Types of Dog Aggression – Here are the main types of dog aggression that you may or may not know and few ways to control this dog’s aggression towards humans or other animals.
It is important to control dog aggression because most times if not properly handled leads to dog attacks.
Dogs show or display aggression towards humans or animals for many reasons. However, there are still many ways to control this aggression.
Types of Dog Aggression
Here are the most common types of aggression found in dogs:
1. Maternal Aggression
Maternal Aggression in dogs is the aggression displayed by a female dog in order to protect her puppies from any form of threat
After giving birth to new puppies, female dogs protect their puppies with everything they got, they may bite if you ignore their growling and snarling.
How to Avoid Maternal Aggression in dogs
- Avoid trespassing of your visitors: If you have a female dog with puppies and want to avoid maternal aggression, which may lead to hurting your visitors. You should not allow your visitors to come close to your dog pen.
- Avoid trespassing of other Animals: Once your female dog has puppies, do your best to keep away other animals. For example, let’s say you have a cat or duck in your compound. Do your best to restrict the cat or dog from going into the area where your dog and puppies stay.
- Do not over touch the puppies: Over touching puppies makes dogs feel their puppies are unsafe, they may think you want to separate them from their puppies and may lead to unnecessary aggression.
Finally, maternal aggression is not only found in dogs but also in many animals. Do your best to avoid this form of aggression, also make your dog and puppies comfortable, as this will help reduce maternal aggression.
2. Territorial Aggression
Territorial Aggression is the type of aggression exhibited by dogs toward people or other animals that approach their property.
This type of aggression in dogs has led to many dog attacks, most animals are very aggressive when it comes to protecting their territory, and dogs are definitely not an exception.
Territorial Aggression ranges from growling and barking to lunging, chasing, snapping, and biting towards humans or other animals.
Dogs that mostly exhibit this territorial aggression are mainly guarding dogs or hunting dogs.
Ways of Controlling Territorial Dog Aggression
- Initial Socialization: To control territorial aggression if your dog is not the kind of dog you get for your home security is by socializing the dog from the puppy stages. When you have a visitor, tell your dog to sit down and greet the visitor this will help reduce territorial aggression in your dog. Also, introduce your dog to your neighbors from the puppy stages.
- Good Control and Rewards: If you don’t intend to use your dog as guard dogs, then you need a good control mechanism and an excellent treat reward. For instance, your dog is barking at a visitor you can call your dog and calm the dog down by giving your dog treats. This is because dogs love rewards for good work.
- Using clickers in training: When your dog is not for home guard purposes then consider using clickers to trigger commands during training from puppy stages. If you properly use clickers to train your dog, it is easy to use the same clickers to calm your dog down when your dog is displaying territorial aggression. Clickers make unique sounds that tell or signal your dog what you want them to do at a particular time.
Finally, if you have a guide dog, you don’t need to control the territorial aggression because you need it more.
You only need to control territorial aggression if you are only a pet dog.
3. Social Aggression
Social Aggression in dogs is the aggression displayed or exhibited by a dog because of the lack of Socialization from the puppy stages by the owner.
Socialization of your dog from the puppy stages is very important except if the dog is been trained to be a protective or guard dog.
How to Control Social Aggression in Dogs
- Vacations: If you have a dog, one of the best ways to stop or control social aggression in a dog is going on vacation with your dog from the puppy stages. By going on vacation with your dog, the dog will stand a chance of seeing different types of people, making friends, and understanding the outside world more. This will help your dog fight social aggression.
- Visiting parks: Visiting parks or evening walks with your dog will go a long way in fighting dog social aggressiveness. Taking your dogs to parks where there are many people will help your dog a lot because when dogs see crowded areas often they tend to get used to seeing different people, which will help kill social aggression in your dog.
- Visiting other Dog owners: Your dog needs to visit other dogs from time to time and interact with new dogs also make new friends. Visiting other dog owners will go a long way in helping your dog fight social aggression. So from time to time take your dog to see his or her dog friends.
- Social training: Social training ensures your dog doesn’t go for 5 days in a row without seeing a guest or visitor. And each time people visit you just tell them to meet your dog and hey (your dog’s name) meet (the visitor’s name).
4. Possessive Aggression
Possessive Aggression in dogs is the aggression displayed or exhibited by dogs in protecting their valuables, such as food dishes or toys from humans or other animals.
Possessive Aggression is common in dogs when you train them to stay at home alone.
Is often difficult to control if not handled well at the puppy stages.
Dogs show more Possessive Aggression towards food as you can see them barking, snarling, growling, and snapping when eating.
We usually see this when other animals or strangers are around a dog feeding area.
How to Control Possessive Aggression in Dogs
- Avoid Trespassing: To avoid unnecessary possessive aggression in dogs do your best to keep other animals or strangers away from your dog feeding area when feeding, or toys. If your dog loves playing with a particular toy please keep other animals away from the toy. Dogs can only allow other animals to touch their toys if they grew up together.
- Proper training: With proper training from puppy stages your dog can overcome possessive aggression. You can train your dog to eat with other animals or strangers around without being aggressive by allowing your dog to eat when you are around to correct the aggression.
5. Protective/Defensive Aggression
Protective/Defensive aggression in dogs is the aggression dogs display when they are feeling the need to defend themselves against a bigger dog or human.
We also see this kind of aggression when the dog feels the owner is under threat.
This kind of aggression is seen in every dog mostly guard dogs or hunting dogs, so expect it once in a while for your dog.
How to handle or control protective/defensive dog Aggression
- Protecting your dog: Always remove all forms of danger close to your dog, don’t allow your dog to get into a fight with other bigger dogs.
- Train your dog to protect: During your training also try to teach your dog some combat skills, this will boost your dog’s confidence.
- Create a safe environment: create a comfortable environment that will make your dog feel safe.
6. Sick Aggression
Sick Aggression in dogs is the aggression exhibited or displayed by dogs towards humans or other animals when they are sick.
Sick aggression is common among dogs that are not properly fed, handled, or taken care of.
For you to avoid this type of aggression you must pay attention to your dog or watch your dog closely when your dog exhibits unceasing aggression.
How to Handle Sick Aggression in Dogs
See your veterinary doctor or other experienced dog owners. Handling a sick dog is not easy, so always see a Veterinary Doctor.
Other Forms of Aggression in Dogs
Here are other secondary types of dog aggression you should know.
- Predatory Aggression: this is the aggression exhibited by dogs over prey, commonly found in hunting dogs.
- Redirected Aggression: we see this aggression when the owner of the dog abuse or beat the dog and your trying to stop the dog from expressing their inner feelings.
- Pain-Related Aggression: you experience this kind of aggression when your dog is in pain.
- Fear-related Aggression: just like the name suggests, dogs exhibit this kind of aggression when they are afraid or in fear may be because of pasted experiences.
- Sexual Aggression: This kind of aggression is exhibited or displayed by both male and female dogs. The male dogs exhibit this kind of aggression when they want to mount a female dog, and the female dog is resisting while the female dogs displayed this kind of aggression when they are not ready to receive a male dog mounting them.
I hope your question about Types Of Dog Aggression was answered.
