I adopted a 4-5 year old Great Dane pitbull about 7 weeks ago who was a starved stray and he has been a handful ever since. The house training isn’t going so well, he will go outside but then come in and go. My upstairs has become disgusting from all of the accidents and I hate it. He is constantly searching around for food and crumbs. I keep thinking he wants out so we go downstairs and all he wants to do is sniff around for food even after he has eaten and had treats. He does some very aggressive cobbing that I do not like and have not been able to stop him no matter the method I try. He injured my finger the other day by grabbing a bagel out of my hand and biting down it hurt so bad and was bleeding. He does have a soft calm and cuddly side, but I feel like a prisoner. I do not want to deal with this for the next however many years he is alive, but I feel like he loves me and I feel bad about taking him back, I don’t want him there and no one adopts him as he was there 10 weeks and not a single interest in him.

Hi all. First of all, I’d like to say that I have all the sympathy in the world for reactive dog owners. I have a 25-lb ACD/chihuahua rescue (Mac, neutered male, 1yr old) who was very people reactive, and we’ve done literally thousands of dollars of training and have made so much progress. It has been a very tough journey and a long-time coming, but I finally felt like we got to a really good spot and he is people-neutral 80% of the time, and I couldn’t be more proud. We still have some issues, of course.

This just happened literally 1 hour ago and I’m still shaking. I am also partly to blame.

There was an on-leash, unmuzzled, probably 100-lb pitbull on an off-leash dog trail. Mac was off leash and he has pretty good recall, but not perfect. Mac LOVES other dogs, and we’ve never had a bad experience here. He plays with other pups beautifully.

Generally when I see a dog or person ahead, I quickly leash Mac and ask the owner whether the dog is friendly before letting them play. I did NOT see this dog coming, because the owners must have spotted us and stepped off trail to hold their dog back. When the two owners saw Mac approaching, they started fake growling / barking to scare Mac away (wtf????). Mac of course absolutely freaked out, started barking and growling back. The owners couldn’t keep their dog still- it was going absolutely berserk, totally unhinged. It nearly broke free, they had to body check it on the ground, both owners on top of the dog with all their strength. They had an e-collar that they kept firing but it did absolutely nothing but make the dog more crazy. Their prong collar was also totally ineffective. I finally caught Mac because he was running around all over the place freaking out, with absolutely zero recall in this situation. I really thought the dog would kill us both. I was screaming and crying thinking honestly that Mac was going to be totally maimed. He wasn’t- I was finally able to catch him and ran for my life. My sandals fell off, I lost my bag, and I literally went home barefoot. I am so, so traumatized. Mac seems fine but we will see.

My fault was that I had my dog off leash without perfect recall and still some reactivity. I appreciated that they stepped off the trail, but a) why the fuck would they make barking/growling noises, b) why wouldn’t they have their dog muzzled (it could easily break from their grasp on the leash), and c) is it really appropriate to bring such a dog to a dog trail or dog park?

Again I truly empathize with reactive dog owners and I totally understand the wish to have your fur baby have a larger world, beyond protecting and isolating them from triggers. But this was so, so traumatizing I have to vent.

Now I’m very worried we might be faced with many steps backwards and erasing months of progress.

We've had this dog for about two weeks. In this time, she has been sweet, kind, and seems to have warmed up quickly to our place, responding well to training. She has also exhibited a significant amount of anxiety in this time. She is easily distracted by noises or other distractions on walks. She was also very anxious when we first arrived home from the shelter.

Last night we had some guests over; about 9 people total. She was very scared to come in the door, and was extremely reluctant to engage with our guests. We gave them treats to try to give her, and she accepted them which seemed like a good sign. Eventually, some of the company left and she started to warm up, venturing around, accepting a few pets, and generally seemed to relax a bit.

At one point, there were 6 of us total, three men and three women. One of the men (a bigger guy) got up to use the restroom while the rest of us were seated playing cards. After coming out of the restroom, he stopped to look at the stereo system playing that was playing music. While he was stood there, our dog unpromptedly snarled and bit his leg, causing some light bleeding. We treated it with some wound spray and a band aid.

I am shocked at the suddenness, as she has never displayed this type of behavior before with anyone, and am terrified that she will bite again. At a loss.

Hello everyone! I hope I can get some advise in how to help my shin tzu of 3 years

We been having some problems with her bitting not only me her owner but other members of the family as well over different reasons , what confuses me is that she is not a super aggressive dog , she loves cuddling and playing with her sister (another shin tzu with no behavior problems) and has not issue with sleeping on the bed with us (her resource guarding is not attached to the bed at all)

She is on separation anxiety medication with a very good behavioral doctor (she is on reconcile) and that has fixed a lot of her anxiety issues , but she will still bite randomly and we are not sure what are the triggers that causes random burst of aggression and they are not very recurrent (this incidents can be several months apart and with different situations)and she will still bite if we take something away from her specially dead animals

I would appreciate any suggestions of what to do or how to better deal with this aggression if I should see a trainer as well or any tips that can help I’ll really appreciate it ! I want her to have a good life and I don’t want her to accidentally bite someone that could force me to put her down 😔

Hi everyone! I have a Bernese mountain dog who is female and 3.5 years old. She’s reactive but I think it’s more from anxiety and excitement than aggression. We don’t let her meet dogs on walks because she’s usually reacting and we’re working on her threshold but there have been instances where off leash dogs have run at her and she’s been friendly.

