How can I stop my rescue dog from being aggressive to guests?

You need to get him into a professional behavior expert for training. Aggression is very serious, and Bodie could hurt you. Do not deal with this on your own, it's not safe. Speak to his vet to get a referral to a behavioral expert as soon as possible. For your safety, keep him away from other people for now as much as you can. Best of luck.

This sounds like a vet difficult situation and there are a lot of factors that can be contributing. Firstly, I would recommend a consultation with a veterinary behaviorist right away to see what can be done. In the mean time, avoid all situations in which he's showing aggression (yes I realize this will be really really hard). He may need to be in a crate, or in the room on his own with some amazing treats whenever you are both home. If he's not showing any aggression towards your SO, she'll need to be the one to move him around. Don't use an punishments, because this could make things worse. Don't try to fix this on your own, you need professional help to avoid potential injury. Wishing you the best of luck.

Dog aggression is relatively common and while there are training techniques to reduce dog aggression it can be difficult. If you can identify certain triggers: i.e. if she is only aggressive when she is at home, or when she is on a leash, it can be easier to work on training her to 'ignore' other dogs or desensitization. I would recommend seeing a behaviorist - your veterinarian would likely be able to recommend someone in your area. Until you are able to work on some training I would recommend avoiding contact with other dogs so that there are no injuries.

I’m sorry to hear about Zedan! This is not an unusual scenario because she is defending “her” territory- whereas the vet or park is neutral ground. This is usually worse in unspayed dogs than spayed dogs. So step one is to spay her. The next step is to try crating her when people are coming over. Once she seems calmed down, you can let her out (on a leash to control her). You should feed her treats throughout this ordeal. This is NOT “rewarding bad behavior”, food is actually a useful way to lower the fear threshold so that she can learn that she doesn’t need to be so anxious. Finally, these two steps may not work without a little help from some anti-anxiety medication. Dogs cannot learn when they are so anxious about people coming into their territory and possibly threatening her people. Talk to your vet about the many options available. Hope this helps, best of luck to you and Zedan!

It is likely that he is being territorial and trying to gaurd the house. It is very diffucult to break such behavioural habits and to be honest he would need to be assessed in his home environment to understand exactly what his triggers are. Because this is such a serious issue in would recommend contacting a pet behaviour specialist asap to come to your house and work with him. In the mean time you may need to consider putting a humane Baskerville muzzle on him to protect your guests.

I would speak to your vet about a referral to a professional behavioral expert for Dexter. Aggression is a very dangerous behavior to work with in dogs, and it's best left up to an expert due to safety reasons. I never recommend owners try to train this behavior on their own due to this, and good on you for wanting to correct this behavior! Getting Dexter into a professional behavior expert is the best option for fixing this behavior.

Hi there! I'm sorry to hear that you're having this problem with Buffy. It's not unusual for behavioral issues to take a few weeks to show up in a newly adopted dog - there is often a "honeymoon period" while they're still getting comfortable and adjusting to their new home, before these issues start to emerge. Aggression towards other dogs and humans is a complex behavioral issue that's difficult to address properly in a forum like this, but I can try to give you some general information that may be helpful. Treatment for aggression issues is generally based on identifying what situations tend to trigger the aggressive behavior - then either finding ways to avoid them, or working with the dog to teach her to respond differently using reward-based training techniques. If this is something you want to work on, I would recommend making an appointment with a veterinary behaviorist who can evaluate Buffy in person and help you put together a detailed treatment plan to address her aggressive behavior. For now, if the aggression only happens with dogs and people she doesn't know, I would recommend keeping her separated from visitors for now until you are able to get a more detailed plan in place to work on the problem. You can search for a board-certified veterinary behaviorist in your area here: www.dacvb.org