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Deescalating dog aggression

Nik

Well-Known Member
This weekend my sister came into town with her 8 month old mix puppy. Her dog Indie is now 60 lbs and is a mix of collie, staffordshire, rottweiler, lab and unidentified mutt (they did the dna test). Indie is a nervous pup who is also fairly submissive so we thought we would try a puppy play date with all three dogs on neutral turf (our mom's house). Well the second Kahlua saw Indie she went insane with barking and snarling and growling and leaping in the air and lunging. I told her no and walked her away while Sean took Diesel to meet Indie.

The meeting with Diesel and Indie went well. Diesel is super dog friendly and was happy to make a new friend. Indie was nervous but okay with him. When I got Kahlua far enough away that she calmed I just had her sit and watch Diesel and Indie interact. After several minutes of this Kahlua had a very different energy. She wanted to join them but not to attack. I still wasnt ready to let her near them so we all mutually decided to do a joint walk to the park and back. I kept Kahlua a fair distance from the others and the longer the walk went on the more frustrated she was about not being able to join the fun (pulling to try to catch up when she knows better).

As the walk went on I slowly narrowed the distance between the dogs more and more until she was fine walking alongside the others and showed no aggression. Once we got to the park I did some agility work with Kahlua to get her confidence up and everything was going great.

The rest of the walk and back to the house went perfect. By the time we got home they were all able to play in the backyard (with one human always watching over) while we visited.

This went great for a couple of hours. Until Diesel started getting tired. When he gets tired he melts down like a child and starts getting over hyper, over wound up and more barky. So when the other dogs just wanted to relax Diesel would start yellling at them and play bowing at them. The problem is that Indie was frightened by the yelling and play bow and would snap at him (no contact or attempt a contact just a warning snap) and the second Indie snapped at him a switch in Kahlua's brain flipped and she was back on attack mode all fangs and growls and snarls and lunges.

We would pull Kahlua back and settle Diesel and once Diesel was calm and Indie was calm Kahlua would settle. But the instant Diesel would bark or Indie would react to his barking Kahlua would turn into this instant aggressive attack dog. She never made contact. 1. I don't think she really tried to I think it was all bluster and threat and 2. We were right there the whole time and pulled her away the instant she started to act aggressive.

A couple cycles of Diesel's play barking, Indie's snapping and Kahlua's attack mode and we decided to call it a day and head home. The dogs slept like babies the rest of the day.

All in all everything went fairly well there was a long stretch of happy play time and we were able to manage the issues that came up. But it worries me that Kahlua just flips a switch like that so easily. I am not sure if she thought she was protecting Diesel or just didn't like any hint of aggression from another female or what but it was definitely a thing with her. On another note she had no issues with my mom's tiny dogs. She sniffed them and instantly disregarded them altogether so at least that is a plus.