Toy aggression at the dog park

Question
Hi,
I have a 1 year old English Springer Spaniel who up until just recently, has been the perfect dog. I've been taking her to the dog park for about 6 months now, on a very regular basis (about 3 times a week). The past couple times she's been there, she's had a problem with aggression towards other dogs when toys are involved. We have never seen this with humans. And she's always great with other dogs when toys aren't involved. But as soon as another dog has a toy, she doesn't want them to have it, and she'll fight over it. It's happened about 4 times now, and I've always broken up the fight and left with her immediately. I just don't know what to do with her now. I don't want to bring her to the dog park anymore, because I'm afraid she'll actually end up hurting another dog, but I keep hoping that somehow she'll get the message that aggression isn't ok. It's just very strange that she started showing aggression out of the blue like this. Is there anything I can do to get her to stop this toy aggression, or do we have to give up the dog park?
Thanks

Answer
Dear Ashley,

Good for you bringing her to the dog park regularly.  Whenever possible, try to tell the other owners that your dog gets aggressive around toys and ask them if they could remove it.  The dogs should be fine playing without toys, and most owners should understand this.  I have a dog daycare with 40+ dogs daily and we learned very quickly (when we had 4-5 dogs/day) that toys would cause problems, so we never have toys anymore.  It's just normal.

My own dog had been going to the dog park for 2 years almost daily and one day she just decided to puncture a dog's ear when he refused to return her floatie kong.  I never brought another toy again, and never had another problem again.

Jean Donaldson has an excellent book called "Fight!" which gives very detailed instructions on how to train the toy aggression out of your dog. You can find the book at her website:  http://www.jeandonaldson.com/ or more specifically http://shop.perfectpawsproductions.com/category.sc?categoryId=2 .

It would be terrible to stop bringing your dog to the park over this so if some of the dog owners aren't helpful about this, try a different time of day, day of week, or different dog park.  If that doesn't work out, try a cage-free dog daycare where there is a good dog/person ratio (no more than 15/1 - and stop in for an unexpected visit to see the indoor and outdoor areas to make sure the place is actually doing what they say).

Good luck and thanks for writing.

Suzanne Harris, BSc, CPDT
http://www.dogdaysUSA.com