I need some direction

[sweet willy]

I have had Willy since he was 10 weeks old. I started with obedience training and by the time he was 5 months old he passed the AKC Canine Good Citizenship test and continued to do great. When he was about 1 1/2 or 2, I hurt my left knee and couldn't work him. A short while later, I needed surgery on my right knee. I couldn't work Willy for well over a year and frankly, with my knee problems, I lost interest for a bit. Here's the problem. Willy barks and growls and pulls on the lead when ever he sees another dog, cat, cow, horse, etc., but not people. He obviously didn't do that when he tested for the CGC. Willy knows I am the alpha. He follows every command. The grandkids lay on him, pet him, etc. and Willy doesn't mind at all. What type of training or rehabilitation can I do to get him back to being comfortable around other critters. We live out in the country and have to drive over 30 miles to get to areas where there are other dogs around and I'm willing to do that at least weekly. My wife and I are retired seniors so I'm also concerned that as we get older Willy's pulling will cause injuries to one or both of us. Thanks.

[Anastasia]

Have you considered contacting a local trainer for help?
Maybe a basic obedience class will help him.

[Stosh]

A properly fitted prong collar would help a lot- it's like power steering. But you need to make sure it's used correctly to be effective. Look at Leerburg Dog Training | 16,000 pages of dog training information, 300 free streaming videos, DVDs and Free Dog Training ebooks and you'll find a lot if information on how to use one.

[sweet willy]

Thank you both for you response. Stosh, I do use a prong collar on Willie. But when he sees another critter it doesn't do any good.
Anastasia, Willy has been through basic and advanced obedience training and was very successful. As I said, he got his Canine Good Citizenship certification at five months old. To get that, he had to do all the basic obedience with people and dogs all around him. He also had to do a down/stay for three minutes while I walked out of his sight. He was awesum. But since I had to stop working with him, he started with this dog aggression stuff. The odd thing is, if I let him approach another dog while he is barking his fool head off and trying to drag me along to get to the other dog, when he gets there, he sniffs the other dog and then ignores it. However, a lot of times the other dog doesn't want anything to do with Willy because Willy has already put the other dog in a defensive mode.