Selective reactivity

[u/SwimmingDoubt2869]

Im so sad right now. My dog used to be very friendly to every dog and would completely ignore reactive ones up until he was around 2 ~ 3 years old (He is neutered). Then he would bark back and lunge at larger dogs that showed aggression but ignore reactive smaller ones.

A couple months ago we were attacked by a pack of 5 stray dogs. One of them bit my leg and I had to go to the hospital and take one million rabies shots but he was not hurt. He also didn’t try to fight them that much.

Now he hates any and every stray dog. If he sees a stray from a distance he will want to charge at them. He still doesn’t care about most crazy aggressive small dogs barking at him, but if it’s a stray, he sees no size or gender, he gets all stiff and wants to go after them.

I’m seeking advice on how to train/condition him to ignore dogs. He is not food motivated when outside and in situations where he sees a stray he’s completely locked in and won’t respond to toys. I also can’t use a friend’s dog cause he likes all of them and if it’s a random dog with an owner he doesn’t care.

Some additional behaviours I noticed that may be important

• He doesn’t want to hurt the strays, but chase them down like he was going to kill them and then do nothing. Just aggressively run after them.

• When he sees dogs playing/fighting he wants to chase one of the dogs away. Regardless of them being a stray or not. That’s for every dog.

• If a dog he knows barks at another dog (that he was until given moment completely ignoring) he’ll start lunging at this other dog.

Would anyone have any tips and suggestions?

[u/read-the-rules → u/[deleted]]

Your comment on r/reactivedogs was removed by the Read The Rules app because you need to submit an acknowledgement that you have read the rules. You haven't done anything wrong, this is a tool we're using on the r/reactivedogs going forward. For more information, see the moderator announcement.

Acknowledgement is required of all users, even if you've been here for a while. You only have to do this acknowledgement once unless the moderators announce otherwise.

If you do the rule acknowledgement within one hour of your comment being removed, the bot will automatically restore it. If not, we encourage you to copy the comment using the 3-dot icon next to it, and paste it to re-post to this thread.

^{Please click here to open the Read The Rules App.}