For dog owners, one of the biggest challenges is training their pets. This can be especially daunting if your dog is aggressive in nature. After all, communicating with your dog can be quite hard if it tends to get angry or agitated all the time. It is extremely necessary to train the aggression out of an aggressive dog as soon as possible. If you let your dog remain aggressive, it may result in mishaps such as another person or dog getting bitten by it. 

Tips for training an aggressive dog

It is understandable that you might be finding it a huge challenge to train your dog to be calmer and more peaceful. Here are a few tips to help you:

• Hire a professional trainer

The easiest and most reliable way to train an aggressive dog is to hire the services of a professional dog trainer. Experts understand the behavior of dogs and offer customized training to every dog based on the source of their aggression. Besides the training hours, an expert trainer can also provide you with valuable advice on how to train the dog yourself. 

• Do not punish your dog

While trying to train an aggressive dog, many owners resort to punishing them for their aggression. However, one should understand that dogs do not understand punishment. Rather, they might start acting even more aggressively out of fear or anger. If you are aggressive towards your dog, you would also nurture the feeling that aggression is acceptable. 

• Use muzzles and special collars

Making your dog wear a muzzle would help you protect others from its aggression. Moreover, keeping the dog muzzled would also bring its aggression under control and help to condition its behavior. Pinched collars or prong collars can cause subtle discomfort to the dog if you pull on the leash, unlike regular collars that would choke it instead. 

Training a dog requires a lot of patience. You cannot expect the results overnight. By gradually conditioning and shaping the behavior of your dog, you can make it less aggressive.  

What are the signs of aggression?

Every dog has its own ways of expressing aggression. Knowing the signs would help you identify aggressive behavior in your dog quickly and take the necessary steps to solve it. Some of the common aggressive behaviors among dogs are:

• Baring teeth
• Growling or emitting guttural and threatening sounds
• Snarling
• Lunging or snapping at people
• Biting repeatedly or causing bruises and pictures through bites
• Standing oddly still

It is crucial for every dog owner to stay aware of these signs so that they can remedy the problem at the earliest. 

Why do dogs get aggressive?

In order to train the aggression out of your dog, you need to understand what’s making it so aggressive. Once you know the actual cause, you can make changes in its environment or condition its behavior towards the triggers. Usually, dogs get aggressive when they are:

• Scared
• Territorial
• Protective
• Possessive
• Suffering from pain

Professional trainers who carry out aggressive dog training Perth always focus on determining the cause of the aggression and help to shape the dogs’ behavior. Bringing the aggression of your dog under control is crucial, as it may attack any person it deems a threat, even if that’s not the case.