Well, as lovable, comfortable and cute Mr. Skeeter is with our immediate family that lives currently in our home, he’s shown signs of fear aggression with people outside of his little, intimate sphere.
Yesterday was one of his bad days. When Zander stopped by the house for a bit, he barked at him. When Zander tried to pet him, Skeeter growled and snapped at him. After a lengthy time-out outside, and then on his blankie, I petted Skeeter to let him know I forgave him. All seemed well until a family friend tried to pet Skeeter (under my supervision) on the side of his face. That area is usually okay with him; he really doesn’t like to be petted on the top of his head, which I guess is a sign of dominance to a dog. Even with me right there, Skeeter snapped. Another friend who was here visiting, but who didn’t see either snapping episode, tried to pet Skeeter as he laid on his blankie— this resulted in a third snap.
No skin was broken in any of these instances, but I fear that if left to smolder that we will have a bite incident on our hands at some point. I’ve been doing some research on fear aggression in dogs, and the prognosis isn’t good I’m afraid. From what I’ve read so far, even with intensive treatment and behavior modification, the fear aggression can be contained but never eliminated.
Skeeter is a great dog. He can be so loving and playful. I want to do all I can to help him. Do you have any stories you can share with me on how you’ve handled a dog with fear aggression? A refresher: he’s a young (approximately a year old) Australian Cattle Dog mix. I know some of what he’s exhibiting relates to his breed characteristics, but there’s something else there beyond the basic instincts of his breed.
Thank you in advance.
Unfortunately, I can’t share anything helpful. We had an Australian Shepherd/Blue Heeler mix that we raised from a puppy. He was always a nervous, fearful dog. The attention they pay to detail is part of the breed, but if they have that fear issue, too, then any little change freaks them out. If my husband put on a hat, the dog didn’t know who he was. Vases of flowers freaked him out, as did balloons. One night, when the babysitter (a regular in our household) was playing “chase the baby” with the smallest of the fries, the dog chased and bit her. We chose to regard that as the dog trying to protect the little child, not realizing those were shrieks of fun, not fear. However, when he was three years old and the baby was two, things went haywire. The child was running in the backyard, making noise, and the dog suddenly, with my husband right there, made a beeline for the child, knocked him down and bit him.
After that, I called the local no-kill sanctuary and told them the story. The woman on the phone said, “Put him down. I’ve got nine others just like that and there’s not a damn thing you can do. You didn’t hear it from me, but put him down.”
It was an awful decision to have to make, but our vet agreed that we couldn’t trust him, and it woudn’t be fair to have him sent to another household knowing that he had that potential, so we did euthanize him.
Maybe, though, with your dog, he just learns that when you have company, he can go to his crate and have a treat. He snaps because he wants to be left alone, so maybe that’s a reasonable approach–give him a place where he is safe from being petted by people he doesn’t know well.
This is a largely useless comment, sorry.
No, please don’t apologize. Thank you for sharing your story. I’m so sorry that your dog turned on the smallest of the fries, and that you had to put your dog down. I understand why you had to, and I’m afraid we may get to the point someday of having the make the same decision.
I’ve been kicking crate training around. My husband was emphatically anti-crate training, due the experiences we had with Miss Virginia, who dances to the vihuela of a different mariachi band (my Cinco de Mayo reference of the day). When we were in dog obedience class for Mr. Skeeter, however, and crate training was suggested to us, he began to warm up to the idea.
The one thing I have noticed, prior to Saturday, is that Mr. Skeeter has always reacted to strangers with light colored hair.
That being said, Tee has the lightest hair of anyone I know (and helped gain him the nickname Saltine, along with his undying affinity for saltine crackers) and Skeets is fine with him. I’m trying to remember if Rosie had light colored hair when we first brought Mr. Skeeter home, and he growled at her— her hair is black now. He’s been fine with her after the first week we had him; now I’m concerned he’ll turn on one of us without provocation.
Pepper has a lot of “issues” including reacting aggressively with strangers although she has not bitten anyone except the person who was actually wielding a hidden weapon. Anyway, the owner of the dog daycare place she went when we lived in Arizona recommended a student dog behaviorist to us to work with. She was a working veterinarian getting advanced training in dog behavior. She was able to help us with some behavioral modification techniques and was able to prescribe medication (e.g. doggie Prozac) if it turned out that was needed. However, we worked on the behavioral techniques with great improvement, and never wound up going the drug route.
You can find board certified veterinary behaviorists here:
http://www.dacvb.org/
[...] for their responses about fear aggression in dogs. After looking at the link Kirsten posted in her comment, along with some further internet research, I contacted a local animal behaviorist. She emailed [...]
