Aggressive Dog Training – Keep it Light and Fun

Michael Baugh CDBC

I don’t remember who it was. A mentor many years ago said, “Aggressive behavior is just behavior.” It plays by the same rules of behavior just like anything else our dogs do.

It’s true. Behavior that is reinforced (think: behavior that works) grows stronger and comes back time and time again. But aggressive dog behavior is distinctly different because powerful emotions fuel it. Aggression works; barking and biting make things stop. And aggression is born of fear turned to anger. Emotionally charged behavior comes up fast and has a kick behind it.

We can replace aggressive behavior with cooperation, more benign tasks and patterns our dogs can follow. New people in our home, for example, can trigger calm and attentive behavior rather than barking and menacing. There’s training for that.

More importantly, though, we can quell the fear and anger behind the aggression. It’s not all about throwing treats at the dog, either. Yes, food plays a role. But there is something else even more powerful at play. You and me. How we behave around our dog when things get tense — that is critical.

Here are some facts. Dogs watch us. They understand our facial expressions. They. notice and respond to our body postures, vocal tones, and some words. Our dogs look to us for social feedback and support. They are social creatures. So are we. Dogs and we have co-evolved for thousands of years. This next part is really cool. Dogs frequently mirror our emotions (and we there’s, I suspect). Model calm behavior for your dog, and you are more likely to see a calmer dog. Act excited and talk in a cheerful voice, and see your dog get bouncy and excited.

I like to keep all training fun and easygoing because I know it helps my dog learn. How we show up in the moment matters. Take a few deep breaths before you start. Let your shoulders relax. Smile. This is especially important when we are working with a dog who has an emotional injury. Our fearful dog (and angry dog) needs a human teacher who is confident but calm, and most of all kind.

If you have a long-standing good relationship with your dog, you are already in an excellent position to succeed. Your relationship counts for more than you might think. You might use clicker training (a mechanical clicker or tongue click) to teach your dog new skills and patterns of behavior. Good. But don’t forget your most powerful advantage: yourself. Learning is not all about the clicks and treats. Leverage your relationship. Include yourself, your gentle words, your reassuring presence. It all counts.

Include play. Take a break for some tug or retrieve. Spend a moment or two between reps to enjoy some goofy time.

Share some joy. Soak some in for yourself. The days we have with our dog are passing quickly. Don’t let them go unlived. Aggressive behavior is serious business. The training to ease it doesn’t have to be.

Michael Baugh CDBC teaches dog training in Sedona AZ and Houston TX. He specializes in aggressive dog training.

Dog Training – How We Show Up Matters

Michael Baugh CDBC

Let’s think about how we begin our dog training sessions. Are we scrambling around looking for that plastic bag of treats? Are we distracted by our phones, our spouses, our kids? Maybe we’re just caught up in our own heads, thinking about other stuff.

It is a disservice to both our dogs and ourselves to show up like a maniac on the run. Be honest, we wouldn’t tolerate that level of inattention from our dogs. We should do better.

And yes, I get it. We live in a fast-paced, everything all at once world. Life is hard. Things are changing, getting worse, rarely better. It’s a lot. Sometimes it’s too much.

That’s all the more reason to give yourself (and your dog) a nice, thoughtful time to learn together. Take a moment. Think it through. You deserve something good right now.

Here’s how I like to approach a structured training session with my dog.

Begin with wonder. You’ve heard me say this before. Our dogs are fantastic creatures. They are intelligent, emotional, athletic, and social. Begin training in awe of that. This is a sacred moment.

Come prepared. Have a proper treat bag — a fabric one that you can wear or attach to your clothing. Use healthful food. If you are training with props (e.g., a mat), have them neatly set to the side.

Be curious. Ask questions? Is now the right time to train? How does my dog look? Is he hungry, tired, excited? Should we burn off energy with active training? Do we need to play or take a walk first because we want to train relaxation? Your curiosity is a sign of awareness and your open mind.

Arrive. Take a few deep breaths. Let your shoulders drop. Smile. Look at your dog. We are here right now. Be present and joyful and relaxed. This is what our dog deserves: our full intelligence, our sharp attention, and our kind guidance.

