Teaching a Santa Monica Cocker Spaniel’s Parents the Leadership Exercise to Stop Their Dog’s Dog Aggression

By: David Codr

Published Date: December 7, 2018

Koda Wally - Teaching a Santa Monica Cocker Spaniel's Parents the Leadership Exercise to Stop Their Dog's Dog Aggression

For this Santa Monica dog training session, we introduce the Leadership Exercise to help 6 year-old Cocker Spaniel Kody stop acting aggressive to other dogs.

Kody was brought into the family after a beloved dog passed away so that the family’s other Cocker, 10 year-old Wally would have a companion. While Kody is not aggressive with Wally, I did observe some inappropriate behaviors directed his way such as getting too close when Wally was chewing on a high value item.

I explained the importance of rules and structure when you bring a new dog into a home with an existing dog. You dont have to be a Cocker Spaniel trainer to do this, but knowing how to create a situation where the dog sees the humans acting like leaders through their actions and interactions is crucial.

I shared a number of dog behavior tips to help the family redefine the leader follower dynamic such as how to enforce rules, how to pet with a purpose, reward desired behaviors via passive training and non verbal ways to communicate with the dogs.

To help the humans practice these new non verbal communication methods, I walked them through a leadership exercise I developed about 10 years ago. This exercise helps the humans practice communicating with their body language and simultaneously builds up respect for the humans in the dog’s eyes. You can watch me teach the humans how to do the leadership exercise in the free dog training video below.

If the humans practice the leadership exercise a few times a day for the next week or two, they should be able to help Kody develop some self control, increase his respect for their leadership and get really good at communicating with him.

Im hoping that by redefining the leader follower dynamic and sharing some dog behavior tips, Kody stops feeling the need to lash out to protect his humans or act aggressively towards other dogs to motivate them to move away. But if his dog aggression is still happening in a month, we may need to set up a one hour follow up session to teach Kody how to stay calm and balanced around other dogs.

To help the family remember all the information I shared with them in this in home dog training session, we shot a roadmap to success video.

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This post was written by: David Codr