confusing reply ian.

twas you that said you dog lacked socialisation and on your other thread his aggression was fear based.

are you sure you believe socialisation has no bearing on dog behavior?

i dont think you will find any biologists, behaviourists, or vets that would concur

I am just saying that dogs are dominant or submissive at birth. Both have their part in behaviour in later life

A dog can still bite with a head collar on. In fact, the head collar packaging boasts that the dog can still pant, bark, drink and eat with it on. I cant see how a muzzle will make fear aggression worse.

However, I agree with you that the head collar has a calming effect on the dog and makes it easier to handle, but it certainly wont prevent the dog from biting.

depends what you mean by this statement?
and im not too sure what relevance it has to what i posted?
you havent realy replied to the questions in my post, anyway.

what you posted at different times is confusing also, as you seem to say opposite things.

It's always very difficult to comment on something like aggression without seeing what is going on and knowing much more about everything - dog, environment, medical history, training, diet and so on

I am not sure if i understand your views re. a dog being either dominant or submissive, but it could be a whole thread on its own

For example you can get dogs who tend to be submissive but reactive (some would say that is dominant). I personally don't use words like dominant and submissive (I have above, for ease of communication only ).

Also you can get dogs who are fearful, but over time find it easy to drive others away by use of learned behaviour (ie they've worked out that lunging, barking, being ferocious, is going to "work").

I tend to work on the premise that most dogs are fearful to some extent (also dogs on leads may be worse due to the "flight" being taken away, so they resort to "fight" in some situations).

Wys
x

Hope this isn't going too off topic, but this may be useful to read:

http://www.dogwelfarecampaign.org/why-not-dominance.php

http://www.dogwelfarecampaign.org/if-not-dominance.php

Wys
x

If this dog is being aggressive towards other dogs, especially when he is on the lead and they come up to him, then this definitely sounds like fear aggression, as has been said by others on here. It isn't him being dominant, but using aggression to keep other dogs away from him because he is scared and the aggression gets the effect he wants.

I'm sure that if this dog had been properly socialised towards other dogs as a youngster, then he wouldn't be this way.

TBH it is totally irrelevant whether this dog is labelled dominant or submissive, the fact is that it is reacting to dogs in an appropriate manner. The reason is unimportant from a global perspective.

Once we have accepted that the behaviour is unacceptable we then have to work out the best way to alter this behaviour and for that we DO need to understand why the dog is behaving in this way.

You can have a very dominant/submissive dog that is not reactive and in fact Rotties as a breed are not a reactive one by nature.

The behaviour could be partly genetic eg was bred from inappropriate stock.
It could be environmental eg insufficient socialisation/habituation.
It could be handler initiated, eg handler has inadvertently reinforced this behaviour.

Or of course a mixture.

The next thing to determine is if this is barrier frustration, over excitement, fear, aggression etc etc.

All of the above is impossible to identify over the net, so I would suggest that once the dog has seen the vet to rule out any medical causes for its behaviour, you then get a referral to a qualified, reputable behaviourist who can put together a programme of desensitisation, counter conditioning and training to help this dog behave in a more acceptable fashion.