record snowfalls reaching a total of 50 inches here, the resulting decrease in exercise opportunities, as well as higher stress levels of human family members who aren’t fond of snow (guilty!), can be stressors for the canine family members. When tensions increase between Missy and Lucy, I need to look for possible added stressors in their environment that are pushing them closer to, and yes, sometimes over, their bite threshold. Getting cut off on the freeway is simply the last straw – the final stressor that pushes him over his “bite threshold.” This is the guy who was likely laid off his job, lost his retirement investments, had his wife tell him this morning that she was leaving him, and just got notice in the mail that the bank is foreclosing on his home. 38 revolver because someone cut him off on the freeway and blows away the unfortunate offending driver, you can bet there was more going on for him than just a simple traffic violation. When you read about the man who pulls out his. You can compare it to incidents of “road rage” in humans. With the very rare exception of idiopathic aggression – at one time called “ rage syndrome,” “Cocker rage,” or “Springer rage” and grossly over-diagnosed in the 1960s and ’70s – aggression is the result of a stress load that pushes a dog over his bite threshold. Why do dogs attack other dogs in the house? Far from a case of dog sibling rivalry, when one dog attacks the other in the house, the reason is stress. I can’t give you a tidy explanation as to why, but I’m beginning to put more stock in the explanation jokingly offered by my dog-trainer colleague, Jennifer Swiggart, CPDT-KA, PMCT, when she called it “snow aggression.” Why Do Dogs Fight? Even our own Lucy and Missy, a Cardigan Corgi and Australian Shepherd who don’t always get along seamlessly, seem to have experienced an increase in relationship tensions this winter. I’ve had a spate of these clients in recent weeks. By far the most difficult and most distressing presentations of tension between dogs are interdog aggression cases: dogs in the same family who aren’t getting along with each other. As a professional behavior consultant who works with aggressive dogs (dogs with challenging aggressive behaviors), I probably see more than my fair share of it. Hey, we humans are a social species, and we certainly don’t all get along! Two dogs fighting within the same household is unhappily common in our world. Knowledgeable dog people are quite aware that not all dogs get along with each other, despite the fact that canis lupus familiaris (domestic dog) is a social species. An aggressive dog (a dog who displays aggression at other dogs) is a serious matter!
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