Dealing with Dominance Aggression

Dealing with Dominance Aggression:

Even Victor's closest friends who had dogs all their lives from childhood to their 60's now, do not know how to handle dominance aggression in dogs. I guess they are just lucky that no matter how vicious the dog breeds are, they always got a submissive mellow one from the litters, from Rotweiler to German Shepard to Pit Bull.

Human is sucker for a cute-looking face with big emotional eyes, I fell for it too. Samson looks just too cute to be a dog with dominance aggression, even he might be abused, he might had bad memories about men kicking him whatsoever, it was the past tense, this is NOW and animal lives in the moment, Samson has to fully understand the pack order in my household, I am in charge of everything around the house, Victor is the second pack leader, the last is Samson. The reason why he bit Victor because he does not see Victor as the second leader, he attempted to challenge his pack ranking.

By not having Samson sleeps in our bedroom, immediately he understands his pack ranking is below us. After confinement, it makes him so much calmer when he was allowed to roam free in the house when we are home. Even Victor noticed a big difference in 4 days.

Samson is as bad as a 4 years old, would test your limit. 2 days after the strict training started, he jumped on my favourite green recliner when I was by the computer, I saw something white and fluffy up there from my view. Instantly I went over to give him a hand-signal and say "off", he looked at me in a sad requesting look and remain still on the chair, I had to step one step forward to tell him off again, then he jumped off and never get up on that chair again. To deal with a dog has dominance issue, keeping the dog on ground level is very important, make sure the dog knows only the pack leader gets the best seat in the house, which is my green recliner chair!

I released his bone a day later after the first strict training day, thinking at least he can chew on his bone to get his frustration out. But soon I found he is guarding his bone when I walk near him and growls when Victor walks by, that means his possessiveness of the bone is there, that means I have to take away the bone from him. However, I can not do it in the dark, I must let him know it is me who takes away his favourite bone so I did it in front of his face, while I was taking the bone to the garage, I spoke to him firmly to explain the reason why he can't have the bone.

Animal understands, I mean not literally our language but when we speak, our tone, our emotion on the face, our energy emitting during the speech.... animal understands.

Samson happens to be a very smart dog, I figured he understands + react + response to about 30 human words, Samson understands:

his own name
sit
stay
wait
ok
yes
no
shake hand
slow
behind me / back
quiet
down
off
drop it
no mouth
come
good boy
well done
go
Shh...Shh...
go potty
go to bathroom
go to your bed
say hello
excuse me
no jumping

it would be truly a bad thing if I don't rehab Samson, just send him back to the Shelter, because he is such a smart, stubborn little bastar*. I would love to see him pass my training and test, to get to stay.