Socializing An Aggressive Dog
Every dog, yours included, is an instinctively aggressive creature and so socializing an aggressive dog is very important in our society.
Aggression is built in to dogs for times when they needed to hunt, defend themselves from other creatures, and to defend resources such as food, a place to sleep, and a mate.
Extensive breeding programs over the centuries aimed at socializing an aggressive dog have minimized and refined these tendencies significantly.
However, the fact still remains: dogs are physically capable of inflicting serious harm, you only have to look at their teeth to see this statement is true.
But that doesn’t mean that we, as dog lovers and owners, are entirely helpless when it comes to handling our dogs.
There’s a lot that we can do to prevent aggression from rearing its ugly head in the first place and even if prevention hasn’t been possible (for whatever reason), there are still steps that we can take to socialize an aggressive dog efficiently.
Aggression towards strangers
It is pretty easy to tell when a dog is nervy around strange people.
You will notice that he is jumpy and on the alert, either he can’t sit still and is constantly fidgeting, leaping at the smallest sound, and pacing around barking and whining; or he’s very still indeed.
Your dog will probably be sitting rock-steady in one place.
Maybe staring hard at the object of his suspicions such as a visitor, the mailman or a stranger approaching him on the street.
Why does it happen?
There’s one major reason why a dog doesn’t like strange people: he’s never had the chance to get used to them.
Remember, your dog relies 100% on you to broaden his horizons for him.
Taking him on outings is an essential part of your contribution to socializing an aggressive dog, without being taken on lots of outings to see the world and realize for himself, through consistent and positive experiences, that the unknown doesn’t necessarily equal bad news for him, how can he realistically be expected to relax in an unfamiliar situation?
What can I do about it?
Socialization is an incredibly important aspect of your dog’s upbringing, in fact, it’s pretty hard to overemphasize just how important it is.
Socializing your dog means exposing him from a young age (generally speaking, as soon as he’s had his vaccinations) to a wide variety of new experiences, new people, and new animals.
Extracted from the popular book and video series by Daniel Stevens called SitStayFetch.
