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My four-yr-old intact male, working lines, GSD is a very calm serious biddable dog with no dominance issues with me, the handler. He is good with children, cats and has never lunged or barked at anyone EXCEPT for a few instances where it seems an invisible line is crossed into "personal space." This has been a dog problem.
Other dogs are ignored until they cross this personal line (about a foot from his body) and then he just snaps. It looks like fear aggression body-language-wise, he basically makes a lot of noise wihtout inflicting any damage and the moment the offender backs away he acts like nothing happened. Okay, I deal with that it's a pain but I have a handle on it. Tell people he's not friendly with other dogs, keep him away from them, etc.
However - a couple of times he has done the same thing with people. Always semi-unfamiliar men. In that, he has met and been petted by these men at least once before. So today he did this where a man was petting him all around his head and getting his face close to his face - I suspect this is the problem and I admit I totally dropped the ball by being way too complacent about letting this happen, but since this man had petted him before with no problem, I didn't anticipate his action. I feel bad because this man (a co-worker) while being very nice about it, is understandably scared and shocked.
Should I not let people pet him? TIA
Other dogs are ignored until they cross this personal line (about a foot from his body) and then he just snaps. It looks like fear aggression body-language-wise, he basically makes a lot of noise wihtout inflicting any damage and the moment the offender backs away he acts like nothing happened. Okay, I deal with that it's a pain but I have a handle on it. Tell people he's not friendly with other dogs, keep him away from them, etc.
However - a couple of times he has done the same thing with people. Always semi-unfamiliar men. In that, he has met and been petted by these men at least once before. So today he did this where a man was petting him all around his head and getting his face close to his face - I suspect this is the problem and I admit I totally dropped the ball by being way too complacent about letting this happen, but since this man had petted him before with no problem, I didn't anticipate his action. I feel bad because this man (a co-worker) while being very nice about it, is understandably scared and shocked.
Should I not let people pet him? TIA