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Location: wny
Joined: Aug 2017
Posts: 29
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My dog growls at other dogs...
I have a 9 month old female Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever.
We picked her from the litter of 8 because she quietly played with a ball while the others climbed on each other at 6 weeks.
We got her into training at 8 weeks and took her to puppy play time at Petco frequently. She did fine until she was about 5 months old. Then she started growling at other puppies. Tried it a few times and had to stop taking her; people don't like their dogs growled at. She still plays well with a sister that lives near us, but rarely see her.
We rarely encounter other dogs, but when we do she smells them, but doesn't seem particularly interested. (she loves all people...)
We had a 16 year old until last month, but pretty much had to keep them apart; the puppy wanted to play and the 16 year old just wanted to be left alone.
Today we took her to a kennel for an interview. Guy has two of his own dogs and boards up to 5 dogs at time. He gives them free run of his house and has two outside runs. (the house was surprisingly well ordered and clean!) Chloe was a bit intimidated by all the dogs and all the noise, but she generally did okay, except she growled twice at a boisterous golden puppy about twice her size. The guy said it wasn't important; the golden was crowding her, and she was telling it to back off. They would work it out on their own.
So, now that you know everything about Chloe...
1) What do you make of her general dislike of dogs? Just a individual characteristic? Keep her away from other dogs? Encourage her to be with other dogs? Take her to a behaviorist?
2) Is she likely to be okay at the kennel we visited today for a week? It will be next March, so she will be a bit more mature and spayed, if that matters.
She is our third Toller and neither of them particularly cared for other dogs either, but we never took the other two to puppy play times.