I got my dog from a shelter about a year ago. He was about six months and extremely underweight. After we got him home we found that he was also afraid of seemingly everything except people. Me and my boyfriend seriously considered returning him (Prince, a Chow Shep mix) about a month or two later after his fearful behavior continued and didn’t seem to get better.
A few examples: Early own (when we’d had him about two weeks) we took him to a friends house who had two dogs. He was scared of the smaller one reasonably because the small dog was always trying to assert his dominance. However, we took him on a walk and ran into a very playful puppy that was 4 pounds socking wet. My dog freaked out and ran away (breaking his collar in the process).
I’d be doing laundry and my dog would get very timid with ears down, tail tucked, etc. He would leave the room but eventually come back in. Once I started folding the clothes he’d run just outside the room and watch cautiously from there. At the time, I thought this was progress.
First time walking my dog when it was raining bad enough to have an umbrella. As soon as I opened the umbrella he freaked out and jumped out of the harness we purchased him during training and ran in the middle of the street. I didn’t realize it was the umbrella until he kept running from me as I was try to get him to come back. I had to drop the umbrella in order for him to let me near him.
My boyfriend would take out the garbage and he’d run from the bag.
We were talked into giving him time to get over his fears and get used to use. I thought things were getting much better until one day he had chewed up an item of mine for the 2nd time. I knew something was wrong because instead of greeting me when I came home he walked away tail tucked and ears down, very unsure if he wanted to come to me but, he finally did. I found my chewed up charger and while holding my dog, I simply showed it to him. He got really scared and even started to shake so I let him go and he ran into his cage. (Mind you, I had never once physically harmed him). After a little while, I reached into the cage, trying to get him out and let him know it was ok (as he wouldn’t come out as he would normally) and he showed his teeth to me for the first time. I left him alone as I was frightened by his reaction. I told my boyfriend and once he did leave his cage and my bf approached him, he showed his teeth and ran under one of our tables. My boyfriend went to get him and he got bit (broken skin and plenty of blood) He ran into the cage and we left him there for the night. After talking about it we figured he was frightened and cornered and probably would have ran again had he had room so we let it go as a learning experience. Months later we were taking him to the vet. He was on the table, frightened and uneasy. My boyfriend was on one side of the table and the doc was on the other. Prince suddenly mad a very ferocious and meaningful snap towards my boyfriend. The doc asked if he was ok and explained that that should never have happened. If Prince was going to bite he should have went after the vet and not his owner. This is when we started to consider giving him back to the pound. About two days later I came home from work and was cuddling with Prince for about 20 mins on the couch. Out of nowhere he bit me and got off of the couch. I guess he was irritated at that point and, although it didn’t break the skin and really didn’t even hurt, I was frightened of him yet again. He immediately came towards me (now almost face to face) and I wasn’t sure if he was going crazy and about to attack or if he simply wanted to play. Either way I wasn’t comfortable and I made the decision that we had to take him back. I’m sorry that this is so long but it hasn’t been 24 hrs. since I dropped Prince off. I was originally going to ask if there was anything else I could have done (doggy medicines, etc.) and I would still like your advice. Writting this has made me feel a little better about my decision but please let me know how you feel.
Hi Sharika,
I am so sorry that you and Prince had to go through all this. It sounds to me that he had a major case of fear anxiety. I’m not an animal behaviorist, just a pet owner, but from your description and what I’ve read about fear aggression, your situation sounds a lot like the stories and descriptions I’ve read.
I’m not sure there is anything else you could have done to help Prince. Bringing in an animal behaviorist may have helped some, but it is very concerning that he was so aggressive toward you and your boyfriend. With that precedent set by Prince, and growing more over time and in intensity, it sounds like it was becoming a dangerous situation for your homelife.
Skeeter is showing signs of improvement but I’d still like to work with an animal behaviorist. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point that we trust him implicitly, as we do with Miss Virginia, but I have hope. Coming up with the coin to pay the animal behaviorist has been an issue.
Skeeter growls a warning when he’s perturbed. He doesn’t do that at all with Lew; he does it occasionally with me, but it is rare and low. He will do it more with the kids (they’re all young adults), but again it is low and we all heed the warning and let him be. We speak with all of our guests who visit our house and let them know they need to ignore Skeeter, and if Skeeter does approach them to not pet his head or face. If he is startled (sudden movements or loud noises bother him) he will snap if alarmed. We let our guests know that he can’t be trusted at this point and to be wary of him, even if he accepts a pet after approaching them because that good feeling can change at a moment’s notice.
