Silly Doctor! You haven’t been legally able to kill your children for being brats for years! Some silly law or something. I blame the Liberal Media.
I feel random need to give some practical advice, sounds like you could use some. Can you set up some policies/rules that your whole family could follow? 1. Cricket doesn’t get alone time outside and gets attached to a sturdy lead line or firmly-held leash. 2. Cricket is crated every time a visitor comes over, have the crate ready at all times, near your main door.
Next up - call your vet and get a recommendation for a decent trainer. These aren’t unfixable issues, by any stretch of the imagination. She’s a young dog, who needs firm leadership, before she goes off and does something really stupid.
PS she’s adorable, looks like my 'lil nuthead. Who is stubborn, but thankfully sweet.
Like I said. 
You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.
I’m worse. 
This could be is issue; you may not be the person to control a strong willed dog.
My dog argued with me for two years; she still tries it some times. She does not win. I am much more forceful with her that I like, having grown up with shepherds and retrievers, because it is what she needs. She could rip my throat out in a heart-beat and she does try it, because … well, she loves and fears me. (That sounds terrible, but she is not my child, she is my dog.)
If you cannot “establish dominance” with this dog, find her another home, with someone who can control her. Just be honest, that she needs are strong hand.
“Establish dominance” sounds much more polite than “demonstrate you are willing and able to kill her if she does not behave, or even if she does, because she’s just a dog and people can kill their own dogs legally.” And don’t fool yourself into thinking that taking a dog that has bitten a human to the Humane Society isn’t killing it. It’s hard work to break a dog with issues and it can make you look like a monster sometimes (it’s supposed to), but if you are consistently tough when you need to be and loving the rest of the time you two can have several happy years (many in dog years) together. And the two of you need training; most of dog training is training the owner.
Hi Palo Verde
I was amazed to read about your dog Cricket. It is so reminiscent of our experience. Our dog Buddy is a rescue collie. We got him from the shelter after he had been adopted and then quickly returned. His former owner was in a wheelchair and could not handle a high energy dog like Buddy. But before that, Buddy had been a stray. When we adopted him in 2009 he was 18 mos old, approximately, according to our vet.
Buddy started out fine, but after about 4 months he started to become quite aggressive toward other people and dogs, especially while we were walking, or if someone came to the door, whether stranger or someone we knew. He nipped a couple of people, and he nipped me, and my husband and our daughter. However, this was during the episodes of high excitement, and not when he was alone with us. One of our strategies at the time was to use a prong collar on him, and I wonder now if that was a mistake because it seemed to only heighten his excitement, but we really needed to control him on walks. It seemed like a vicious cycle.
Soon we were giving Buddy and our other dog Blondie all of their exercise together in our back yard, which is quite big. Btw, Buddy has always played well with Blondie, and there has never been any aggression between them. Blondie is the dominant one, but she shares this with Buddy in certain ways, such as letting him into the house before her, drinking water first, etc. She is a very kind dog toward him, but she can also discipline him. We also have 2 cats, and Buddy adores them. He takes a lot of guff from them too, because cats are like that.
We researched techniques for Buddy such as gradually desensitizing him toward people and dogs on our street, by standing at the edge of our driveway for 5 mins one day, then increasing to 7 mins, then 10 mins, but one day a man came hurtling toward us on his bike with his out of control dog pulling the handlebars, and Buddy went berserk. The man crashed in front of us, and got up apologizing profusely. It was all I could do to get Buddy back into the house. It all happened so fast, and I don’t blame the man, or Buddy even, but it was one of those times when you just take a step back and try a different approach.
We finally went with doggy day care. We had Buddy assessed at a local daycare for large and small breeds, and they found that he did best with dogs his own size but lower energy than Buddy. Basically, he needed calming down. So he has been going once a week for the past 3 years. It has been worth it. He is perfect with the aunties at the daycare, he gets along famously with all the large breeds and he has learned not to become so excited around less than familiar dogs or people. He even has best friends he curls up with during nap time but his favourites are the aunties.
I should say that we do prevent Buddy from seeing visitors in our house, but he gets along really well with my mother, and I don’t know why, except she feeds him crackers. Buddy and Blondie get their exercise in our back hard and they are very content. We don’t have to crate them if we go out for a couple of hours. I think their quality of life is better than if we gave Buddy back to the rescue for who knows what kind of future. He lives for his doggy day care, and he adores our family. We love him and we have not given up on him.
So, this past Christmas, we put the dogs in a kennel so that we could take a family vacation. This is the first time since we adopted Buddy that we have done this. During the drive to the kennel, Buddy did not react to cars on the street as he used to, and he has mostly stopped this behaviour since being driven to doggy daycare anyway. When we walked him up to the kennel door, there were other dogs and people in the fenced yard, and Buddy could not have cared less. He watched them, and wagged his tail a bit, but he was unconcerned by them. My jaw dropped. I had expected him to explode and act out, bite my husband, all that. Instead, I cried because I was so proud of the boy. We took him inside the kennel, and Buddy acted very affectionately with the volunteers who petted him and talked to him. He just drank it up.
