Social Isolation - Treating Dominance Confusion and Aggression

When he comes to you and sits spend at least 5 minutes interacting with him -- petting, talking, whatever you want to do. Then, end the attention time. Walk away. For the rest of the day call him to you at various intervals (an hour, 20 minutes, 2 hours, 10 minutes) and give him about five minutes of attention each time.

Day Four
You can relax things quite a bit today. Give him attention any time you're in the mood, but still ignore any attempts on his part to demand your attention. Because of his history of biting you will probably have to make this a life long rule --- attention on your terms only, not ever on his, but that's not too difficult a rule to live by. He can still get all of the attention a dog would ever want, it's just that you're going to initiate the attention and end it.

If, months from now, you feel he's been so good that he can start asking for attention you can give it at try. The way you test it is to let him ask for your attention once or twice and then the next time ignore any attempt at getting your attention. If he accepts your decision (no attention) then he's probably OK. If he gets more pushy, then he's probably on the road back to his old ways. It is quite natural for a dog to try to make his way up the pack ladder as far as he can go. He may test the rules every now and then for the rest of his life. Don't worry about it. Just say no.

Day Five and After
Now that the issue of leadership has been resolved, it's time to start the Nothing in Life is Free program. NILIF is a useful technique for all sorts of behavior problems, not only for those dogs that have a history of dominance confusion. For that reason, it gets it's own page and is not repeated here.

What About Sleeping on the Bed?

The alpha gets the prime sleeping spot. If your dog didn't already have a history of aggression you could let him share your spot, but the bed thing can be all it takes for him to hang on to his aggressive ways. How you go about accomplishing this during the initial 48 hour isolation period is going to be tricky. If you can close the bedroom door at night without him going ballistic on the other side, that's what I'd recommend.

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