I’m sorry for your loss. We grow so attached to our pets– they are a part of our family. Fear aggression can be managed but not cured, I think. Sometimes it’s too ingrained to be managed and it sounds like you did everything you could to help Prince. I wish I had more information, or an answer for you, but I don’t. I wish I could be of more help than just offering my empathy. Take care.
wow how disturbing these feeds are -you put your dog to sleep? so when your child gets into a fist fight or has some social/behavioral problems when he/she reaches highschool-please don’t invite me to the funeral after you euthanize him/her
Michelle,
You obviously haven’t read much of this blog, or even thoroughly read this particular post. No, I did not euthanize my dog. He has behavior problems that are associated with fear aggresssion. I cannot completely trust him, either, and have been trying to use behavior modification to help him.
Another respondent to this thread had to euthanize her dog because her dog attacked her child. This was the second time her dog bit someone, after being frightened by noise and movement that was not aggressive toward anyone. The respondent did this only after consulting her dog’s vet and a local expert she trusted. It was not done lightly or on a whim. I thank her for sharing her story— I know it had to be hard to do. I do not appreciate you making snap judgments, especially when it is obvious from your flippant comments that you didn’t even bother reading this post very closely at all.
And FYI— most of my children are adults, out of high school, which you would have known if you’d bother to read anything else here.
I sincerely hope you do not care for any pets because you come across as a very immature person and that you do not look into things very closely. Having a pet is a huge responsibility, and sometimes you have to make painful, gut wrenching decisions, which it sounds like you may be unable to deal with.
Michelle,
You are an idiot. We just had to put down a foster Rottie boy who was aggressive. He tried to bite several people, got into a two fights with my senior dog, and then bit my boyfriend. Aggression is very difficult to deal with. We tried everything and he was not adoptable. You put at risk everyone is society. Some of these dogs are just not wired right. It’s because of poor breeding, poor training when they are pups, anything. They are too damaged and it becomes too much of a liability. We loved our foster and had big aspirations in him finding a loving wonderful home. But you can not adopt out a loose canon. We released him from the demons he had, whatever they were. And he is now at peace. We tried, our life revolved around him. Some, you just can not save and unless you have been there, you have no idea what it’s like dealing with an aggressive 100 lb dog. We are heartbroken, but he is at peace now.
I know this is not to recent, but the problem here is a very common problem. Dogs by nature are fearful, when anybody gets a new puppy or dog the common advice is to socialize, socialize, socialize. That’s all well and good, except most people don’t have the luxury of time nor the inclination to spend vasts amounts of time socializing their dog.
A related problem to this is, there are a lot of dogs that it doesn’t matter how much you socialize them. If we don’t know how to relax them in those situations, we will see very little to no progress with that dogs fear aggression issues.
Also what will exasperate the problem is the ability or more accurately the inability for a lot of trainers to successfully deal with these problems.
On a final note, we will often have a lot of different explanations as to what caused the behavior in a dog, those are not exactly accurate. This is normal behavior that is misunderstood. And quite frankly most people are not suppose to understand these behaviors. After all everybody drives a car, but how many of us understand how to fix that car when something goes wrong.
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i too have a fear agressive dog. stanley is 1 of 6 dogs in my family. my daughter picked up a stray lab spaniel mix who i immediately took to my vet they vaccinated and dewormed and then we found out she was pregnant .8 puppies later. i wound up keeping 2 of them. stella and stanley. did dna because i saw some odd things popping up with them it confirmed they were spaniel lab collie shetland sheepdog mix. all my dogs sociialized. stella and stanley in dogs classes by 4 months top of the class, both have gone to 4 classes, now 2 and 1/2 yrs old. i took them to meet ups at pet stores , all daily 2 mile walks swimming frisbee, ball chucks and i continue obedience. after third set of classes took stanley to dog park. he was petrified, talk between leg and just stood there, i took him out. he gets along fine with other dogs in our home and people he knows. problem is on walks he pulls and barks towards other dogs on leash and in yards. most of the time im feeding treats and can manage. people that come up now hes does a low growl and cries. its very frustrating, especially when people walk by and look at u like what did u do to your dog. i have always been kind and positive with my dogs exercise them and only the best food and care. it is very frustrating and saddens me to see my dog this way. stanley and stella are crated when people come to house and when they are calm they are let out if people are not fearful and then there fine. i dont see a change its the same thing and this have been going on for 1 and 1/2 years. very territorial too. stanley bit a worker at my house arm at 1 year old when 3 of the dogs came on the porch and they were jumping on each other and the guy reached down and hstanley chomped. no blood but a pretty showy bruise. some times hes okay with people on walks but is better when i talk to people and they ignore him and he can approach them on his terms. went to another dog class last year and was fine there. even liked a couple of dogs. i think i will always have a problem with him and just have to be extra cautious,but i feel i am doing the best i can. any comments would be appreciated. thanks