Lucas and Lincoln. Calm.
Why does one dog suddenly attack another dog in the home when excited or aroused?
When someone new comes to the door, they shut the two Dalmatians behind a gate. They will be barking loudly as the person enters the house.
Lincoln is barking with excitement. Lucas’ excitement quickly spills over into redirecting onto poor Lincoln, attacking him.
I witnessed this for myself.
Fortunately Lincoln is very easygoing and has not retaliated – yet.
They settled quickly and were both fine when let out to greet me.
However, things weren’t so good a few days previously when someone they didn’t know came to the house. While the dogs were still barking she put her hand over the gate. A mistake.
Bite!
The two brothers are now sixteen months old. Everything they do has been together. They are the best of buddies most of the time.
Their humans will now be working at two things in particular. They will be doing their best to lower both dogs’ arousal and stress levels in every way they can. They will be building up their own relationship with each individual dog rather than treating them as a pair.
Keeping arousal levels as low as possible is key. Stress builds up over days until the dog will be ‘ready to go’ and much more reactive than when calmer. Like a volcano, he will ultimately blow. See this video on ‘trigger stacking‘.
Lucas’ way of erupting is to take it out on poor good-natured Lincoln.
Lucas’ redirecting excitement and arousal is causing problems.
It’s a busy household. The two males like to stir the dogs up with rough play. The dogs also get over aroused when there is push and shove between the humans. All this results in Lucas redirecting either his own uncontrolled excitement onto Lincoln by going for him, or by reacting to Lincoln’s excitement in similar fashion.
As is often the case with two dogs, particularly siblings, it’s hard to leave them with toys or Kongs because it can cause trouble between the dogs. This is a shame because chewing is one of the best ways they can self-calm.
Separating them one each side of a gate for short periods will mean they can chew without actually being separated. Instead of taking his feelings out on Lincoln, Lucas can take them out on a bone, Kong or Stagbar!
Redirecting on walks
The redirecting happens on walks too and got so bad they muzzled Lucas. Once the dogs, always off-lead, are let out of the car and having built up a head of steam, Lucas immediately goes for Lincoln. He redirects all his uncontrolled, built-up excitement onto the other dog. They have now recently started walking the two dogs separately.
Walks will be overhauled, starting with the right equipment (Perfect Fit harnesses recommended), loose lead walking and controlled exits from both house and car with plenty of recall work and the use of rewards.
By not using food in training and for getting their dogs’ attention, they are missing their most valuable tool.
They will do everything they can to take away all opportunities for Lucas to rehearse redirecting his arousal, whether it’s fear, excitement or both, onto Lincoln. The less practice he gets, the less it will happen. With lower stress levels, the aggressive redirecting should lose its fuel so to speak; he simply won’t need to do it.
People asking for help usually ask for help with the behaviour itself – the symptom. It’s actually the emotion, the stress and excitement which is the cause of the behaviour that needs to be dealt with.
The two Dalmatians will now learn to be calm before getting the things they want whether it’s attention, a welcome, to be let out from behind their gate or out of the car, before getting their food and so on.
Lucas and Lincoln will learn to earn what they want by offering calm behaviour.
At present hyper behaviour is being rewarded and unwittingly compounded by receiving all the attention.
We ourselves need to be what we want our dogs to be. If we want them to be happy, we can be happy ourselves. If we want them to be calm, we need to behave as calmly as possible ourselves.
