Stop Aggressive Puppy Behavior With Positive Dog Training

For this Long Beach dog training session we worked with French Bulldog puppy Delilah, sharing tips to stop aggressive puppy behavior.

Delilah is a 9 month-old French Bulldog puppy who lives with a 5 year-old Frenchie named Spider and a 9 year-old Chihuahua mix named DJ (not pictured).

The guardians had reached out for help after Delilah had started indiscriminately going after the other two dogs for apparently no reason. Its unusual to see a young puppy acting aggressive. I knew I needed to ask some questions to find out what was going on.

I sat down with the primary guardian to discuss the dog’s issues, backstory and other pertinent details.

From what I was able to determine, it sounds like Delilah was not getting as much sleep as she needed. Many people don’t realize how much sleep dogs usually need. Small breed adult dogs usually need to sleep about 12 to 14 hours a day. Puppies usually need more than that.

If a puppy is under slept, it is very, very common for them to become overly mouthy, cranky and offer other unwanted behavior issues. Increasing her sleep throughout the day is one of the top things that these humans can do to stop aggressive puppy behavior in Delilah.

I ran through a number of dog behavior fundamentals and offered a ton of tips and suggestions in this session. The guardian pointed out a few things that she did that could be problematic to some of the dog and puppy behavior issues they were dealing with.

I explained how to introduce and use marker words to make sure that the dogs understand what it is the humans want. I went through how to introduce a cue when I taught them a hand targeting exercise. This may not seem directly related to thier puppy acting aggressive, but miscommunication is the root to many dog problems.

Next we went over the importance of recognizing and rewarding desired behaviors, something I call Celebrating. Many people accidentally train their dogs to do exactly the opposite of what they want by giving them attention following those unwanted activities. They make matters worse by only occasionally rewarding dogs when they offer desired behaviors.

Celebrating is the easiest way to fix this conundrum. I suggested that the guardians point at each other and say the word “celebrate” anytime they notice a dog offering a behavior near one of their housemates who was not paying attention. Celebrating is an incredibly powerful training tool, but it only works if everyone practices it regularly.

While celebrating by itself won’t stop aggressive puppy behavior, it will make it clear for the puppy what they can do to get attention. When this is repeated frequently, puppies learn that sitting, laying down, coming to their human or giving eye contact are much better behaviors because they are consistently rewarded.

Next I went over dog consent and cut off signals. One of the guardians had mentioned that they sometimes would tease DJ when he showed his teeth by covering his mouth with her hand. Because he is a small dog, people don’t feel threatened by him. And the teeth bearing is usually not an outright threat, it’s more of a warning. It’s a way of a dog saying “I don’t like what you’re doing, please stop.”

But just like humans, if a dog communicates it doesn’t like something and the person continues to do it, it’s going to erode their relationship and may end up resulting in other unwanted behaviors. You better believe that this is an incredibly important factor if you goal is to stop aggressive puppy behavior.

Learning how to cut off signals and dog body language is really important for this family. The dogs are communicating with each other but since they have a puppy who doesn’t always listen, it’s really important for them to recognize when that’s the case so they can intercede.

If the adult dogs see that the humans are managing the puppy, then they don’t have to handle the situation on their own.

Additionally, managing Delilah properly will go along ways towards their goal of wanting to stop aggressive puppy behavior. If they start seeing cut off signals from the other dogs that she’s not listening to or indications that she is overly tired, they can move her into her long-term confinement area so she can take a break or nap.

We also went over some basic training. Spider did not know how to sit on cue so I spent a few minutes demonstrating how to do teach a dog to sit. Later in the session I walked the guardian through the same exercise with Delilah.

It was great to see how quickly Delilah picked up the lesson, but more inspiring to see the light shine in her guardian’s eyes. She was so proud of her dog and what she taught puppy Delilah. This is one of the hidden perks of being a positive dog trainer. Seeing people recognize the potential in their own dogs always puts a smile on my face.

How to Stop Aggressive Puppy Behavior

As mentioned previously, I think one of the biggest reasons that Delilah was acting aggressive was she was under slept and cranky. Small breed puppies need to sleep 14-16 hours a day and Delilah was getting far less than that.  So increasing her sleep needs to be a top priority for her guardians.

But there were a number of other things that the guardians can do to stop aggressive puppy behavior.

I decided to pull out my camera and spend a few minutes going over things the humans can do to help Delilah interact with the other dogs better. No one wants to see a puppy acting aggressive; more sleep will help with that.

If you want to learn how to stop aggressive puppy behavior, click the free positive dog training video below.

By increasing her sleep, recognizing her body language, observing the other dogs cut off signals and building some impulse control, the guardian should be able to help Delilah modify her behavior.

I don’t think Delilah is an aggressive puppy, I just think that she was overstimulated, underslept and due to a lack of early socialization with other puppies, is confused on how to interact with the other dogs. Poor social skills and practice is different than a puppy acting aggressive, although it can look the same.

It’s important to keep these things in mind when your goal is stop aggressive puppy behavior. Often as humans, we do a number of things that contribute to our dog’s problems. We also confuse intentional actions with bieng emotionally overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, one of the guardians was not feeling well and unable to join us. I’m hoping that the guardian I sat with is able to sit down with him and watch the videos that are included and linked here so that she can fill him in. Everyone being on the same page is super important when you want to fix puppy behavior problems.

Not being able to see how this ill guardian interacted with the dogs prevent prevented me from pointing out anything that he may be doing to contribute. Sometimes people take it personally when people point out that some of their actions can have a negative influence on their dogs.

But it’s important to remember that everyone’s goal is the same, a harmonious house. Everyone wants to stop aggressive puppy behavior in Delilah, and if they work together, they should be able to achieve their goal. So hopefully he understands anyone pointing things out is just their attempt to help everyone improve.

Now it’s going to take some time and practice with everyone on the same page to help these dogs all get on. To make it easy for the guardian who wasn’t able to sit with us to know what we covered, I pulled out my camera to record a roadmap to success video. You can check out that session summary by watching below.