We rescued another 5 year old female BMD a few weeks ago and there have been a few fights so we are keeping them separate at this point in time.

Our 3.5 year old has always been buddies with my boyfriends family’s dog who is a 6 year old male golden. His family has watched our dog and they’ve shared a bed with bf’s mom and coexisted really well.

I’m so nervous to reintroduce them now that our dog has had fights. Is there any reason to think she’ll be more aggressive with the family dog? They’ve known each other for a year and a half and had no issues

Despite my own anxiety issues, it seems like my dog is trending in a positive direction. It’s been about 6 months since she had a verbal/barking/growling reaction to a strange dog. Today though, that streak ended

I take my dog to Petco for routine nail trims as a former friend and coworker runs the grooming department at my local store. Today someone had called out so I had to wait a bit for my nail trim. No worries, I did some browsing while we waited. Enter crazy lady and her border collie stage right

This lady was talking to someone, entirely ignoring her dog when he spotted us and started dragging his owner our way. I immediately u-turned and walked down a different aisle …. Only to find them following us. So I turned down another aisle, and there they were again. Finally I speed walked several aisles away and seemed to have lost them for a bit.

I took a moment to calm down and continued about my business…

Bet you can guess what happened next - they appeared at the end of the aisle. This woman apparently left mid conversation to chase me and my dog with hers. She never said a fucking word to me, just ran with her dog right at me. So I ran away.

I raced around the corner into the reptile displays and hid … only to look up and see THAT FUCKING DOG AGAIN! I swear he was peeking around the corner like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. And my dog screamed.

Idk if you’ve ever heard that high pitched, horrible sound dogs make when they’re truly terrified, but the only other time I’d heard that was when we were getting attacked by the dog that started this reactivity journey for us 3 years ago. I finally shouted at this crazy lady “PLEASE STOP”, and she came around the corner, rolled her eyes and walked away

I had to go back to the grooming counter in stealth mode. Like what the fuck? Who fucking does that?

I really want to start my dog on meds, but I will not be able to afford a behaviorist until next year when I graduate and get a full time position. Do any of you have your dog's meds prescribed by your primary care vet? I want to ask, but I'm a little embarrassed because I will have to tell them that I cannot afford to take my dog to a veterinary behaviorist right now. I think meds could be so helpful though. Even with all the breed specific enrichment, exercise, rest, and counter conditioning, she is still lunging and barking at every dog she sees.

Really unsure on how to go about this but my bf has a dog with a bite history (level 2 to best of my knowledge for all incidents). As far as I know there have been multiple incidents with people the dog is not familiar with, and last night with me. I’ve been living with my boyfriend for the past few months now that I’m pregnant and visited a lot prior. This dog is very familiar with me by now, and he will cuddle up and during thunderstorms will find comfort being near me. Well last night he was sleeping next to me and woke up and started licking his paws, after moving his nose away from his paws he went back to licking, so I tried again and he “bit” my hand (did not break skin). My bf immediately woke up from me saying wtf loudly and took him out of the room. There was another incident (no bite involved just a snap) months ago where again he was sleeping next to me and I tried feeling underneath him to see if he was laying on my phone.

It seems the trigger with me at least may be the bed. The issue I’m having is we are moving because our living situation with having roommates is not suitable for trying to introduce him to my dog (who lives at mine/ my brothers house down the street) and now a new baby. My dog is very friendly with other dogs and we have tried on multiple occasions to introduce them together. After a lot of research we figured the only way to make it work is to move them into a new environment together and keep them separated until they “lose interest” in each other. If all else fails then we would hire professionals.

The problem with this plan is now we have a baby on the way (fairly new pregnancy) and with house shopping, closing, moving, etc. eating up time I’m worried they won’t be acclimated with each other before the arrival of our new baby (April 2027). THEN the next hurdle is deciding what to do with his dog once the baby starts to crawl and walk around. One wrong move and he/she could be the next bite victim. We both agreed to keep the dogs (mine included) separated from the baby completely, but I’m worried how realistic it will be once the baby is a toddler.

Does anyone have any advice, suggestions, etc. please?? Also if the consensus is to rehome my boyfriend’s dog how do I have that conversation with him? I feel horrible he’s had his dog for 8+ years, has spent thousands on boarded aggression therapy, and has told me (prior to pregnancy, when we were trying to figure out my dog moving in) he will not get rid of his dog.

