# Help with one-year-old female sudden aggression toward certain other dogs



## Butter (Apr 2, 2013)

Hi everyone, we've been lurking on the forum for the past eight months, getting great advice. Most of our issues seem to have been addressed by other posters, but we can't find anything specifically dealing with our current concern. We have an awesome one-year-old girl who was spayed two months ago. She has a great temperament - very playful but not bonkers. Since she was quite young we have been taking her to our large off-leash park for an hour or two every morning. She is very well socialized to people and other dogs, and usually spends a lot of her park time racing through the woods, chasing and wrestling with other dogs. She pretty much gets along with everyone. 

Over the past few days, though, she has ended her park time by pinning another dog - literally wrestling the other dog to the ground and then standing over the dog growling. The targets are submissive - one is even prey-like - but today the target dog really got upset and fought back, causing my dog to get even more aggressive, growling and baring her teeth. I pulled her off and gave her a time out before leashing her up and taking her out of the park. There were slight scratches on my dog's nose and lips, some blood - nothing serious, but I'm quite concerned about what might be driving this change in her otherwise friendly, playful demeanor. Is this just adolescence? From a training perspective, is there anything I should be doing to calm her down? Should we avoid other dogs in the park for a while? Maybe it's spring fever? I have noticed a few other dogs having aggression issues lately.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.


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## SteelCityDozer (Aug 25, 2011)

I'm not going to advise how to fix this but I've heard of teenage female dogs getting this way with other females. Is she only targeting females?


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## Butter (Apr 2, 2013)

Actually, yes, so far the other dogs have been females.


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## redbirddog (Apr 23, 2010)

http://redbirddog.blogspot.com/2012/02/inter-dog-dominance-aggression.html

Maybe something in the above article may be of assistance. 

We don't do dog parks because of the never ending problem for the dogs understanding how to relate in a thrown together pack. Too confusing. We walk the hills and my dogs greet other dogs but we never "hang out" talking for long so the dogs don't have the burden to see where they fit in this ad hoc pack.

Hope that helps.

RBD


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## datacan (May 15, 2011)

Yes, avoid dog parks!

It's a pack thing. Dog must negotiate new pack structure every time a new dog enters the area. Crazy unless the same dogs play together every time.


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## Butter (Apr 2, 2013)

Thanks. It's not a dog park per se, rather a gigantic park where dogs are off leash in the mornings. Our dog knows many of the other dogs she encounters, and has happily played with them for the past eight months, so the recent dominance aggression toward a few of her "friends" is new. But I take the point about the pack thing. The aggression has tended to occur on a small hill where a pack of owners stand around and chat while the dogs play together. Maybe the nicer weather has brought out a combination of dogs that weren't consistently there during the winter - of course we are there every single day for an hour or two!!

Guess we'll avoid the pack for a while and see if that helps.

In the meantime, if anyone has any advice on how to deal with the aggression in the moment - is a time out appropriate? should we leave the park? any other way to correct the behavior? - let me know. 

Thanks again! p.s. We LOVE our vizsla - best dog ever.


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## born36 (Jun 28, 2011)

Butter said:


> In the meantime, if anyone has any advice on how to deal with the aggression in the moment - is a time out appropriate? should we leave the park? any other way to correct the behavior? - let me know.


Not sure if it will work for your girl but Mac sometimes (more rarely now) gets over excited and decides to try to pin or hump other dogs. I do a stern errgh and stomp my foot. I then put him on his lead for a while and in a sit before releasing. Important to is that when you remove the lead you give them a wait command and don't let them run off to play again until you can see the are calm.


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

I run my dogs with my sister sometimes. She owns 2 females, a lab mix and a English Setter. The Setter is the top dog at her home and June is top dog in my house. Having 4 females and 1 male together on these runs, top priority is to keep moving. As long as we keep walking the dogs keep running.


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