My Dog Attacked Me

Off Topic
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Both wolves and domestic dogs do almost anything to avoid an actual fight where blood is drawn. Almost all bites stop short of wounding.

Even where lines have been bred to be “game”, some amount of coercion or baiting is usually involved, and the “pit” or enclosure is to give the dogs no option for escape (which is what at least one dog would do if given the option).

Humans are the most violent species on this planet. Even still, in sports we always have the option of whether we fight or not and with very few exceptions, there are rules in place to minimise the risk of serious, long term injury.

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[quote]DragnCarry wrote:

I realise that this is what you have been taught and have probably had it reinforced with some practical experience (i.e it has worked for you in the past, maybe a lot of times), but that doesn’t make it good advice universally. OP has found this out the hard way.

If you’ve ever worked with a dog who has learned to bite people, let’s say a Rottweiler from working lines or an Anatolian Shepherd, I can’t imagine you would give this same advice.[/quote]

True i wouldn’t give the same advice but seeing as its not a dog from this background i figured generally asserting dominance over it would be enough

if it was the kind of situation with a dog that was trained as an attack dog or a fighter i would recomend simply not keeping it as a domesticated pet at all unless you are mental, and have it put down if it was properly aggressive to the point where it cant be interacted with
otherwise i’d recomend a good trainer, someone who’s delt with that kind of dog before for help

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[quote]Skinystudent wrote:
otherwise i’d recomend a good trainer, someone who’s delt with that kind of dog before for help[/quote]

Now THAT is excellent advice.

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Rhino Jockey, got an update what you’ve done with the dog?

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At the risk of being wrong-

When a dog rolls on its back and shows belly, that means it is comfortable and trusting, right?

When you touch its belly and it snaps or becomes aggressive, then it doesn’t trust you, right?

To solve that you would have t do something to reinforce the trust of the dog.

I don’t know a whole lot about dogs, other than the ones I’ve raised, but thats how I’d read it.

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[quote]cyruseven75 wrote:
look bro if you enjoy/attend dog fights, you are ignorant. i don’t know your circumstances for witnessing this shit so i won’t judge beyond saying it’s inherently wrong.

Give me an APBT from a champion fighting line AS A PUPPY and socialize him around other dogs, it should be known i hate dog parks they fuck up people and dogs…but the point holds true, just because an animal has a genetic predisposition for aggression doesn’t mean it cannot be behaviorally modified from a young age.

Michael Jordan would have sucked at basketball if he never played or practiced. Athletics/genetics are one thing, but some shit is a learned response.

My dog and cat are best friends, that shit didn’t just happen. i do think, as stated, dog parks are a set up for disaster, but ABPT isn’t a killing machine from birth, ignorant fuckers who choose to fight dogs create them. [/quote]

Shouldn’t question somebodies ignorance and turn around and say something ignorant.

“GAME” Dogs cannot be broken in to socialize… That’s the point of it being a “GAME” dog. Many dog fighters will not let a dog live from birth if it doesn’t constantly attack other dogs. Your scenerio is the equivelenat of saying you can put a mentally challenged kid in a room full of physicist and he will be a genius. Stupid and doesn’t make sense.

Now you CAN possibly get other types of dogs from a champion line, but it’s the luck of the genes. But if you get a true “GAME” dog and try to break him in with other dogs, you’ll end up with alot of dead dogs.

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[quote]nikinine wrote:
Rhino Jockey, got an update what you’ve done with the dog?[/quote]

Still have the dog and haven’t had any problems with random aggression from him in since August. He still has food aggression issues but those don’t manifest because I don’t bother him while he is eating. One thing that seemed to help stop it was to buy him a dog crate and send him there whenever he started getting “antsy” I hadn’t used a crate with him since he was a puppy and now he loves it and sleeps in there all the time even when I don’t put him in there.

He is an obedient dog as mentioned before and a lot of avoiding the aggressive tendencies is knowing his personality and reading his behavior to stop it before it even begins.

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Hunter

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[quote]MODOK wrote:

No, an AmStaff and an APBT ARE the same fucking breed. The only difference is AmStaff is the AKC’s fancy made up “term” for an APBT that they invented so their could be a breed standard and be judged for conformation in the show ring. And they did so less than half a century ago. Stupid ass dog fighters and those who just won’t to argue a point will talk about this shit till they are blue in the face, but they are from the SAME LINE with NO MIXED GENES from the time the AmStaff was recognized by the AKC until now. Culling dogs DO NOT change their genes… Its the same damn dog.[/quote]

I am going to have to disagree, if you brought an APBT into a show ring you’d have some dog fights, not going to have with an AmStaff. Yes they had the same ancestors, however it does not make them the same kind of dog, sorry.

