wally’s dog aggression

I haven’t really had any other dogs around wally.  I noticed that he growled and snapped at my neighbor’s dogs, a pitbull and a Rhodesian ridgeback, who are never on leashes and never listen to their owner when he gives them commands.  they would swarm him and get in his face, and he would snap.  I thought this was relatively normal.  these dogs had no doggie manners!  they went straight for him, right in his face.  that’s pretty damn rude in the doggie world – it’s pretty much a sign that you’re looking for a fight.
then, I asked gina’s mom to come over and help me learn some techniques for training wally.  she brought her german shepherd, willow, over with her.  again, I thought he snapped at her because she did the same thing as the other dogs – she went right into his face. 

however.  I was out walking with mr. bear one afternoon and a guy was also out with his dog (I love how now that it’s nicer out I see all these people out, but when it was the dead of winter there was NO ONE out!).  they were walking on the sidewalk coming towards us.  we owners did the right thing, we moved to the middle of the sidewalk with the dogs on the outside.  well, even unprovoked wally went after this other dog.  that was when I realized I had a dog who had dog aggression.

I had one session with steve where the first thing we did was take a nice walk with another dog.  this makes the dogs feel as though they’re migrating in a pack, so it usually lessens any aggression.  sure enough, once we walked for about 15 minutes and THEN let the dogs smell each other, wally was fine.  he wasn’t “happy” with the other dog by any means, but he could at least sniff the other dog and be sniffed by the other dog without incident. 

the only problem I face with trying to rehabilitate wally with this particular problem is that I don’t know anyone with a really well-behaved dog who lives nearby that I can really practice with.  :(