aggressive jack russell

Question
i have an eight yr old jack russell. As of late my husband or myself cant go near our children when they are in bed as he gets very aggressive. he also will not allow us to walk out the front door without laying down being submissive, then when you try to get him out of the way he gets very angry and bares teeth and sometimes tries to bite. i am afraid for the safety of my children who are 6 and have grown up with him. why is he doing this??

Answer

Connor Trudy -

Whenever you have a signifcant change in behavior in a dog, especially something like this, you first need to rule out something helth related.  So, I would take him to the vet for a general physical, explaining that you have a significant change in behavior.

The behavior he is showing when near the childrens' beds is called resource guarding, and the children are the resource.  

Overall, he is trying to take control of the household for some reason (assuming that he was not like this all along). Sometimes a dog has behaviors along this line, but because it didn;t include threats to bite, people didn't notice them as incoorect behaviors.

No matter what the cause, there are 2 things you can do right away in those 2 circumstances. One - do not allow him access to the children's bedroom at all. He can't be allowed to sleep with them - **not** because I think he's out to hurt the kids, but rather to deny him access to one of the troublesome situations.

Second, I strongly encourage you to use a crate.  If you were to crate him when you are leaving the house, you would completely avoid the second circumstance.  In fact, oonce he's used to being crated, you could put his crate in the kids room, and put him to bed at the same time you put the kids to bed.  That way he can keep an eye on "his" kids and still not be able to act incorrectly.

Now - if you want to eliminate these behaviors instead of just manage around him, it will require a concerted effort at training by the adults in the household.  Here is a link to a brief description of the way I would encourage you to handle him.  An obedience class would help a lot too - It's not so much about him being obedient as it is about you learning to think "dog" and improving the nature of your relationship with him.

http://cairnrescue.com/docs/NILIF.pdf

Let me know how you make out.

-Beth (fellow owner of a JRT who has had his own moments)