My 5 year old Husky girl has a new trigger.

[emmanuelbiny]

Our 5 year old Husky girl has recently developed a strong reactivity to certain dogs very sporadically at the dog park she has played in for years now. The trigger seems to be if a new dog comes into the dog park and in passing growls at her. Sometimes she growls first too— and this is new. She has on occasion cone unglued and we need to step in immediately to calm her and de-escalate. It started when an “old friend”, a female pup who ours always happily played with became aggressive with her, growling and snapping. We have no idea what set that dog off, but her owner and my husband had to break up the fight that ensued. I think this may have traumatized our girl, and now she will occasionally growl at a new dog as he/she starts to enter the dog park. We always correct it ( step in and tell her no, or leash her and take her to a bench with us) and make sure she is calm before allowing her to interact. This seems to work. But I am concerned with this out of the blue, hair trigger response that I had never seen in this 5 year old. Would love any advice or thoughts. She enjoys almost all of the dogs at our dog park, but I need to figure out how to undo whatever happened to create this trigger ( which is not predictable at all) so we can eliminate this seemingly random and thankfully infrequent aggression. She used to feel very safe there, but now I don’t feel as safe with her behavior, which had never been an issue at all until just now.

 

[robert76]

@emmanuelbiny Stop using dog parks. Why anyone thinks they’re good let alone for reactive dogs is beyond me.

 

[erbard1]

@robert76 I think you missed the part that my Husky was/has been a happy camper there for years. This is a totally new thing. She loves the socialization. Why anyone would not let their dogs enjoy these spaces is beyond me!

 

[quilly]

@erbard1 Because you are now rolling the dice with your dog and everyone else's dogs safety...If your dog attacked another dog...would you understand then? Would it be to late then?

 

[obadimu]

@erbard1 I think dog parks are a gamble for most dogs as you often don’t know who is coming in and out, who has a good understanding of their dog’s body language and who has an aggressive dog that still thinks it’s okay to bring them for some reason. However, now you have a dog with aggressive tendencies and that takes the dog park from a gamble to a Bad Idea. You should make friends with people and see if you can do calmer play dates somewhere else. I’m glad that you pay attention and remove your dog when she is showing discomfort. Some day you might not be fast enough especially if she thinks your punishing her for the growl.

 

[celtish]

@robert76 There’s a large dog park near me and I’ve decided to give it a try … when it’s mostly empty and my girl can just run around. If someone shows up and I don’t like their vibe, we leave.

 

[jhofste]

@celtish High risk high reward

 

[celtish]

@jhofste It is a risk, yes. We lived here for a year with me casually scouting the park whenever I’d drive by. I decided to give it a go last week. She had a wonderful time playing with a Shiba who’s owner was as attentive as I was - staying close to monitor the dogs, no cell phone. A couple with two dogs showed up and they walked to a bench and sat down while their dogs ran around - completely out of monitoring range and verbal cues. The Shiba had left by then and my girl was starting to tire so we left. I can’t imagine every going on weekends or weekday evenings when it’s packed but I work from home so we can drop by on “off” hours now that I broke the seal, so to speak.

 

[jhofste]

@emmanuelbiny I had a iditarod line race husky obsessed with balls. She went to a dog park first year with someone else. I took her there 6 months or so. It just turned into an expectation of balls to control and get stolen. Also some female dogs she knew since young she had some bad association would fight on sight.