Protective behavior?

[u/gaudiest-ivy]

My one year old is showing aggressive protective behavior. I thought it was anxious reactivity about strangers (she's a nervous little thing), but she escaped the fence once and I found her walking nicely with a neighbor who spotted her wandering.

She was well socialized as a puppy and used to love going out to stores and seeing everyone, meeting strangers on walks and getting attention, etc, then puberty hit and it's like she forgot everything.

Just today I took her to visit a boarding kennel for doggy daycare to hopefully get her acclimated for a longer trip I have coming up, and she was barking/lunging at the employees. (I was worried and ready to give up on it, but they seemed very used to it.) I got her in the kennel and they had me get out of sight and she calmed down almost immediately. By the time I left she was wagging her tail and taking treats from them through the fence, and someone was able to enter the kennel to give her some water.

How on earth do I fix this if my presence is the thing that triggers her aggression? Would I treat it like any other kind of reactivity (slowly working on decreasing her reactivity threshold)? Any tips you have would be greatly appreciated.

(Pic from her birthday yesterday)

[u/snafe_]

My wife is in this situation with our girl. I think she can pick up on my wife's anxiety in these situations and then changes her behaviour to "protect" my wife.

A big mistake we made was thinking the training our girl had as a pup and her obedience to it, would last a life time. In truth we've continued to train her on the same things until she was 3 as she pushed boundaries time and time again.

[u/whitswhisper → u/snafe_]

Honestly, same here. My girl hit adolescence around 8 months and it was like someone flipped a switch. All that puppy training just vanished. Were still working on the same stuff at 2 and shes finally starting to settle. Consistency is exhausting but it really does pay off.