Sure-Fire Tips For You to Stop Dog Aggression
Territorial, Behavior, Dog on Dog Aggression

All dogs suffer from dog aggression in one form or another. This is just a natural instinct in a domesticated dog and while the domestication helps to eliminate a large portion of the anger, they still suffer from aggression on some level. This aggression can be seen each and every time a stranger walks near the house resulting in the dog barking and wanting to protect his dominance in your home. Read on and learn how to stop dog aggression!

What Causes Dog Aggression?

Your dog simply wants to defend his home as he or she considers it to be their territory. When a person walks to close to the territory, the dog will bark or may even growl at the stranger to let them know that they are in the dog's territory. In most cases this is not an issue it helps with keeping strangers away from your home but in some cases this aggression may escalate.

1) Let's take the mailman for an example. The mailman is a natural enemy of the domesticated dog for a very important reason. The mailman walks up to the house to drop off a package and the dog barks to ward him or her off. When the mailman leaves, the dog assumes that his or her barking drove him away and thus creates more anger and tension as the dog's behavior has been reinforced.

2) Driving in your car, your dog will bark as you fly past other people and animals. It is obvious to you that these strangers will never approach your car as it is driving down the street, but each time the dog barks and the stranger does not approach, he assumes victory and as a result the behavior is once again reinforced.

3) When a dog is sitting at a door and barking, do not yell at him as this will excite him or her and will lead to more barking in the future. The dog is barking at a stranger in most cases and when you yell at him or her, it is like saying that the barking is ok and simply reinforces the dogs behavior and increases his or her level of aggressiveness.

4) When you have guests in your home and you choose to take your dog and lock him up in a crate or another room, this can cause an increase in aggressiveness. The simplest way to look at it is that the dog can smell and hear the strangers in the home but cannot do anything about it. This causes stress as well as anxiety and leads to an increase in tension.

You can help stop dog aggression by consulting a professional dog trainer. This is the easiest way because us normal folks don't typically understand what is going on in the mind of our dogs. My advice is to hire a pro and let them handle it. Doing this will save you years of stress and frustration.

by James D Nash - 10/02/08

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