USA Dog Behavior Podcast
Are you struggling with a dog that is anxious, fearful, or aggressive? You’re at the right place. In this audio podcast series, Scott Sheaffer will explore insights and strategies to guide dog owners, veterinary practices, and dog trainers in overcoming these issues using scientific and humane methods.
USA Dog Behavior Podcast
Why Is Your Dog Aggressive at the Door? Territorial Fear
Unlock the mystery behind your dog's sudden growls and watchful eyes when guests arrive. Our latest episode offers a deep dive into the realm of territorial aggression in dogs, and why your four-legged friend might be more on edge in the sanctity of your home than in the great outdoors.
Explore with us the trifecta of triggers that provoke this: the craving for security, the shock of unexpected visitors, and the perceived lack of escape routes. We don't just lay out the problem; we arm you with strategies. Discover how to modify your home environment, reducing your dog's stress and their need to stand guard against the world.
View this Episode on YouTube:
Ep. 35 Complete Video: Why Is Your Dog Aggressive at the Door? Territorial Fear, Part 1
Episode Link(s):
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About Scott Sheaffer
Scott Sheaffer, CCBC-KA, CDBC, CPDT-KA, is a certified dog behavior consultant who has worked with thousands of dog owners and their aggressive dogs. Scott specializes in the assessment and treatment of fear, anxiety, aggression, and phobias in dogs six months and older. For more information about Scott, see USADogBehavior.com.
Disclaimer
If your dog is aggressive toward humans, consult an experienced, certified canine behavior consultant immediately and ensure your dog cannot harm anyone. This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not replace professional guidance. Scott Sheaffer and USA Dog Behavior, LLC, are not liable for outcomes resulting from the advice provided.
Have you ever wondered why your dog is super aroused and maybe even aggressive when people come into your home, people that he doesn't know or she doesn't know? It's a real common issue and it's called territorial aggression. It's one of the seven major types of aggression. In today's episode, we're going to explain what's going on and what you can do about it. Stay tuned. And what you can do about it. Stay tuned. Are you struggling with a dog that is anxious or aggressive? You're at the right place because in this podcast series, we educate dog owners, veterinary practices and dog trainers on how to overcome dog fear and aggression using humane methods. My name is Scott Sheaffer and and it's my mission to help you better understand your dog's behavior. Territorial aggression what does it look like? This is what it looks like, and it almost always looks the same with all dogs, and it kind of presents in two ways. The most common way would be and it kind of presents in two ways. The most common way would be the front doorbell goes off or someone knocks at your front door. Your dog immediately goes ballistic. The person comes in the door a person, by the way, that your dog is not comfortable with. They come in and your dog stays about four to five feet away, kind of circles a little bit like this, and is barking, is not tearing their eyes away from that person and is clearly uncomfortable. When the person comes into your home, the dog never really does go up to the person, but stays at a distance and never takes their eyes off the person. Things can kind of start to calm down a little bit after a while. In fact the dog can almost look like it's being a little friendly. But as soon as that person stands up, talks loud, moves, it all starts again. And another common symptom of this would be when the person goes to leave boy, your dog is right on their heels on the way out. That would be a really common presentation of territorial aggression. In some cases, when the person comes in, the dog will actually kind of jump up on the person. It's not a friendly jump up. It's like I don't want you in here, I'm not loving you too much. It's not a friendly jumping up. That would be kind of a common thing as well.
Scott Sheaffer:Does your dog have territorial aggression? How do you know if your dog has territorial aggression that I just described? Well, here's a couple ways you can test. First, do they do the things that we just talked about. Another really great test is if your dog is 100% okay with all strangers outside of your home, never has a problem with humans outside the home, even people that they don't know at all. It's probably just arousal that you're seeing when someone comes into your home. So a lot of dogs most dogs maybe when someone comes into your home, they're all excited and they have a soft body and the tail's going crazy and they just want to interact with a person. So one way to know that those behaviors are not territorial aggression would be if your dog is just fine with all strangers outside of your home. However, if your dog is not 100% okay with strangers outside your home, he or she probably does have territorial aggression. If it's looking like what I just described at the first of this episode, it probably is some form have territorial aggression. If it's looking like what I just described at the first of this episode, it probably is some form of territorial aggression.
