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Nothing but a guard dog This is becoming more and more frequent. We take Carmel and Emma to the park and have meetup with many other dog owners with big and small dogs. Whenever a big dog comes near us, Carmel will bark at it. We noticed it's always when the big dog is coming towards us that he always barks. Does this happen to everyone else?? How do you train him to stop? Does he think he's alpha?? |
I don't have an answer but I'd love to get one, too. Princess always barks at big dogs but if she sees a little one her tail wags a mile a minute. |
I grew up with poms. When a big dog ever went into the yard, our small pom would bark and chase the big dog away. It was pretty funny to see such a little dog run off such really big dogs. I think that our toy dogs will try to be alpha towards a bigger dog that they do not know. My Suzi has not even been near really big dogs yet. She loves to bark though, and probably would do the same thing. |
Now that I look back, he DOES bark only at other big dogs! Today, he kept barking at this big dog and that dog got annoyed so he scared him. Carmel freaked out and started yelping REALLY LOUD like he got hurt. The dog didn't attack him so he couldn't have possibly gotten hurt, he just got scared. Then, he kept barking at that dog. We were so embarrassed...he was so noisy...believe it or not, he rarely barks at home!! He used to never bark too!! :confused: Maybe he IS trying to be alpha over those big dogs. :eek: How can I train him to stop this behavior?? |
Hi Jen -- This is something I struggle with as well with Monkey. He is well socialized, of course he enjoys sitting on my lap at our social settings but we enjoy ourselves just the same, but let a large dog come into the area and he immediately tenses and starts mumbling under his breath. I personally feel, as does my trainer, that this is not based on him believing he is alpha but more on fear. He knows he is small. He knows he is having to look up at this other dog. We have been learning "quiet" and "watch me" to help break his tension. I give the commands one right after the other. I want to draw his attention away from the other animal so he does not send off any signals of aggression to get the larger dog to attack. Of course this is all still new to us but we put our training into "real life" practice only with my trainers bull mastiff and my neighbor has a retired police dog that is a giant schnauzer. In my opinion, larger dogs are simply "gentle giants" (assuming they have responsible humans of course) but that doesn't mean that all of them are able or should be around smaller dogs. Good luck to you! |
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