Rescue Dog With Problems

Hi, first of all I would like to appologise for my outbursts in the last thread, it was childish and should never have gone out of control. Anyway last night I was talking to C&D and we were disgussing my approach with dogs. If some of you read that thread you will see that my family and I have adopted a 5 year old Sporting Lucas Terrier called "Milo".
His story is a very sad one because in his short life, he has been past from owner to owner, infact we are owners number "4". His first owner past him on before he was a year old, the next owner past him on after having him a couple of years. We saw an ad on Gumtree asking £50 pounds for him. These owners were a young professional couple whose careers came first and love and care of Milo came second. He was lucky to have walks every other day and some weekends if they felt like it. Most of the time he was left in the house on his own and his diet consisted of a mix of dried food and nearly out of date ecconomy sausages. We found in his belongings some antibiotics and when we asked what they were for, we were told that they had been feeding him raw turkey !! the fools!!. I 'm just glad that we have him and his diet is right and good for him. When we mentioned it to the vet, she was shocked and said he could have died of poisoning.
He has settled in with us great and we all adore him, he has the most lovely brown eyes and a smile to match.
His main problem though, he has never been socialised with other dogs properly, and suffers from anxiety fuelled lead aggression. After doing some searching we found out that he was savagely attacked by a GSD when he was a small pup, so now we think he sees all dogs as a threat to him.
When he sees dogs approaching, he lets out a screaming bark that sounds like a dog is distress. This is very off putting to both the other dog and their owner. We have started to socialise him with some of our friends dogs and once he has calmed down and smelt the other dogs he plays with them fine. Its just the aggressive lashing out that he does each time he sees another dog.
Its such a shame because he has so much love to give and loves being fussed by people who meet him.
Can anyone give me some advice to tackle this problem, so that he can enjoy his walks without the anxiety.

Thanks for reading
http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/...lo/MILO005.jpg
Duncan

Just looked at the pic of you boy and he's lovely. Bet he's glad he's found you.

I cant offer any advice on the fear problem but others will probably have some advice to offer.

!!!yeh!!! he's great you just want to cuddle him.

Anyway thanks for the quote.

Aww what a lovely boy.

You could try contacting Gill Aitken, who is a behaviourist who works with the dogs at Animal Care in Lancaster who have issues.

Gill's website ... http://www.animalmanners.co.uk/

Good luck.

Yes of course, I forgot about her, I think there is another one called Kirsty. This is all new to me because we have never had a rescue dog before and one with problems such as this. Lets hope that he comes through this because he's worth the time and effort and I don't intend to give up on him. I know they do a great job up at animal care and it really tears at your heart strings when you see all the dogs that need rehoming.
What I did notice on my last visit there, was alot of staffy's and Lurchers in the kennels, some of them had been there for more than a year.
Anyway cheers!!

The book - the dog aggression work book by James o heare is great for learning how to go about training a dog with aggression issues. I have a dog with fear aggression of people and it gives a really good step by step approach of how to go about making your dog feel more comfortable around the stimulus..

Have you come across BAT (Behaviour Adjustment Training). It`s really just a formalisation of a well known method in which you gradually decrease the dogs` fear by desensitising before the threshold is reached.
That sounds a bit complicated - a good demonstration is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwf53xwyndw

By turning away from the `threat` and rewarding when calm you are gradually changing the state of mind of the dog, who become calmer and therefore able to process what is happening. A frightened dog doesn`t learn, he simply reacts.

There has been a recent visit to the UK by the lady who put the method together (from techniques already cominh into operation by combining clicker training and desensitisation techniques) and so there are now some people in the UK using it.
http://www.wagtailscaninecollege.com/home

Another good method is the Deferment technique (sorry about the jargon).
In this, you teach the dog to trust you to protect him and he defers to you in the control of space. So you teach the dog that you will remove him from threats by turning away (as above) but then use a sit and reward when the dog is calm. You also teach a `watch me` response (hold a treat to your face, say Watch me, give the treat) You need to train this intensively so the dog automatically glances at you when you say it. Then you can use it to prevent the `stare` which comes when a dog sees a possible threat. (You follow up with your turn away and sit.

I hope this helps.

Hi, thanks I'll have a look for that book, I'm reading a book at present called "Dima's Dog School" and there is a part in there I think that covers aggression and how to cure it.

Duncan

Thanks for this I'm really grateful, I took him down to the beach this morning and although there was quite a few dogs there, his reaction wasn't as intense as before and what I did a couple of times was make him sniff the dog rather than snarl at him and it seems to be working. Am I doing the right thing? The reason I am trying this is the hope that it might help to calm down.
Please can you let me know what you think.
Cheers!!!

Hi Duncan have you seen this article by our own Shadowboxer,

http://www.dogsey.com/dog-articles.php?t=8050

...it may be of help . It is really aimed at fear of humans but some of it can be tailored to dogs too.

Claire has already given some excellent advice which I can't hope to better.