Training is a conversation with a dear friend who will never speak a word to us. Consider that for a moment. Dog training is not a menu of commands. It’s not a list of problems to solve. It is a connection. Training is how we communicate with our dogs.

This is a gift — these morsels of time in a day or a week or a life that sometimes feels like it’s devouring us. How wonderful that we’ve set this time aside to teach and learn with our dog. How do we approach such a gift if not with humility and sincere joy? Show up. Time is slipping away. Show up like you wish everything else would stop and this one moment would last forever.

Michael Baugh specializes in aggressive dog training in Sedona, Arizona and Houston.

Aggressive Dog Training – Eliminating Triggers

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

I teach several techniques related to aggressive dog training. They all help. However, none is as essential as preventing your dog from being triggered. Trainers call this managing your dog’s environment or, simply, management. Some add “just” before the word “manage.” We can just manage the problem. I think this dimunitzation is a mistake. Controlling and preventing environmental triggers is key to your dog’s success.

Here’s an example. Our dog consistently barks and lunges at guests we invite into our home. If the dog is in another room or in the backyard, our dog does not see the guest. Barking and lunging does not occur. It’s tempting to discount this technique by saying we are avoiding the problem. I get that. The technical term is actually antecedent control. We are preventing the problem one occurrence at a time.

Let’s say we have a broken pipe in our home. Our home is flooding. The first and most important step is to turn off the water. We can’t fix a pipe with water gushing out. Eliminating our dog’s triggers is like turning off the water. It’s the first fix. Our other positive training interventions are analogous to repairing the broken pipe. We do these with the trigger absent, muted, far away, or otherwise controlled. Staying with the plumbing analogy, the water is still off.

Remember our dog who barks and lunges at guests? We’ve stopped triggering him with unexpected strangers. Good. Now we can teach him some relaxation and other coping skills. We can even begin letting him see people in our home under controlled, non-triggering circumstances. I call these “controlled exposures.” All the while, we maintain our promise to protect our dog from surprises and his own hair-trigger responses. When we aren’t training, we are managing his environment. This is how we ease our dog into a new skill set of calm, confident behavior.

(Video: Your Dog’s Behavior Thresholds)

I frequently ask clients how long it’s been since their dog’s last aggressive incident. The longer the duration, the better off we are. Our dog needs a low-stress environment to learn new skills and new emotional self-regulation. They also need people and places that are consistently safe and stress-free. We can relate to this. It’s hard to work on our own anxiety or depression when stimuli keep coming at us. Overbooked calendars, traffic, loud noises, toxic people, distressing news reports. Any of those can disrupt our mental wellness. Two or three can derail us. We need people who will give us a soft place to land, a place where we can exhale.

Be that person for your dog.

Avoid this common mistake. Stop testing your dog. Too often, we intentionally expose our dogs to things we know upset them. We might think we are helping him get used to it. Pause and think about that for a minute. Does flying in a helicopter with the door off help us get over our fear of heights? No, of course it doesn’t. It’s worth repeating. Stop testing your dog. Let’s keep our promise to protect and help him. Let’s provide that safe place where scary things never happen. Be your dog’s safe person. Commit and stay committed.

I received an email recently from a client I hadn’t seen in a long while. She’d hired me back when she and her partner moved in together. They were and still are very much in love. Each of them had a dog. And, the dogs didn’t like each other. They fought. You can imagine the strain that puts on a relationship. We love each other. We love our dogs. Something’s got to give, or so the saying goes.

“They’ve progressed well over time with patience and not rushing it,” the email read. My clients had kept the dogs separate and controlled the environment. When everyone was together, it was in thoughtful and controlled exposures. “That has provided a lot of peace and happiness in the house,” she went on. They stayed the course, trusted the process, and never tested. “…thank you very much for your help,” she wrote before telling me about their new puppy.

The email ended with a photo. I stared at it for a long time. Two dogs curled on a bed, their backs pressed one to the other. Maybe they didn’t love one another like their humans did. Maybe they did. We don’t get to know those secrets. But the photo made this clear enough. They were safe. They were home. And “home” meant each other.

Michael Baugh teaches dog training in Houston, Texas.