I have a 6 month male australian shepherd I've had since 8 weeks. He loves dogs – goes to dog parks, daycare, and he's been complimented many times on his temperament with dogs.
There's 2 dogs in our neighborhood he's recently started to react to and seems to hate. One is a female black lab about his size who is shy and calm. Whenever he sees her, he goes ballistic, lunging and barking, it's quite embarrassing. Another is a white and brown small breed who lives on our hall. This dog always travels with another larger dog (the owners have 2), and seems polite and calm whenever we run into him, but for whatever reason, my dog will lunge and bark at him also, but never the larger dog. I try to avoid these dogs as much as possible to prevent a reaction, it's quite embarrassing and uncomfortable for the other owners, and I'm not sure what it is that's causing my dog to react. I thought at first it was a male v male dog thing, but the black lab is female. He can be a bit skittish with larger dogs, but these dogs are his size or smaller. They don't act threatening (no rigid posture, no staring, they just mind their own business, or in the case of the lab, sort of act skittish and back up towards her owner). It doesn’t matter where we run into them (outside vs hallway) so it’s not a context thing. We run into other dogs in our neighborhood that he loves.
Anyone know what might be going on?
submitted by /u/ilikebananabread
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