Hi everyone!
This is my first post, but I’ve been reading around and finding out a lot of interesting and helpful things here so far.
I had a couple of questions that I couldn’t find specific answers to and was hoping that maybe someone has some ideas about our situation.
We’ve had dogs in our family before, but never a Beagle. Our Beagle’s name is Benson (and my name is Nicole), and he is 1 ½ years old. He has lots of energy (of course) and seems to be quite happy.
The problem is that he can get very aggressive. For example, everything will be fine, and I might accidentally drop a piece of paper (or anything, really) and he’ll run to steal it. If it’s nothing important, then we’ll usually let him have it in order to save ourselves the struggle of trying to get it back. If I move my hand towards him, he’ll start to growl because he knows I want to take whatever he has. Sometimes a situation will arise where we absolutely need whatever he has taken, or we want to take it away for his safety. At times I won’t realize that he is being extremely protective of something and I’ll go to play with him, and he growls and bites. When he does this, it is not a small nibble sort of bite; he seems to almost be attacking and lunging forward to make the most damage possible, and I think that he only really lets go because he loses grip in the whole mess. With my father, he tends to be less aggressive, although he has also bitten him.
I’m not sure what I should try in order to make him understand that being vicious is not okay. So far, he hasn’t behaved this way with any strangers or with the vet. He likes to play rough with me, and I let him because he’s not hurting me and generally knows when to stop (is this part of the problem?). The only way that we can take something back is if he becomes distracted enough with something else, and we can quickly hide whatever it is he’s taken, but often times the damage has already been done.
Is there anything that I can do about this?
This is my first post, but I’ve been reading around and finding out a lot of interesting and helpful things here so far.
I had a couple of questions that I couldn’t find specific answers to and was hoping that maybe someone has some ideas about our situation.
We’ve had dogs in our family before, but never a Beagle. Our Beagle’s name is Benson (and my name is Nicole), and he is 1 ½ years old. He has lots of energy (of course) and seems to be quite happy.
The problem is that he can get very aggressive. For example, everything will be fine, and I might accidentally drop a piece of paper (or anything, really) and he’ll run to steal it. If it’s nothing important, then we’ll usually let him have it in order to save ourselves the struggle of trying to get it back. If I move my hand towards him, he’ll start to growl because he knows I want to take whatever he has. Sometimes a situation will arise where we absolutely need whatever he has taken, or we want to take it away for his safety. At times I won’t realize that he is being extremely protective of something and I’ll go to play with him, and he growls and bites. When he does this, it is not a small nibble sort of bite; he seems to almost be attacking and lunging forward to make the most damage possible, and I think that he only really lets go because he loses grip in the whole mess. With my father, he tends to be less aggressive, although he has also bitten him.
I’m not sure what I should try in order to make him understand that being vicious is not okay. So far, he hasn’t behaved this way with any strangers or with the vet. He likes to play rough with me, and I let him because he’s not hurting me and generally knows when to stop (is this part of the problem?). The only way that we can take something back is if he becomes distracted enough with something else, and we can quickly hide whatever it is he’s taken, but often times the damage has already been done.
Is there anything that I can do about this?