My 20 weeks old whippet is showing occasional aggressive tendencies.
He barks at any family member in an annoyed way when asked to do something, it's now happening once a day, never more than once a day.
It usually occurs when he's on the sofa, mostly in the evening. He's usually very mild mannered, so his barking comes as a bit of a shock.
For example, dd asked him to leave something he's not allowed to have and he barked at her and mouthed her, we have now asked the dcs to distract him away from forbidden items rather than using the leave it command.
We think he is resource guarding on the sofa, so I changed his access to the resources, he is no longer allowed free access to the sofa and has to ask by sitting and being invited onto the sofa. He is now also being asked to sit before the dcs throw a ball or frisbee etc.
So we're 24hrs into him learning the new rules and dh asked him last night to sit before gaining access to the sofa (first time dh asked him and only second time he was forced to ask for access to that particular sofa) he got quite annoyed with dh barking at him and dh tried to appease him by petting him and he mouthed his arm.
I ask him to get down when he behaves like this.
Not sure if I'm doing the right thing/enough we've only just started to deal with this as it seems to be becoming more frequent. There's no snarling, just annoyed and frustrated barking. Should he be completely denied access to the sofa rather than just being taught to ask?
I want to fix this, I assume we can only tell if our new rules are working by giving it a few days. Any thoughts?
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The doghouse
Occasionally aggressive whippet
13 replies
Dancingyogi · 21/10/2014 04:50
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