Scott Sheaffer:Let's talk for a second now about what causes territorial aggression. Well, it's simple and if you've been watching this podcast video or the audio, it's fear and then aggression. So your dog doesn't want these strangers coming into their home and it's their home and that's their safe place. So it's one thing to see these people outside on the street but it's another to see them in their home. They don't like that too much and that aggression is to say don't come in or get out.
Scott Sheaffer:And there's three reasons, really clear reasons, why this aggression is worse in the home than outside and this is just almost universally true. Here are the three reasons. Number one, and the most important, it's your dog's safe place. They live there with a family. Everybody's cool there, they love everybody there. And then they feel's cool there, they love everybody there, and then they feel kind of violated and I'm kind of humanizing this a little bit, but they feel kind of violated when someone comes in they don't know and trust and they want to get them out. This is not something that you see out, that they would experience out on the street. The second reason would be that there's a sudden appearance of this scary person so they're fearful of them. That ding, dong or knock, knock, bam. All of a sudden they're there. They don't like that. It's not like out on the street where they see this human slowly coming up to them and they can kind of size them up so that sudden appearance isn't great. The third reason is what I call avenues of escape. How is your dog going to get away from this person? I don't care whether you have a 500 square foot apartment or a 10,000 square foot home. Your dog knows that they can't get away from this scary person. So for those three reasons, that's why your dog is going to up the aggression level when they come into your home. And just to help you get into your dog's head and I think it's always helpful it's the same three reasons that you would be horrified if someone tried to break into your home. Suddenly they're there this is supposed to be your safe place and how are you going to get away from them? So I hope that kind of helps get you into your dog's head a little bit.
Scott Sheaffer:Territorial aggression can be very dangerous. I've done a lot of legal consulting and I'm going to tell you that most of the bad bites happen in this scenario. This is where you push the dog to the limit. When a scared dog doesn't like a stranger coming in the home is where we really see this escalate. It's some of the worst bites I see and I just want to give you a caution here before you listen to this episode Do not do these exercises we're going to talk about if you have any concern at all about your dog biting somebody. So we're really looking for a dog with mild levels of territorial aggression, no bite history at all, and you have no concern about your dog biting someone coming in. You're just concerned about their aggressive and unfriendly behavior. If it's anything beyond this, please talk to a certified canine behavior consultant in your area that can help you with this. All right, with all that being said, I just want to mention here real quickly if you would like to write me, please go to grumpydogspodcastcom and you'll find a way where you can send me a written message or a voicemail message. So please do that. That would be great. Love hearing from you guys, grumpydogspodcastcom.
Scott Sheaffer:Now let's talk about five things to do before we go any further. I'm going to give you five considerations going to lay the groundwork a little bit for this exercise we're going to be discussing and I'll go over the mechanics of handling the people and your dog when someone comes in your home after we talk about these five things. But I want to be clear on these five elements. First, before we go on. Number one, remember that your dog determines who a stranger is. For example, I have certainly seen a number of dog bites, where someone comes in the home and the dog has territorial aggression or some form of that and bites the person and the person replies with something like but it was my sister. Well, that's fine, but it's not your relationship with the person, it's your dog. So if your dog has never seen your sister before or for some reason is a little scared by her, she wears funny clothes, who knows? That's the dog's relationship with the human, not yours. So always remember that your dog is the one who determines what's going on here and who they are scared of.
Scott Sheaffer:Number two let's review a couple of very important rules. These are exceedingly important and I've covered these in other episodes, but let me just briefly go over them here. When someone comes in your home, the last thing your dog wants because they're already scared by this person. If they have territorial aggression, the last thing your dog wants is to get any attention from this person. Why? Because it makes them look more scary. They're scarier. So here are the rules for your person and you're going to tell them this. You're going to say my dog is afraid of people that they don't know. Please don't look, touch or talk to my dog. And secondly, don't approach. So here are your two rules for a person and you can't say ignore my dog because people don't get that. I've been down this road many times. They don't understand ignore. You have to be very specific. Hi Joe, thank you for coming over. My dog is afraid of unfamiliar people. Please do not look, touch or talk to my dog and don't approach them. Okay, super, super important, and I'm going to tell you that really, in so many cases can really calm your dog down. All this attention that people give in an attempt to create a relationship with your dog backfires. Your dog doesn't want to interact with them. They're already scared and that kind of attention makes them look scared.
