Aggressive to Other Dogs - Help!


jodifaye

New Member
My 4 year old mini Carl is pretty much the perfect little dog. He's very sweet to adults and children and other than alerting us to a person at the door, is not aggressive in any way toward people.

Other dogs, however...are a problem. He is generally friendly toward other small dogs - he loves chihuahuas - though he won't play with them. When he meets a dog he likes in the park, he'll sniff, wag his tail, whine a bit, and then move on. He's just not that interested. BUT, when he meets most big dogs, flat-faced dog breeds, and especially adorable little puppies, he turns into an absolute maniac. He bares his teeth, barks like a madman, and chases them away. Sometimes he's able to ignore other dogs when we're just walking down the sidewalk, but sometimes he can't. We've tried to figure out what makes him tick, what his triggers are, but sometimes it just seems random. He doesn't seem to discriminate based on male/female/neutered/spayed/not, etc.

It seems that often he is doing this to "protect" me. He still does it when my husband walks him without me, but not as much. We've tried a few different training methods - getting him to "heel" to distract him, for one, but he is a totally typical dachshund and doesn't always believe we know what's best for him.

He's never bitten another dog, but I'm terrified that someday he's going to mess with the wrong big dog and get hurt himself. He's chased away Great Danes, pit bulls, wolfhounds....in his mind, he's the size of a tank and bullet-proof.

He's always been this way, since he was a puppy and I tried to take him to a puppy play-group and he went crazy at a french bulldog puppy. We live in Prague, where there are tons of really well-trained dogs everywhere we go, so not only is it scary sometimes, but it's also really EMBARRASSING! He's such a sweet, gentle, laid-back guy otherwise.

Any advice? Any tricks you've used with your "people person" doxies?
 
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