How are you reacting to this situation? You say she acts this way for the first 5 mins, what does she do afterwards? How is your body language to her when you see a dog walking in your direction? If she is fine after meeting the dog and relaxes after, im thinking you may be causing some of it and not even realizing it. By that i mean when you first leave the house you may be anticipating running into another dog and become tense and then when you see a dog in the distance you tighten up on the lead and become more tense which the dog can sense and im thinking when you realize there is no problem you relax which makes her relax. Were you the one that just posted recently about her pulling on walks? Does she pull you towards the dogs she is meeting?
I am fully aware I might be part of the problem at this point, but only because she has proven that she will not react well to other dogs. This has been going on since she was a puppy. At that point I had no reason to think she wouldn't like other dogs. She lived with a bunch of other dogs and was fine.
I do try really hard to not react to other dogs myself and to just keep her moving when other dogs are around. I don't tighten up her leash and I'm not really tense when other dogs are around. I mean, I have her on a leash and she can't actually get to them so I'm not worried she's going to eat one of them. Last week an unleashed Newfie ran up to us while we were walking. I could tell he was super-friendly and probably wasn't going to pick a fight with Athena or anything. Her leash was loose and we just stood still. After about two seconds, she growled and lunged at him and he ran off.
We have had more success with a long line on her when she is around off-leash dogs. She will threaten them but they can move away fast enough to stay safe.
So, I guess I just don't know how to work on this. Like, I know she doesn't react well to new dogs. So how do I teach her to be non-reactive without her being reactive? Does that make sense. Everything I read says to find their safe distance and work from there. That's fine. We can be across the street. We can follow dogs. She doesn't care so much about that. If a dog is walking toward her, we will have a problem. And I can't do treats for counter-conditioning because she won't take them.
So, yeah. I fully expect her to act aggressively toward new dogs because she always has. It's like I need practice dogs to work with. Most people here just look at her like she's some sort of demon-spawn and like we are horrible dog owners. But we've socialized the crap out of her since we brought her home. She has like 4 dog friends that she loves.
She wanted to kill the puppy when we brought him home. Since he was ours too, we just let her work it out. She barked and growled for like a minute and then she was fine.
I'm hoping a behaviorist will also be able to point out anything I'm doing to make the situation worse too. It's just hard for me to figure out her triggers, and my reactions while trying to make sure she doesn't attack the other dogs.