When we returned just today from vacation and picked up the dogs and cats at the kennel, they said Buddy had a great time and behaved really well.
I give his doggy daycare all the credit because the aunties there showed him what good manners were, and what a calm environment could do to help him overcome his anxiety. To this day we still don’t know what stresses Buddy, as he was a stray before the rescue took him in, but doggy daycare seemed to have the answer for us. It has taken 3 years but it was worth it. We are even thinking we could take Buddy and Blondie for walks together this spring, if winter ever decides to let up.
I hope this helps you. Good luck to you and Cricket.
Yes, it does. That is the point.
We may not be morally their owners, but we are morally responsible for protecting them, and that does include ensuring they do not break the laws.
Except … domesticated canines don’t respond well to mortal threats. Corporal punishment, food, and physical affection are good stimuli, but a sense of a real physical threat? I’m not sure. I think a domestic canine needs to know it is not at risk of death, only of loss / abandonment.
Withholding food can be a useful tool if the dog is feeling her oats, but sudden violence is better if the dog is violent. Usually a dope slap or a swat on the behind is sudden and violent enough, especially if she gets marched off to her Special Naughty Place, like the basement or your bedroom. Not her crate because she will associate that with punishment. Ditto for the bathroom, or you’ll never bathe her. Offering to kill the dog is a next-to-last resort. A swat and temporary banishment so she misses the party should be enough, and if it isn’t it’s time to think about that long ride to live on a farm in the country.
The dog always waits for permission to eat, but we never use not feeding her as a punishment. Physical punishment is only used when she nibbles or teethes on another animal; it is clearly a ‘play’ action, but given her size and musculature, we have to forbid it.
I had a friend go through this. The dog appeared to be a pit-mix. It was an absolute coward around anyone who was introduced into the human pecking order but other dogs were automatically below him. He tolerated the family dogs most of the time but when he got aggressive toward them it was always zero-to-crazy in .2 seconds. Sometimes the dog would wake up from sleeping and launch on one of the other dogs.
They had it put down after it caused a wound requiring stitches in one of the family dogs.
If it’s bitten 4 people already then the question is how vicious are the dog/dog attacks. If it’s causing serious harm to other dogs then the fear should be a similar event with a small child.
Once again - displays of aggression are NOT always asshole/bully/dominant behavior. They can and do arise from insecurity and fear, in which case swatting the dog and alpha rolling and being tougher/bigger/louder is only going to make the problem worse.
**Palo Verde **, if you take this dog to the shelter she will be euthanized. That may or may not be the appropriate end, but if that’s the way things are going I think the kindest thing for the dog is to take her to your own vet - a good day at home and then done. The shelter is a terrifying place.
I still say you need a behaviorist to help you - not Petsmart’s dubious trainers, but someone who really knows fear from dominance from screw loose. Is the dog a particular breed or identifiable breed mix? You could contact rescues for those dogs and see if they have any placements available or any suggestions.
In the meantime, set the dog up for success. You know by now what sets her off - avoid those situations at all costs. Separate her from visitors, don’t leave her in the yard unsupervised. On walks, stay away from other dogs even if that means going in and out of your gate 25 times. Keep some super delicious treats (deli meat, bits of chicken, stinky liver treats) with you on walks, and if you see a dog in the distance get her attention on YOU with the treats, and the turn away from the other dog and go somewhere else.
This probably is something that can be fixed, BUT, you have to want to do it, the whole family has to be on board, and know that it will take time and work. If this isn’t something you are willing to do and a rescue won’t take her, then please do her a favor and take her to the vet yourself, don’t drop her at a shelter.
This is the group that helped my friend turn her dog aggressive and fearful guy around:
http://www.petucationtraining.com/Home_Page.php
They are in Baltimore, but there may be something like this near you - they may even have a reference for you.
Good luck, I really hope you can make this work.
Boxers in general do not deal well with boredom. They need a job, and lots of exercise. I had a friend whose boxer fixated on a wall in the hallway whenever it went more than 3 hours alone and bored. He eventually dug a hole through to the stairway - through two sheets of plywood in addition to the sheetrock. After changing his schedule and adding lots of Dog Park time, the same dog was her “Nanny dog” to her three boys later on; but he’s never bitten a human.
And I fully support saje’s advice about providing a peaceful and comfortable transition if you decide it’s time to give up.
I have a 70-pound American Bulldog and have had dominance issues with her. Strategies I use:
• I enlisted the help of a trainer from BarkBusters, which I highly recommend. The trainer I got came to my house and expressly addressed any issue I brought up, including bringing her kid over to help my dog learn to chill around children (He was 13 so she didn’t really see him as a child. It’s toddlers that scare the crap out of her.) She also brought her dog over as well and we practiced passing Other Dog on the street, meeting Other Dog etc.
