Fence Fighting

[Drea]

So this morning was no different than most mornings, in that I let Tucker out to do his business in the yard, and moments later, I heard intense barking, which signifies that he's barking at the neighbor dogs, Buddy, BamBam, and Pebbles. Usually, when I walk up to him, he'll let me catch him and redirect him so that we can walk away from the fence. This morning, however, it took several minutes for me to "catch" him, although once I did I was able to redirect his energy onto me.

My question is what should/could I be doing when Tucker gets into this situation to redirect him quicker (short of not letting him get into the sitch in the first place). Here's the scenario: Buddy is the dog that Tucker doesn't like. He lives on the West side of our property, but frequently goes over to the North neighbors yard and hangs with those dogs, so the three of them gang up on Tucker (and any of the other dogs in the yard). Tucker sometimes barks at BamBam and Pebbles, but goes ballistic around Buddy. On the corner of the North fence is a shed, and there's a foot and a half wide space between the shed and the fence. Tucker runs around this shed, when he's fighting at the fence. I try not to chase him in this case because I don't want to cultivate that behavior.

So how do I practice getting him to focus on me? This morning I did have the tug in hand, but he wasn't as interested in me as he was in the other dogs.

[neilsattin]

Hi Drea,

I suggest that you prepare for these encounters with Tucker on a leash, and that you, at a minimum, use the technique for redirection that I describe here. The leash (obviously) helps you manage the situation while you get the fundamentals in place, and enables you to avoid having to chase after anyone.

In your other post about the car and Tucker's "charge" towards Buddy, I also posted a link to an exercise on my blog that deals directly with a way to transform a "fence fight" into a positive learning experience that ultimately eliminates the charge between two dogs.

Here's a link to that post in the other thread as well, for more information.

[Drea]

Thanks for the article on fence fighting, Neil. I might have found it on my own, but there's so much info on your site to get through; it's nice to have it linked directly. Which reminds me, is there any place that I can see all the articles and their titles, without having to search for them?

Regarding the neighbors and their dogs. Neither neighbor is willing to change the way their dogs react to our dogs, and they're not willing to do "training". So I'm wondering if it makes sense to try the fence training with Buddy on one side of the fence, but without his human to interact with him, while I'm working on Tucker on our side.

[neilsattin]

Hi Drea,

I personally think you should feel fine about working at the fence with Buddy, even without his people there. You can toss him a treat, too, as you're pushing with Tucker. It'll probably be fun for Buddy. If his owners inquire, then you can explain to them what you're doing - since Buddy would be fence fighting anyway, I can't imagine that they'd care. You could point out that it'll actually be helping Buddy too - so they're getting some benefit without having to even do anything.

On my site, there's a menu item for the site archives, which gives you a list of all the articles in reverse chronological order. I'm working on a better navigation scheme as well (you can see the experiment in action on the "Training How-To" page - in the sidebar). Just last week I went through all of the articles to take stock of what I had already written about, how to organize what's there, etc. - and I intend to make major progress on making the information more usefully accessible over the coming weeks. There's also a search function in the sidebar now as well.

[Drea]

Thanks Neil!