| Elizabeth:
I got the idea about men and a dog's territorial manifestations straight out of Dr. Dodman's book DOGS BEHAVING BADLY. That was a near-verbatim quote. And I tend to believe it's true because when I went to the home of Kaiser's previous owners, first they put me out in the backyard with him alone. He was rambunctious but never threatening. And as I was going in and out of his house taking his things to my car, he barked as I opened the door but never acted aggressively. And I SERIOUSLY DOUBT his previous owners invested much time and energy into training him.
I'm not sure how Dr. Dodman defines aggression as it pertains to a correction so I may be off base with that assertion. I do know that in his book he advises a systematic desensitization program in which you first accurately identify the cause of the aggression and then work to desensitize the dog to it. And just FYI (not saying I agree with everything he says because he makes no breed distinctions) he did say that yes, you could extinquish some of these aggressive behaviors using stronger corrections (again, I don't recall that he actually defined that) and the like, but you don't really address the underlying issue and truly solve the problem.
Thanks for all the info. I wanted to know how others may have handled the situation. I even brought this up to my obedience instructor a couple of months back, someone who has raised rotties for years, in anticipation of out of town visitors to see how best to prepare. She said that she's had a couple of dogs who never warmed up to visitors in her home and so she had to keep them separated. Not much help to me as that was not what I wanted. Realistic, maybe, so that's why I was polling the group.
The other rotties I've had we've raised from puppies and so were able to mold them and make them into what we wanted them to be. Kaiser is 2 1/2 yrs. old and I've had him since Sept. of last year. He has a couple of issues that we're working on, and making progress, but this is something that we haven't practiced with since I don't have out of town visitors very often.  |