Unexpected Aggression

Question
Hello Mr. Kelley,

My wife and I adopted a 2 year old male purebred Boston Terrier about 4 months ago named Manny.  Although he's always had a ton of energy, he's never shown any kind of anger or aggressive behavior.  He has however always been very anxious and excited when it comes to other dogs, always trying to pull towards them.  He's never done anything more than give them a thorough sniffing.

Yesterday when I took him outside on his leash for his normal potty break, there was a young Boston puppy with it's owner...a neighbor of ours.  Manny immediately showed his normal extreme interest with pulling on the leash, but wasn't barking or growling.  The puppy trotted over to Manny and I bent down and make sure I had him good, as I didn't want him to overwhelm the puppy.  The moment that they came nose to nose, Manny lunged forward and bit the puppy on the face and held on.  I was shocked!  I yelled at him and jerked him back but he held on for a few seconds while I tried to separate them.  I finally got him to let go and luckily the puppy wasn't injured.

We have NEVER seen anything like this before from him.  Also, it didn't seem like an "attack" necessarily.  He didn't bark or growl, and he didn't shake his head back and forth like he was trying to hurt the other dog.  Obviously we'll be extremely cautious in the future around other dogs or children.

I would appreciate your thoughts on why he would do this and what we can do to prevent it!

Thank you in advance!

Todd

Answer
Hey, Todd,

How old was the puppy? It could've been a normal, instinctive reaction to puppy, or even adolescent energy. The fact that the other dog wasn't injured may be indicative of just that kind of behavior. Rather than and "I'm going to kill you" response, what you described may in fact simply be a "Knock it off, kid--you're buggin' me with your loud music" kind of thing.

Let me know the age of the other dog, if you know (if not just give me your best guess). Once I have that info we can take this further.

LCK

Thanks for getting back to me. Some dogs just react negatively to a puppy's energy. The puppy doesn't have to really do anything to provoke one of these attacks.

What I'd suggest is to be alert to any signals that your dog is feeling snarky about other dogs, people, or kids. You can learn a lot about reading stress indicators by looking at this website: http://www.tiny.cc/rugaas Just a word of caution, they're not really "calming signals," they're stress indicators, as I said.

I would also wait to see if something like this happens again with an older dog. If it does, that would indicate that it's not the instinctive behavior I talked about in my initial post, but is probably a by-product of stress.

Try praising your dog to the skies every time he meets another doggie on the street. Praise often acts as a kind of social grease when two dogs are meeting and one of them (your Boston, in this hypothetical case) is a little nervous about the encounter. Even when a dog is growling a low growl at another dog, just praising him can often stop him from growling and cause him to be friendly. (To read more about using praise as a correction, go here: http://www.tiny.cc/praise622 )

Also, if you're scolding, correcting, or punishing your dog for anything, even if they seem to work in the moment, you should know that all these things tend to create, rather than reduce, nervous tension. Dogs can't learn a negative, such as what NOT to do. They can only learn WHAT to do. So if you're using corrections, try redirecting your dog's energy, instead of trying to stop it in its tracks.

DON'T CORRECT - REDIRECT!

Finally, tug-of-war is a great tension reducer. It's best to play outside, always let the dog win, and praise him for winning. The more he wins at tug, generally speaking, the calmer and more confident he'll be in any social encounter.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need further feedback.

LCK