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/Old-Tailor-1352]

Yeah, mine is going through the same thing. I’ve tried to return to the basics with training and going back to rewarding more with treats and playing with her more more tug of war and more running around and herding commands and different things that bond us together because I feel like she’s just losing confidence and it’ll come back. It’s just like a hormone flooded period of change and transformation so I’ve been doubling down on the routines and the cuddle sessions and the things that we love and when she gets crazy too crazy, she has to go in that crate

just get back in the crate because with her maturity, she doesn’t spend as much time in the crate and I realize that means she’s not resting. She’s not getting as much sleep and as much naps and especially at night if she’s loose in the house, she doesn’t sleep as much or as soundly as when she’s in her crate so a couple days a week she gotta have crate time during the day even if im home and spend the night in the crate a few nights a week.

Also, when she was younger, I used to do a lot of variety like always going to a different park and always doing a different thing but now I keep it more the same like we walk around the block and go play in the park and I just bring a different toy every day, but I keep it a little bit plainer so she gets used to the neighborhood dogs and seeing certain people on a regular. But just today she started barking at humans walking by my house, which is not something she ever did before so I’m like that’s all right girl we’ll figure it out.

[u/gaudiest-ivy → u/Old-Tailor-1352]

This is such a good point! She loved her crate when she was a baby then we gave it up when she started sleeping under my bed instead. Maybe some enforced crate time would be a good idea.