Dog just growled at me, never done that before

[MmeLindt]

Daphne was outside and obviously did not want to come inside but she was barking at the neighbour's dog (they let it wander up and down the road).

When I bent down to pick her up, she growled then snapped. I am pretty sure that she would not have bitten me but it was a bit strange.

Recently she growled at DD when she tried to take her out of her cage. And yes, I have told DD dozens of times that she should not disturb her. Maybe now she will listen.

I suspect that she is fed up at the moment. The DC are always picking her up and schlepping her about the place. 8 weeks of school holidays is long, for dogs too. I do keep telling them to leave her in peace, will have another chat with them tomorrow.

I feel that I need to go to dog training classes. Until now I have heavily relied on the fact that I can just pick her up and put her where I want. Will look into that when I come back.

Question for now: What should I do, how should I react?

Both mine will do this if we try to pick them up to move them. I think it's just samll dogs standing their ground. I have trained mine so that when I say 'out' or 'off' usully with a hand movement they do as they are told. It's easy with smaller dogs to pick them up rather than train them which can be a mistake.

Dog training classes will help and you have to make sure you do your homework each week.
Don't worry about it - I don't think she's a vicious dog.

Bloody hard one and IME it depends entirely on the dog. If she is bold I would suggest that you consider coming down on her like a ton of bricks, bellow at her and play the pack leader, putting her in her place. This can work with a strong leader.

If however she is of a more nervous disposition this could make things worse and the only advice I could give is to ignore and avoid situations which might cause such a reaction until you have a behaviouralists advice.

I have a similar one with my foster GSD who was fine in rescue but is now starting to growl at DDs and I over food. I have sorted other, short term foster dogs with food aggressive growling by conming down hard on them but this boy can be a nervous wreck so I know getting arsey isn't the solution here.

I'd suggest asking your vet for advice in the first instance, to check that she isn't in pain and reacting as a consequence.

And yes, reinforde the rules to the children obviously, for all your sakes. My sympathies, the holidays are waaaaaay too long for all of us and I'm sure that the change in routine and additional attention doesn't sit well with some dogs (or parents!).

I agree with Val that your first point of call should be the vet just in case she is in pain and reacting to it.

Not sure how old your dog is but my lab is fairly young and we did have a bit of problem with him growling at DS (although not me and DH or our younger dc's) if he took something/tried to move him etc and the advice I was given was to basically make sure he saw DS as the boss.

DS was told not to react to the growling or show any fear and follow through with any command that he gave the dog. It does seem to have resolved itself so seems it was just the dog testing his boundaries.

Dog training classes will make sure your dog knows what is being asked of him so any response will be automatic and any physical contact will be minimal and the dog wont feel so put out.

Fwiw, even though my dog would growl and give a snap he never ever bit - just make sure your dc's heed the warning!

Agree with the others re see the vet first. But also look at what you are doing with her.

She is doing something you do not like it so you pick her up and remove her. There is not much else she can do but growl.

I would work on her training a bit and then if you want her to stop doing something or recall her she does it but is then rewarded for doing so. It will make a huge amount of difference to her. She feels she is still in control does not need to growl to protect herself and gets rewarded as well. win win!

Re food aggression vall I expect you are doing the normal things and adding food to the dogs bowl and around the bowl etc?

Yes, minimu, I certinly am. I know that it can be a slow process but we'll get there eventually.

I wouldn't mind, but often he doesn't want the damned food he's stropping about!

Could you make a habit of preceding each pick-up with a command word that would both instruct her and give her warning of the pick-up (so making it leas threatening)? And reinforce the command with a reward after pick-up for the fist several days?

(I think if she was highly aroused by the set-to with the other dog it wouldn't be unusual for the aggressive energy to just slip round onto you without her really intending to threaten you.)

Every sympathy - our dog (supposedly friendly breed) growled at ds as soon as he could crawl towards him. Most alarming. Kept them separate until dog stopped growling at him, which I think was because we made a consistent elaborate show of how far ds is above dog in pecking order. Still would never leave them alone together. But exactly what to do in each case does depend on the dog.

But don't take any risks and don't make any excuses for the dog though, a dog is a dog and is potentially dangerous... 'fed up' and 'not intending to threaten you' are phrases to be applied to humans, not dogs!

Thanks for the advice.

We were at the vet this morning anyway as we are on our way to UK so had to have flea and worm treatment. She looked her over, and said that she is fine.

Will see about a dog training course when we get back to Switzerland. I do think that it has always been easier to just pick her up and move her so I have been a bit lax about training. Aside from party tricks like lay down and roll over.

Val
She is not nervous, but not a dominant dog either. When we come in the house she immediately rolls over on her back. She is very submissive, that is why it came as such a surprise - she is very docile and very sweet natured normally.

Dogs do growl and it is often something that humans do not understand. A dog can't talk, but growling (amongst other things, mostly too subtle for most of us to notice) is a means of communication. The dog is simply saying 'I don't like that'.

I would work on the training and stop picking her up to move her. If you need to move her until you have trained her to move to where you want (reward based training, such as minimu has suggested) then I would keep her collar on and use a lead to move her. I would also stop the children from picking her up. It may be that eventually the dog feels it has tried warning, it hasn't worked and then feels the need to progress to a bite. I imagine this is how a lot of family pets end up biting.

(says me who left my toddler with 18 year old step daughter and dog whilst clearing dinner things and came back to find said todller 'astride' thankfully good natured Golden Retriever)