Is this agressive behaviour?

[moderateorgood]

Dog is a 2 yr old rescue collie X.

She is as sweet as butter with people who like dogs and are confident around her. Friendly, obedient, engaged.

As soon as she senses that someone is nervous of her her hackles go up and she barks and barks.

This applies to any children visiting the house. She has one end of the hall that she can be safely shut away in behind a baby gate with an around-the-corner bit so she can put herself away to bed if she wants to opt out.

3 children pottering round the house today. Dog shut away. One of the boys very frightened of dogs. Every time he needed to cross the hall she leapt up and barked and barked at him.

I put her out in the end because he was getting frightened.

He didn't go near her or engage with her. Nothing that I coukd see required her to bark at him.

She also barks at my baby.

No I doubt it.

Sounds to me that she is frightened and unsure and in typical collie fashion she gets in first with a bark to get rid of the scary thing.....in this case the unsure child.

I agree with idirdog. It sounds like she is frightened. Maybe she wasn't socialized with children as a puppy and so she finds them scary. It sounds like you are managing the situation well. If you want to resolve it then you could consult a behaviourist. The APBC would be a good place to start.

You did the right thing moving the dog as well so that the boy did not have to be frightened of her.

I third the previous posters. You are clearly managing the situation, but you could consider trying to create a positive association with children, particularly if you are in line to have a toddling child shortly. As she's showing such clear signs of anxiety, it would be advisable to do this under the guidance of a behaviour counsellor as Redwing has suggested.

Aggression in dogs is almost always either an escalation of fear or a learned defensive behaviour. As such, it is the culmination of a sequence of events where the dog's stress signals have been ineffective and the dog has only one remaining course of action available to them. In your case the barking is a clear sign of distress/anxiety, and by heeding this signal and keeping the frightening things away from her, as you are, she will not have to resort to aggression.

The ladder of aggression is really useful. I tend to put the barking that these dogs do on the same sort of level as the stiffening and staring.

Oh how I would love a behaviourist to help me help her. Unfortunately such a thing doesn;t exist where I live.

I do my best with her but to be honest she is way beyond my understanding a lot of the time.

She gets better with my children as they get older. With visiting children I just always keep them apart.