Scott Sheaffer:All right, number three you'll need a designated safe place. Maybe you already have one, but let's talk about the three ingredients of what's needed for a safe place for your dog. This is kind of a staging area for your dog that we'll talk about later. Here are the three ingredients for the safe place aging area for your dog that we'll talk about later. Here are the three ingredients for the safe place. It needs to be off the main drag. In other words, I don't want it to be in your living room or in your den. This needs to be a place where the dog can be put away and has no line of sight to the visitor. Okay, that's number one. Number two it needs to have some level of sound isolation, meaning a closed door. So we want to be able to put the dog in a place, can't see the person and you can close the door. And thirdly, we want some white noise or some music in the room, and this goes a long way to help calm the dog a little bit and to cover up the noise of the visitor, and the best kind of music, by the way, is classical music. We want it off the main track, we want a door to be closed and we want some white noise or music in there.
Scott Sheaffer:All right, number four let's talk about something that is really important here, just to keep this problem from getting worse or maybe even developing in the first place. When your dog is looking out windows and barking at people going by, people with dogs or just people by themselves, you're making this problem worse, and I'm talking about not only barking out of the front windows of your home looking on streets. I'm talking about people coming into your back lawn as well the pool guy, the lawn guy, whoever's coming in your back lawn to do maintenance or something like that. If your dog is barking at those people, this is very bad. Let's talk about the front window first. When your dog is barking at people going by, do you understand that this is really territorial aggression in action and it's making it worse. Why is that? Because as the person walks by, your dog is barking. Oh no, I don't like that person Too close to my space. Bark, bark, bark. And they walk by. What always happens they walk by 100% of the time.
Scott Sheaffer:What does your dog think? Look how well this is working. It's called what? Reinforcement? Technically it's called negative reinforcement, but it's reinforcing to this behavior. It makes it worse over time. We've got to stop that, and the same applies to the back lawn.
Scott Sheaffer:If you have somebody coming to your back lawn backyard, make sure to put your dog up. So what do we do about the front windows? Well, we have several options. We just need to remove your dog's line of sight to these people going by. We can do that by not letting them in parts of the house that have those windows. We can close shutters, shades, drapes, or we can put window film like a frosty see-through window film. It lets the light through but it doesn't allow your dog to really see the triggers. I'm going to provide a link in the episode notes where you can see some examples of that type of window film. Remember, your dog is not six feet tall, your dog is only a couple feet tall or whatever, and so you only need to cover the windows up to that level and that will take care of that.
Scott Sheaffer:Number five the muzzle to be used as needed. I know I told you earlier, if your dog has any bite history or you think there's a chance they could bite and this is anything more than mild territorial aggression you need to get the help of an expert. However, I have some clients and I'm on on board with this who, in an abundance of caution, regardless of the size of their dog, want to put a muzzle on during these exercises that we're going to be talking about. I am on board with that. What you want to do is make sure you get the right size and you acclimate your dog to the muzzle so they're comfortable with it. This is very much easier than most people think. I have done it with hundreds of dogs. It's just not all that bad for the vast majority of dogs Use a muzzle. If you have any doubts when you're doing these exercises. I'm going to provide a link in the episode notes, also on kind of the gold standard muzzle that we use for dogs like this.
Scott Sheaffer:In today's episode we went over what territorial aggression is and we covered the five things to take care of before going any further with this exercise. This is the first of two videos on territorial aggression. In our very next episode I'm going to cover how I want you to manage your dog and the visitor when they are in your home. It's a two-pronged thing. I'm going to save that for our next episode and at our next episode we're going to just jump right into that right away. Thanks for listening today and before you go, I just want to remind you that I have some free and premium dog behavior videos. Just go to GrumpyDogsPodcastcom and select video collection to view these. See you next time on the Grumpy Dogs podcast, where we'll continue our discussion of territorial aggression. Thanks for listening. Thank you for joining me today. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with other dog lovers, stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll continue our dive into the world of dog behavior.
