My 1-year-old Boerboel is aggressive towards my husband. Help!

Question

We have a male Boerboel. He just turned a yr old. My husband corrected him (told him no) and grabbed his collar to get him to leave the room. Then yesterday my husband accidentally steppes on his paw and he growled, snarled, postured and barked at him. He hasn't done this with me. We have always had large breeds (cane corsos before) this is our 2 male Boerboel and we have a female. We've never dealt with this before. How do we handle this? We don't want to be handling him with kid gloves. Pet's info: Dog | Boerboel | Male | 1 year old | 115 lbs

Jennifer Summerfield, DVM CPDT-KA · Accepted Answer

I'm sorry to hear that you're having this problem with Brutus! Owner-directed aggression is a complex behavior problem that can be quite serious, especially in such a large dog. This is a more complicated issue than we can really address in this type of forum, so I would strongly recommend making an appointment with a veterinary behaviorist who can evaluate Brutus in person and help you put together a detailed treatment plan to work on the problem. This will likely include management recommendations, training exercises to work on, and possibly medication if the behaviorist feels that this would be helpful for him. In general, I can tell you that treatment for this problem normally involves identifying what situations tend to trigger the aggression (verbal corrections, collar grabs, and disturbing the dog while resting are all very common triggers), and either finding ways to avoid them, or working with Brutus to teach him to be more comfortable in these situations so that he doesn't feel the need to snarl or bite. Punishment of any kind is not recommended for this problem, as it is likely to make the issue worse over time and will greatly increase the risk of a bite. You can search for a board-certified veterinary behaviorist in your area here: www.dacvb.org

My 1-year-old Boerboel is aggressive towards my husband. Help!

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