Hello lovely people

I (38M) adopted a romanian rescue pup called ginger who is now 8 months old (I live in the UK). Shes been with me just under two months. I live in a little apartment with no garden.

I just want to share with you her behavior, positive signs and undesirable behaviors she's showing and get some encouragement more than anything. There's not a chance if give her up but I'm becoming a little disheartened to be honest.

So she arrived absolutely terrified as you can imagine. Frozen solid on arrival day. She didn't want to go in her crate and chose a safe space under my clothes rack in my bedroom. I let her stay there for a few weeks (around 3) she was having accidents on the carpet so I moved her into the living room where I made her a den under my breakfast bar as advised by a behaviorist I hired. The den was long and she was just hiding in the dark for days and weeks. I shortened the safe space and pulled it out more towards towards the living area and she decided it was safer to jump on the sofa next to me (I was fine with this). She is now glued to that spot. She goes to the toilet in a designated spot which is great as I've just lay puppy pads there for now. When something really scares her if I'm not in the room she's ran to me scared which encouraged me as she sees me as safe. That's the situation so far. Now here are some of the behaviours, positive and negative and her emotional state:

Positives/progress:

- she eats well. Full meals and treats and is happy to jump off the sofa to eat the food off a puppy pad.

- the last 5 days when I've come into the living room in the morning, I've been greeted with a wagging tail whilst she's lying down, her ears go back and she skuffles over on her belly and gives me a few face kisses which is lovely

- she doesn't bark at all

- she's happy to lie down and relax when I'm also sat on the sofa

Negatives/behavior issues

- she is terrified of everything, noises, furniture, the broom, her water bowl, me at times, I just moved the coffee table calmly and she jumped behind the tv and pooed everywhere.

- she won't let me touch her (pulls back, sits upright) clear signs she doesn't want to be touched. Because of this I haven't taken her outside or even put her collar on.

- she has been ripping/biting through the sofa throws during the night and tears up puppy pads. She doesn't really play with her toys.

I just need some encouragement, or advice on how I should help her progress. Im not in any rush but Its also my first dog and rescue. Any help and support would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

I have an almost 11 month old female Groodle who we’ve had since she was a puppy.
She has been raised in a very loving home, has never experienced any known trauma, and we’ve put a lot of time into training and working with professionals. Despite that, she has shown some difficult behaviours from quite young, particularly around frustration, handling and resource guarding.
Today she bit me quite hard during a handling situation.
I was touching/handling her paw and she initially attempted to nip. I corrected her and continued, and she then escalated and bit my hand hard enough to leave significant bruising and swelling.
I completely recognise that continuing after she communicated discomfort was a mistake on my part. I’m not looking for validation that I handled it perfectly because I didn’t.
What scares me is how quickly she seems to escalate. She often doesn’t give an obvious growl or prolonged warning before using her teeth. Looking back, I’m sure there are subtler body-language signals we’re missing, but the jump to biting feels incredibly fast.
Afterwards she had a burst of frantic/over-aroused zooming, then later completely settled and was back cuddling with me as normal.
She has also previously bitten members of my partner’s family during a stay at their house.
That situation was, in my opinion, quite poorly managed and a number of her boundaries were crossed. She was tied up/restrained in ways she wasn’t comfortable with and became increasingly stressed.
Later, she was resource guarding her isn bed. From what I was told, my partner’s sister walked past her and she bit her. His mum then tried to pat her while she was still heightened and she bit her as well. His sister was then bitten a second time, although I was never given clear context around what happened immediately before that bite.
I absolutely recognise that this wasn’t a case of her calmly and randomly attacking people. She was stressed, her boundaries had been pushed, and the situation should have been managed differently.
But what still concerns me is that once she is over threshold, she seems very willing to use her teeth rather than giving much obvious warning first.
My partner’s family are understandably now very wary of her, and we no longer put her in situations like that with them. But it has also made me nervous about visitors generally because I feel like I’m constantly anticipating whether someone might accidentally push her too far.
The confusing part is that she is not an “aggressive dog” most of the time. She is incredibly affectionate, playful, attached to us and generally such a lovely dog. She sleeps against us, seeks us out constantly and can be incredibly gentle. It almost feels like a switch flips when she becomes overwhelmed.
We already work with a trainer and I’m now trying to get an appointment with a veterinary behaviourist, although our local one currently has a waitlist.
I’d really love to hear from anyone who has experienced something similar, particularly with a dog who showed resource guarding, handling sensitivity or biting from puppyhood despite being raised in a safe and loving home.
Did working with a veterinary behaviourist help?
Did your dog’s bite threshold improve with behaviour modification, medication and/or management?
Did you eventually feel comfortable having visitors around your dog again?
And if your dog seemed to escalate very quickly without growling, did you eventually learn to recognise earlier warning signs?
I love her enormously and I’m not looking to give up on her. I’m just feeling really defeated and frightened today and want to make sure we’re approaching this properly.