Boxer Talk

Hi, i was wondering if anyone can help me, as i've told you before i have a boxer called Mojo who is now 5 months old, the problem is he can turn from being all loving into a mad dog. It normally only happenes around me or my partner and our trainer said it was just puppy behaviour and that we should play back to him, only this does not work. He now has his big teeth and getting strong. Its hard to describe how he goes, you cant even stroke him to calm him down as he goes to bite you. We also find it strange that it is only with us, we treat him so nicely he is our baby.
I would just like to hear if this is normal behaviour and if he'll grow out of it.
Thanks Jade

Hi Jade!

Has the trainer seen this behaviour? If it's so bad that you can't go near the dog there's something wrong.

In any case no matter whether it's puppy play or not, this behaviour needs to be at the least controllable.

Mojo needs to know he's not allowed to do this, to be trained not to do this. Imagine how you would feel and the repercussions, if it ended in someone getting hurt.

I should say I'm no expert in dog training, but doesn't Mojo stop when you get angry and raise your voice telling him to stop?

If that simple measure works then once he stops pet him and tell him he's good as a reward.

Playing with him when he gets aggressive, will only encourage the behaviour as he will see it as something you participate in (see it as encouragement).

I hate to challenge a professional but I think that was bad advice from your trainer.

I would say it's normal for dogs to be somewhat rough in play, if you let them be. If you encourage it by playing back it's more than normal it's rewarded behaviour.

I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with Mojo, it may be he's just been conditioned to see this behaviour as acceptable.

I don't think he will grow out of it without some training.

If you can maybe seek a second opinion from another trainer?

Also because I'm just one opinion and I'm pretty fallible. I'll as usual point out that at places like the forums at -
http://www.boxerworld.com/forums/

You can get a lot more opinions than here.

Good luck Jade!

Hi to everyone! As you know i have written on here before about Mojo, who is just over 8 months old now, i can't belive how time flys.

Paul you know when i wrote on saying how Mojo turned and was quite aggressive, i just wanted to let you know what happened. We took him to the vets who without doing any tests said he had limbic epilepsy or rage symdrome he was put on 2 lots of tables which where suppose to make him drowsey, after a couple of weeks there was know change and they had really messed his tummy up, he started going to the toilet inside, we took him for a second oppinion and all the vet could say was 'if that was my dog i would have him put down, i can do that for you'. Me and my partner were horrified we could never do that to mojo. We stopped the treatment and started our own research.

We found out that some foods are like giving E numbers to kids and make them hyper and beta was one of the foods, we changed his diet to Naturediet and he started to calm down.
We also bought the dog listener-i would recommend this book it is fantastic, it turns out that Mojo thought he was leader of the pack, we are now in the process of changing this with the books help.

Mojo is now becoming an enjoyable dog he still has a go every now and then but hopefully soon he will be a perfect dog.

Sorry if i went on it would be nice to know if others have experienced the same as me and all i would say is don't always listen to vets.

Jade,Geoff and Mojox

Well Jade,

I could just about hug you that's marvellous the way things have turned out.

Most dog issues are behavioural and only can be treated with hard work and training.

I'm so glad you never listened to the vet!

Give Mojo a big hug for me!