I never said that people did not try to fight these dogs, however they are not the same dog and anyone who thinks putting an AmStaff in a pit is a good idea is setting a dog up for failure. They have not been bred for that activity for 90-100 years since they were started to be bred for show. There is a lot of what people call American Bullies that are fought too, that are bred for the fact that they have big heads and big chests. Yet, idiots still put them in rings

I apologize if I offended you with my raising; I’ll let folks know you disapprove of their culture. I however am not apologetic for not having a base relationship based solely on if the person finds dog fighting entertaining or not. When I watched dog fighting it was legal, there were no federal laws against dog fighting, there was no panty-wasted groups crying about the cruelty of animals in or on a persons personal property. I talk to these people because they are experts in conditioning dogs for things like weight pulling and other competitive “game” activities.

Even if I choose to “turn” someone in for a victimless crime, how would the DA prosecute them?
You can’t make a law then charge someone for doing that thing before you made the crime ain’t that the truth?

Yes, I have bred dogs before, but if someone is fighting dogs it ain’t my business and it ain’t yours either. I do not break the law, sorry sir. Do not get on your high cardboard horse yet. You might have to get on my level again after you realize it ain’t very sturdy up there.

If you want something to go holla about, go down to Guam Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands where they still allow cock fighting. Oh and just to let you know, they found that allowing cock fighting lowers crimes and creates a sense of community.

You remind me of the people that have no clue about a culture and just destroy it because you find it non-kosher that someone would do something like fighting animals and other activities.

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[quote]pushharder wrote:
Surprised I missed this thread earlier. I have owned and trained Rotts, Dobies, and Blue Heelers (and my present Pit Bull pup) for almost 30 years. I have never, ever tolerated any growling directed at me or family. Ever. Even when they are eating.

In fact, I make it a point to mess with my dogs when they are eating to see if I can elicit any aggressive behavior so that I can nip it in the bud. Even when my kids were young I would have them go up and fiddle with the food bowl while I was right there monitoring the situation. ANY kind of bad attitude was instantly and overwhelmingly crushed. I wanted dogs I could trust around my kids no matter what. And I got 'em.

Almost all of my dogs were males and there was always a point in their adolescence (just like human boys) where they tried to test the ladder of the dominance hierarchy by taking on another rung or two. Swift, instantaneous, physical enforcement of the Alpha Male position effectively eliminated all of the problems mentioned in this thread.[/quote]

How is your new puppy? We need an update on that thread.

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[quote]pushharder wrote:
Surprised I missed this thread earlier. I have owned and trained Rotts, Dobies, and Blue Heelers (and my present Pit Bull pup) for almost 30 years. I have never, ever tolerated any growling directed at me or family. Ever. Even when they are eating.[/quote]
I feel the same way, if these dogs are going to be around me I’m going to cut them at the knees if they try any funny business

[quote]

In fact, I make it a point to mess with my dogs when they are eating to see if I can elicit any aggressive behavior so that I can nip it in the bud. Even when my kids were young I would have them go up and fiddle with the food bowl while I was right there monitoring the situation. ANY kind of bad attitude was instantly and overwhelmingly crushed. I wanted dogs I could trust around my kids no matter what. And I got 'em.

Almost all of my dogs were males and there was always a point in their adolescence (just like human boys) where they tried to test the ladder of the dominance hierarchy by taking on another rung or two. Swift, instantaneous, physical enforcement of the Alpha Male position effectively eliminated all of the problems mentioned in this thread.[/quote]

How did you elicit these swift, instantaneous, physical enforcements?

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yeah our german shepherd was abused before we got her… so she was incredibly aggressive and didn’t trust us… tried to chase me down when she was strapped to a transmission lol… it was nothing a phone book to the head couldn’t fix. She trusted my dad but took a while for her to trust me.

Now both our German shepherd and rottweiler are perfectly good dogs… I love them. German shepherd is pushing 16 years

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[quote]Rhino Jockey wrote:
Still have the dog and haven’t had any problems with random aggression from him in since August.
[/quote]

Awesome, good work.

