Otherwise friendly dog becomes hostile when people first come over.
Hello, I am looking for help with a problem I am having with my dog. My dog (a 3yo 85 pound Australian Cattle Dog mix) is the friendliest and most playful dog 95% of the time. He gets along great with other people, other dogs, and the vet, groomer, and daycare all love him very much.
My issue is that whenever people come over to my house he goes full on guard-dog mode. He barks his head off, shows teeth, raises his hackles, and will even nip at people if he manages to get close (he has not hurt anyone but he has bitten my cousins foot while his shoe was on and has torn another friend jacket). I have developed what I think is a good system for introductions:
- Put up a gate between the entrance area and the rest of the house so he stays back.
- Gently but sternly tell him "no" while he continues to bark and wait for him to calm down.
- Once the barking has stopped for a few moments I tell him "good boy" and give him a treat (I think I am rewarding him stopping the behavior but worried I may accidentally be rewarding the behavior?). Then if he continues behaving well I give the guest some treats to give him.
- If he does not continue barking and his hackles stay down (or he does the stress-relief shake) I will open the gate (with the guests permission) and monitor closely as he gets his smells in and is okay with the guest.
Once this process is done, he loses any sense of hostility and wants to be best friends with the guest. He will wag his tail, go find his nearest toy, and do anything and everything that shows he is friendly and wants nothing more than to play. The hostility never comes back and this is the only situation that I have ever seen that side of him come out. It is maybe worth noting that he does this even to people he has met many times.
Even if this is a good method, there are a few reasons I want to try to alleviate the hostility all together.
- Right now I live alone, but it looks like my cousin (the one whose foot he bit) is going to move in. He obviously doesn't want to have to do that process every time he comes home and he is worried (rightfully so) about what might happen if he comes home when I am not home. Also worth noting that when I first got my dog as a puppy I already had a roommate and there was never any issue there up until the roommate moved out (when the dog was roughly 1yo).
- I recently moved so I have space to actually host friends. In my old house I could have 2-3 people over max so it wasn't a big hassle to do this process but now that I can have more over it would get tiring to have to monitor the door and do all of this every single time.
- It is also uncomfortable for everyone involved. A lot of guests are very understanding but some get understandably freaked out and are wary of him after. I am a big guy and have no issue controlling him, but he is still 85 pounds and has quite the bark on him which is intimidating for many. It also makes it stressful for me to have people over and of course, I obviously don't want my dog to be so stressed out every time someone comes over.
So really I am looking for any help to both get him comfortable with my cousin before he moves in (in roughly a month or two) and to be generally more comfortable with people when they first get through the door.