Roo has become agressive towards...

[Flaperoo]

other greyhounds?

This is hopefully not a big problem but I do not want it to get out of hand and wonderered if any of you had experienced this problem before and can offer some advice.

For background Roo has settled in brilliantly with our pack, dogs and humans. He got on great with Flash and me from day one, and over the past month is completely relaxed with Jeremy and now that Peggy is playing with him, they get on like a house on fire too.

The problem started about a month ago; There are two entire male greyhounds who play in a park near us who are allowed off lead and not muzzled (I don't have a problem with this as they are not agressive), but they are not very obedient and they try to mount Peggy (who is never off lead, and always muzzled) at every opportunity. Peggy responds appropriately initially, giving several warnings and then if they don't stop she will lose it and start snarling, biting (if she could) and generally becoming a bit uncontrolable. The first time this happened when Roo was with us, he decided he would join in (I assumed to try and support Peggy), and he became agressive too. No harm was done and we all went on our way.

Since then Roo's attitude to all other Greyhounds just approaching us is at best warning them off and at worst quite agressive. All my other greyhounds have loved other greyhounds and get very waggy tails just at the sight of one, so this is new to me.

Yesterday we were doing our evening walk when we saw two different greyhounds, Harley with his new sister Roxy (only two days out of kennels) walking down the road towards us. Flash and Peggy were very excited to say hello to their old walking partner Harley and to meet this new greyhound to the neighbourhood, but Roo was not. Neither Flash or Peggy, Harley or Roxy showed any signs of anything other than friendliness towards each other, but Roo without warning just attacked Roxy.

I am actually very upset with myself, because I am a forever bestowing the virtues of wearing muzzles, but on this occassion Flash and Peggy had muzzles on but Roo didn't; all because Roo's muzzle was not put back in the porch where it should be by OH when he brought them back from their lunch time walk and I was too lazy to go and find it . As a result Roxy was bitten on the ear and I was bitten on my finger trying to get him off her. The other owner was very good and said it was nothing serious and politely moved on. This morning we met them again and from a distance Roo started lurching in an agressive manner trying to reach Harley and Roxy. Jeremy had Roo on the lead and took him home via another route, while I spoke to owner to check if Roxy was ok from last night.

Thankfully she was it was just surface stuff and yesterday it just looked much worse than it actually was.

OH and I discussed this morning what might be going on in Roo's mind to see how we can correct this, but it is hard to work out, because Roxy is female and Harley (who has been castrated) has never tried to mount Peggy, so it can't be a protective thing, so we are bemused as to what is going on?

Roo is absolutely fine with all other dogs and shows no sign of agression towards them. Any ideas? We don't want to spend our entire time avoiding other greyhounds and anyway that would be very difficult around here as they are probably the most popular breed of dog near us. I could name 20 that we meet on a regular basis.

Sorry this post is so long and thank you for any advice you can give.

Mary

[Lisa]

One word sadly Mary .... Fear.

Roo isnt the most overly confident dog as it is and just when he was learning there was nothing to fear the entire hounds that are badly behaved have given him something to worry about. He has basically been put on the defensive. I am actually suprised that it is only happening with other hounds and not more breeds of dogs especially entire male dogs so your right it needs nipping in the bud quickly. I would be looking to take him on a few individual walks and probably be posting on Gap to see if we can find a few stooge dogs for him to meet up with to re build his confidence BUT most importantly do it singularly and away from the Peggy and Flash. He is now worried about your capabilities to take control of a situation and you need to be able on a one on one basis get him back into terrotory and a comfort zone that he is happy with and take control you can do that much better one on one before progressing to group socialisation sessions again with other hounds.

Give me a ring tomorrow evening so we can have a chat and see if we can hook you up with some others with hounds in the immediate area.

[loopylou]

Don't want to steal your post Mary and hope every thing is sorted soon but we are seeing similar behaviour from Molly and even though its hard to believe I did think as Lisa suggested in Roos case hers could be a fear aggression too. When she was with Jackie she lived with three bitches and met up with'regular ' dogs on walks and was generally well behaved although she is a dominant bitch.We usually walk her at lunchtime and rarely meet other dogs or if so only in passing so don't get to know regular walkers.She has been fine with the peoples dogs we have met with, mainly greys and whippets.On our first couple of WL walks she behaved impeccably even having some off lead time with the others.On the next walk she took off with another dog and chased two spaniels fortunately she was muzzled and did come back when called, she came back at such speed she crashed into a tree, she screamed and yelped loudly but luckily was only scared but didn't even have a bruise.Since then I have been wary of letting her off as she has developed a hatred of spaniels barking and snarling at any , but now grumbles at most dogs she sees.At the last WL walk all the dogs were on lead but if any came face on to say hello she snapped and snarled.If any were let off lead and ran near her she seemed worried as they were quite boisterous and loud and she snapped and snarled.she will walk beautifully alongside other dogs really quite close and seems to enjoy it ,but seems worried by face to face or dogs belting round near her..She runs around our garden at home with Suggs so I'm not too worried if she can't go off lead, it would be nice if she didn't get so hostile towards dogs coming to say 'hello'.People are always very nice about it and she is muzzled, they usually say 'she's showing her seniority' It is a bit embarrassing though and hard to avoid other dogs wanting to greet her.I hope Roo is soon back to his old self and able to socialize without fear.As for Molly well I was told shes 'a batty old bird'