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[quote]pushharder wrote:
I make it a point to mess with my dogs when they are eating to see if I can elicit any aggressive behavior so that I can nip it in the bud. [/quote]

I do this too. Control over food is a huge factor in establishing dominance and you can play with it a bunch of ways, such as eating in front of them with no begging allowed, and giving the last bite, and hand feeding some meals, so they know that food directly comes from you.

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I doubt that it’s relevant to compare wolves to domestic dogs, but seeing as so many people think it is perhaps it would help to explain a bit about wolf social organisation.

The “alpha wolf” does not use physical force to attain his position. The “Alpha Male” is simply the breeding male of the pair. Being a dad puts him there. He gets to raise the pups, yay for him. At least he gets to have sex with Mrs Wolf.

A lot of the early research was based on captive populations of wolves and was deeply flawed by this, and also flawed by observational bias. The guy who coined the term “alpha wolf” has even asked his publisher to pull one of his titles, but it keeps on selling. He’s been in the wilderness for over 30 years now, watching real wolves do real wolfy things and he can’t believe the crap he hears about what wolves “supposedly” do. Worth looking up, “L David Mech” is his name.

The “alpha roll” you see on nature documentaries is not a display of physical power. The subordinate wolf OFFERS this by rolling over, he isn’t PUT there. The only time a wolf would physically pin another dog to the ground is if he intended to kill it. I can’t imagine that this would be good for a dog’s mental health, being pinned to the ground thinking “I’m too young to die!”

So given that we’re not actually using real “wolf speak” when we try to talk to dogs like this (if they would even understand wolf speak), what makes this sort of thing effective? It’s actually Operant Conditioning. If we know that’s it’s Operant Conditioning, then we also know there are a ton of ways to use OC without having to pretend to be a wolf, much less resort to physical violence.

At the end of the day, we have to remember that a dog LETS US win these games. We’re coming to the knife fight with some badly rehearsed moves we saw on Karate Kid (or a phone book as the case may be). Some of the dogs I’ve seen are no longer at the point where they will willingly or even begrudgingly let us win anything, so obviously unless I want to break out the tranq gun I have to take a different approach because, I’m not weak or slow, but I haven’t got a mouth full of daggers either.

Nearly all the dogs I see are referrals from other dog trainers and vets. I don’t lay a finger on them, we’ve moved past that. It doesn’t matter what you or I learned about raising dogs or what has worked in the past, it was never really that great anyway. What I do today is easier, has a higher success rate, can be used to take the dogs much, much further, is much safer for everyone, and most people enjoy the process.

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Not sure if this issue has been resolved already, and now the thread’s gone off topic (it’s happened before, and I’d read all 8 pages but I’m just taking a small break from studying for my exam tomorrow), but I wrestle my rottweiler every couple days. It gets his aggression out, and I make sure I always win. I wear work gloves, and he’s gotten to the point where he’ll only bite if he recognizes the smell of the gloves. I even taught him to only get aggressive when I say “wrestle.”

Just make sure you always win when you wrestle, play tug-of-war, whatever. Dogs need an Alpha Male, and if you don’t take the role, they will. The reason noone cares if tiny dogs take the role of Alpha Male (those little yipping dogs chicks always get that never seem to be properly trained) is because they don’t do enough damage most of the time. Bigger dogs do, and more frequently.

And if a chick who didn’t get little yipping dogs reads this, thank-you for proving me wrong. I’d rather be proven wrong than have another one of those bastards come running up to me and attack my calf. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: DragnCarry, I pin my dog to the ground whenever I wrestle him. He just loves the physical contest. Could be just my dog, but I’m just saying.

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[quote]Xander89 wrote:
EDIT: DragnCarry, I pin my dog to the ground whenever I wrestle him. He just loves the physical contest. Could be just my dog, but I’m just saying.[/quote]

Lots of dogs love it, mine love it. Dogs PLAY like that, play is good fun - complete with growls, pinning, inhibited bites, slobber - the works.

My working German Shepherd bites a sleeve on my arm regularly. She WINS regularly. She is a very obedient dog, lets my baby daughter take food from her, too (wasn’t born that way, and I didn’t use so much as a verbal correction to change that either).

I let her win games of tug, or not. It’s up to me - isn’t that the point? See, if you dink around with arbitrary rules about “winning” and “showing them who’s boss” you could miss the point.