Hello from Australia!

[zephyr]

Hello, I'm the 'parent' to a 9 year old basenji boy who has lived with me since he was 8 weeks old. He is very aggressive to other dogs and I need some advice with this. I posted a message in the behaviour forum and I gave all the details of my predicament there. I hope someone can help because it's a pretty frightening problem. I'm able to teach Sam my basenji new 'tricks' like shake hands with each paw, sit, jump up, jump down, etc which shows that he respects me enough to cooperate with me but once he is outside the fence he nearly totally ignores me. I tried a halti once to stop him pulling but he kept trying to rub it off on the ground till his nose bled. My other dog (Zephyr) is a greyhound and a complete angel, but Sam is driving me into an early grave!Also, often if someone is walking past he will nip at their legs and he has nipped at children without being provoked in any way. When he was a pup I took him everywhere with me to socialise him with people and dogs, he is fine with female dogs, but why does he actively try to fight all male dogs? And people can be so thoughtless, allowing their dogs off lead anywhere and I'm very frightened that Sam will get into BIG trouble one day.

[wizard]

My EL D will nip "unprovoked" at the legs of any males that come near me – I think it's related to incidents with his previous owner. But also I've been noticing that these "attacks" are not always totally unprovoked. In some cases, he'll nip at my brother when he comes out of the dark guest bedroom or up from the dark basement and I think he doesn't like the surprise. He'll also nip if there's too many people crowded around me or him and so maybe he doesn't like feeling surrounded. Maybe there is something that is really setting off alarms with your beastie too. EL D hasn't been any problem when we're out on our walks - he'll even let the neighborhood kids come running up and pet him (I've told all the kids however that they have to let EL D smell them before they touch him and the kids all respect that so far). The problem might partly be a territorial thing.