Dog Behavior Problems

Dog’s behavior problems can range from mild to severe depending on the problem and how ingrained it has become. Things that were cute when your dog was a puppy can be a real pain when your puppy becomes an adult. For the most part the size or breed of the dog doesn't matter, what really matters is how that particular behavior affects your family and your life. If it at first it doesn't seem to bother anyone most people will just ignore it and hope it goes away on its own. Over time however the behavior can begin to worsen to the point that you can no longer ignore it.

So what are some of the most common dog behavior problems our clients call us with? Probably the most common would be:

• Being possessive over toys or food
• People Aggression
• Dog Aggression
• Marking Territory
• Barking

Believe it or not most of the problems listed above could have been eliminated before the puppy's first year. You see as soon as you bring your puppy home he is hard wired to test you to see if you are the pack leader. If your puppy determines that you’re not or that through inconsistency you may not be he will constantly try to get his way or test you. Most of the behavior problems we see in our client’s dogs started as dominance issues when they dogs were puppies. Things like not enforcing proper discipline, being inconsistent or setting behavioral boundaries can lead to dominance issues.

When your puppy sees that he can get away with snapping at you or growling over his food he gets the impression that he can take charge. I have seen clients with dogs who have done these things for so long they even believe their dogs are truly pack leaders. Let me tell you about a client that called me a number of years ago who had just such a dog. When she got on the phone I could tell by her voice that she was very emotional. She started out by saying that she had been to the veterinarian with her dog and her dog had charged at the vet and backed him into a corner. The vet was so shocked by the behavior he had recommended that she put her dog down for being vicious.

So she proceeds to tell me how her dog barks and lunges at people and that this behavior has been going on since she was a puppy. In tears she tells me that she and her husband were at their wits end but they didn’t want to put their dog down. Now the one burning question in my mind was what breed of dog was causing all this trouble. When she told me it was a Bassett Hound I laughed out loud. When she asked me why I was laughing I told her that even though any breed of dog can be aggressive I haven’t seen many female Bassett Hounds with aggression problems. We set up a time for an evaluation and I let her know how to handle her dog when I came to the door. Well this is where things got interesting. You see when I rang the door that dog barked and hit the door with her body. I swear she sounded like an attack dog. When door opened she handed me the leash and I made a correction. That dog dropped into a down and we almost had to pick her up to get her back inside. It wasn’t that the correction was that hard it was that it scared the heck out of her. For the next forty five minutes or so she lay there as quite as could be.

It turns out that she was never really that aggressive. She was just playing a game that she had been allowed to play since she was a pup. The problem was that when she got older no one saw it as a game. Not even her owners.That behavior was allowed to unchecked and could have led to her being put down.

The moral of this story is to think about what you allow your puppy to do and how you will deal with. Problem behaviors don’t just go away. That cute thing your puppy is doing now may not be so cute when your puppy is an adult. If you need help get it! Don’t wait until the behavior has become ingrained.You can’t love your dog’s bad behaviors away.