“What happens when visitors come to the house? Is he aggressive to them? What happens when you take him to the vet?”
The last time I took him to the vet, his first visit after neutering and after he’d developed serious aggression issues, my husband and I took him together, sedated, muzzled, and with a double lead to a regular and dominant dog collar. Despite the sedation and dominant dog collar, my husband and I could barely control him enough to get his rabies shot. The vet told us not to come back, then later apologized when he realized we were trying to be responsible dog owners by calling ahead for sedation, etc., and the dog was just scared.
My older daughter came to visit recently for a week. I had her send a t-shirt so my dog could get used to her scent and know it was “mommy’s XXXX,” someone special to me. I had my dog muzzled and on the double lead, with plenty of space so he wouldn’t feel cornered. His reaction was to try to immediately, viscously attack her. I was able to get him to not try to attack at her, but after 4 days I knew I couldn’t take his muzzle off around her and it was just making everyone miserable including the dog. The look in his eyes made it clear that she was toast if his muzzle came off.
When strangers come to the house, he looks to me to protect him and close his crate door or put him in the bathroom. He will bark the entire time they’re here. I rarely get phone calls, except from the gardener telling he’s here. When my phone rings, my dog barks and makes motions to be put in a safe place. I’m the Alpha female and he expects me to protect him, and he’ll attack anyone that’s a threat to his “pack.”
Way back, I went to a breeder to get one cute little puppy. Two in the litter both glommed onto me, and I had a rough time picking which one (I had first pick). After I got home (I had to go back in two weeks to pick him up) I talked with the breeder, and nobody after me picked the second one - he was the only one with no home. Dumbly, I said “What the hell! Double the trouble, double the fun!” Even dumber, I proceeded to spoil both throughout their puppyhoods, and never asserted dominance.
A year later I had two big violent monsters trying to kill each other any time they were together, and it was wild.
I got a choke, read everyting on training, and put in an hour a day with each. No go.
Dominant Dog Pinch collar, muzzles, and Don Sullivan video’s. One actually tried to nip me through a muzzle for correcting him with a pinch collar. How dare I! And they still wanted to kill each other. Why did Sullivan make it look so easy?
Prong collars, heeling, down commands, Stay, no effect. It was like they didn’t feel pain, and could care less if I broke their legs with a baseball bat. Worse they were going to kill each other.
It was horrible, with both separated in the house, and the fear that they would get at each other someday somehow, and do real damage.
Finally, I blew ~$170 each on the Sportdog 400s electric training collar. It is a high voltage training collar for stubborn dogs which shocks them on the neck with a variable voltage you set, levels 1-8. You teach them down with it, and that they will get shocked if they don’t go down. The shocks will provoke yelps on higher settings, so they will learn very quickly how to go down and stay there. Two dogs who ignored the prong collar corrections were terrified of the shocks. I would have been horrified by this before, but I was totally out of options.
First time I let the two of them together they began to go at it, and I hit them with shocks on the remote(three out of eight) as I yelled down. Both looked shocked and confused for a moment, then dropped, and stopped their aggression cold. They even put their heads on the ground. I have never needed to use the seven or eight setting, ever.
Now that both see me as dominant, and they know I will not allow fighting without shocks, they both play with each other, and are together constantly, without fighting (Though there is an occaisional disagreement, usually a growl, followed by both stopping and slowly laying down while looking at me.)
That collar saved me. I couldn’t just dump one on another person, and keep the other one. They both were blindly loyal to me - one of them would have been crushed.
I know it’s late now, but file away, Sportdog 400s. I am convinced that it can cure just about anything behavioral, save from some really genetic stuff. Once you teach the dog to go down, they accept their role as a submissive. If you put him in a down, and let your daughter near him (while muzzled), and then shocked him when he growled, he would have stopped growling, and eventually let her do anything to him. If any sign of aggression got a shock, he would have knocked it off. Breaking that cycle is all it takes.
I know, because both mine would eventually lay their heads on each other on the couch sometimes. It works, and it doesn’t traumatize the dog. It just conditions the dog to go submissive when it would have gone aggressive.
Let us know how it turns out. Worst case, drop him at a shelter, and let Freepers here visit, and try to place him over the internet. Sometiems just changing a home is enough to make a dog submissive. One of my best friends was a wolf hybrid which attacked his owner repeatedly, and was set to be put down. Stunningly beautiful dog. I took him, and he just fell in under me, and was the best dog you could ever want, without a hint of violence or aggression towards me. It is possible that if he is the new guy in a pack, he will accept an omega position.
For the record, I would take him, but I already have more dogs than I can handle responsibly.
Good luck, and please let us know when you find a solution.