Great post = again - Strangechilde!!

Yes, our attitude influences our dogs and as Chris said , every dog is different. Dogs react to their emotions in situations like this and we can manipulate how they feel through our behaviour and classical conditioning.

You can increase anger, fear and panic in someone if you act that way yourself . While keeping calm or acting jolly helps, it might take more that that for some dogs.

I get the gist of what you are saying. but the way you have explained it , in not allowing him to be sacred , you mean to persuade or encourage not to feel scared?
You can't not make or force a dog to feel a different emotion.

Strangechild,

Myrskys mum did asked in her first post about whether his "aggression" could be due to emotions from increasing testosterone and we added our opinions as to what could contribute to his behaviour.

To me , its not overthinking to be aware of how you dog could possibly react. It helps to have a plan for different contingencies. But you're right, dogs don't over think, they react. Emotion drives behaviour and in mammals emotion mainly overrides rational thinking behaviour.
For whatever reason Mrysky is acting aggressively, his mum now recognises the antecedents or stimuli so she can act accordingly.

I'm talking generally here, I think it helps people if they do have a rough idea why their dogs act aggressively
or reactively. They are more likely to act in a negative way towards their dogs if they think they are being dominant or vicious.

I think the general public lack knowledge rather than capacity to understand dogs. While we may never know for sure how dogs or any species think, we share primative emotions and hormones, our behaviour is shaped by classical conditioning and operant conditioning. We can read their body language, understand the effect of breed and genes on their behaviouir, understand their sense of smell, hearing, sight etc.
I agree it is important to recognise that there are differences but if we don't try to learn how they think, how can we recognise what the differences are. ?

I agree with you, Dibby, on all counts. I wanted mostly to address the idea that dogs live 'in the moment'. It can be easy (present company excepted; I think we all know dogs too well for that) to come away from that thinking that whoever said it is saying that a dog's previous experience has nothing to do with how they'll react to a given situation. That's obviously not true. At the same time it's all too easy to veer completely in the opposite direction and imagine that a dog is contemplating a situation exactly the same way a human would, which isn't true either. Or worse, to overgeneralise and imagine we know exactly what's what, when if we stood back and had a look at the information that is available to us rather than the construction in our heads, we would have a much better idea.

Spot on. Which is why it's important to look at what we think we know and not let it run away with us. One of the things I think often gets overlooked when we try to understand how an animal is thinking-- and we should definitely be trying to do that!-- is how we ourselves think, and that can get us into all sorts of trouble... cue stream of anecdotes.

Well put. Good points.

Hi again! I didn't see the new posts first.
But I still want to reply
Thanks for your thoughts, ideas and knowledge. Its very interesting to read.I can tell you about what happened in the past.I was frightened first,that this wouldn't be the last time. But Myrsky was very young, and the first dog he met after this, he was afraid of.Understandable.But we encouraged Myrsky to meet this dog, just because of the experience he had before. And since then he met hundreds of dogs, and had only good experience.And he was never afraid of ANY dog. Not even the attacker.They really do live in the now.And me too after I saw Myrsky was fine.
And I actually do think (also our dog trainer) that his Hormones are the reasons for his rebellious behaviour. And because he is not a puppy anymore, he doesn't like other dogs to be mean and barking at him. So he responds.
Actually mostly it will never come even to a response.We watch our surroundings quiet good, but never expect anything bad to come from the beginning.Just a call and a treat to get his attention, if there is any sign of disliking another dog.But as long as we can go to the dog park,without fights to happen,I think its not a big deal for us we should manage his little rudeness towards some rivals.

You're doing a good job handling Myrsky, Well done.

We seem to go off topic quite a bit and I'm glad you have the patience to read through all the posts!

I second that! Thank you for letting us (well, me) ramble!

Myrsky sounds like an absolutely delightful dog. You're doing a great job with him!