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my dogs aggression over tennis balls has increased!

tianna's picture
Posted December 7th, 2007 by tianna
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Thanks to your advice, Adian, Inuki has been doing much better, and he is much more social with other dogs in general, especially since he is going to doggy daycare a few times a week! One thing, however, has gotten worse.....his obsession with tennis balls at the dog park! He does not act like this towards me if I am throwing the ball, only other people that are throwing the ball for their dog(s). He races up to the person full speed if he sees them picking up a ball, and barks this high pitched bark non-stop at them until they throw it, and then he speeds past the other dogs and will lash out with his teeth flaring at any dog that comes between him and the tennis ball! He went after a dog today who was not even interested in the tennis ball, he just wanted to chase and play with Inuki, and Inuki turned aggressive. He is acting in ways that I have never seen him act before. Hes always had a thing for tennis balls, but not to the extreme that I have noticed lately. He used to just love the thrill of the chase, and could care less if he actually was the first one to the ball. Its as if he thinks that every ball being thrown in the dog park is his! I get worried when people start throwing balls because I dont know some days how Inuki is going to behave. Anything I can do?

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Hi Tianna, we could set

Aidan's picture
On December 10th, 2007 Aidan says:

Hi Tianna, we could set up a training program to teach him how to behave around tennis balls, but I think your best bet is to put him on leash and leave when someone starts throwing a ball around.

At this stage he is learning how to socialise with other dogs, and you are having success. Don't risk it for one little thing like that.

As a matter of fact, I would stay away from parks at peak times because he is too easily over-stimulated and probably not quite ready yet.

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com

Jax has the exact problem

On April 18th, 2010 mg says:

Jax is a one year old Brittany rescue who is not an aggressive dog EXCEPT when he is at dog camp or at the park. Both are necessary for him to be socialized and exercised on a regular basis. The problem is both have tennis balls everywhere. He will hoard the balls and if someone comes near him with his balls, he will behalf aggressively.

I have him in Petsmart training and we are working on spraying the ball with Boundary and Bitter apple but once he is back at the park near the balls, he becomes completely mesmorized by them.

Any thoughts?

resource guarding and socialisation

On April 20th, 2010 pos4015 says:

Yup - this sounds like a really great way to end up with a reactive or aggressive dog!

Not all socialisation is 'good', a lot of it can cause the exact same problems you are trying to avoid. Putting a resource guarder into a situation with strange dogs and the resource he guards is possibly the shortest path to a life of trouble that you can take.

Find better situations - no balls! Nothing he will guard.

Aversion therapy of this sort (bitter apple etc) will not address resource guarding. I'm not clear on the rationale here but I think it is misguided. It is difficult to give advice about this sort of resource guarding in a comment over the internet, I would suggest looking for a trainer who is more experienced with this sort of problem. The idea is to teach appropriate behaviours around valued resources in such a way that he doesn't feel threatened or that he needs to guard the resource.

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