• Exercise, exercise, exercise. My dog spends way too much time in a pitball, sleeping and lounging around on the couch. She needs to burn off energy. Hell, she needs to be chasing cows around a farm somewhere. However, since I stupidly took on responsibility for her, I think it’s my duty and responsibility to ensure that she gets sufficient exercise. So the 20-minute walks turned into 40-minute walks, which have since turned into 2-mile walks, minimum. Twice a day, if it’s my day off. You wouldn’t believe how good she is after 5 miles. 
• Leash training. She is required to heel at all times. She is not allowed one paw past my feet. She’s gotten much better about trying to pull, but I am still very strict about the rules. If I give her an inch, she will take a mile.
Perfect example: I was fussing around with my phone, fixing the music, while we were stopped – standing around in a cemetery. Dog spots a squirrel. SQUIRREL! And she bolts after it, catching my finger in the leash loop and broke it. Lesson learned: Pay attention to the damn dog, even if I’m just standing there. Notice what she’s noticing. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! 
We’ve gotten to the point where I barely have to correct her if she (literally) steps out of line: a gentle, subtle, barely noticeable tug on the leash and I watch her carefully slow down. Sometimes she’ll glance up at me to make sure she’s okay or if I’m going to correct her further. Once, I saw she had spotted a cat chilling underneath a car. She glanced up at me to see if I was looking – before she lunged under the car to “get” the kitty (she lived with a cat, loves 'em, wants to play) – and I said to her, “Don’t even think about it.” She turned her eyes back to the front, her ears dropped, and she sighed as if to say, “Dammit. Busted.” It was such a human sounding expression of disappointment, I had to laugh. But she padded past that cat without a glance, as if it wasn’t even there.
After the broken finger incident, I got much more consistent and strict about constantly working on training. I will stop her in the middle of the walk – next to the park where there’s tons of people and squirrels and distractions – make her sit and run her through her tricks. The reason for all this is it makes her think. She has to think about pacing herself so as not to be leading me. She has to think about shutting out the distractions to give me a paw shake or a fist-bump or whatever I’ve asked her to do. When you make a dog think, it has to work harder than just running doggy circles around the backyard. And a tired dog is a good dog.
Finally, I can’t recommend AKC Canine Good Citizen training enough. It’s basically a list of things that your dog should be able to do with some patient, consistent work with you and your family. You can take the dog to an AKC event and they will run it through the items on the linked list and if your dog passes, he or she is officially a Canine Good Citizen. The certification means nothing, really (although there’s only a few more items to accomplish on the training list and your dog can be a certified therapy dog), but it’s the act of going through the training over and over and over and over and over again that really engages their little doggy brains – that’s what made the difference for us. YMMV, of course.
Two last points: Everyone in the family must be consistent. If one person lets the dog enter the house first but everyone else makes the dog wait so humans go through the door first, then that one person, in the dog’s mind, is ranked lower in the pack hierarchy. And the dog will walk all over that person. So that brings me to the other point, which is, especially with strong dogs like bully breeds, chows, herders, big ole mutts, the owners have to be strong too. Watch a bit of Cesar Milan and you will see him emphasize calm, controlled confidence. For the owner. You have to use a strong voice when correcting the dog (Bark Busters’ training is all vocal control on your part. Your learn vocal techniques so your training isn’t dependent on having treats or a clicker or anything fancy. The dog responds to the tone of your voice. So you learn to make a I’ll kill you I’m your Mama voice.)
To summarize: A tired dog is a good dog. And the owners have to be strong enough mentally and know how to communicate to the dog that the humans are in charge. People come first, dogs are second.
If I were you, I would NEVER allow this dog around visitors in your home – especially your kids’ friends.
Several years ago, we were visiting some family friends for a BBQ at their house. The kids were all playing outside with the dogs, when we heard horrible snarling, barking sounds followed by screaming. Turns out, one of their dogs (unbeknownst to any of the guests) had a history of biting, but the owners didn’t inform any of their guests, nor did they crate their dog. ANyway, for reasons unknown, the dog turned his sights on a 7 year old girl in the group and viscously attacked her. She had to be taken to the ER and had numerous stitches. To this day, she has visible scars on her face and hands and is terrified of dogs. It also destroyed the friendship between the family of the victim and the dog’s owners.
Prior to this attack, the dog (who seemed like the sweetest love to me) had apparently “only” snapped at people, but had attacked other dogs.
From a legal standpoint, I’m pretty sure the owners of this dog could have been sued royally for negligence, but the victims family didn’t sue.
Dogs are supposed to add enjoyment to your life.
All of these suggestions are pretty good, and you might want to consider them.
However, you have four kids. You only have so much time in the day. The odds of you being able to devote the time, and get every single person in your home to do the same exact process, is nil to none.
You can’t train everybody well enough to prevent a tragedy. You just can’t. Put the dog down.
Some dogs get snappier when they grow old, though they don’t necessarily look that old .