I watch dogs interact socially all of the time and give a lot of credit to folks like Cesar Millan, Suzanne Clothier, Stanley Coren, and Bruce Fogle who also gain much of their knowledge from first hand observations. But the dogs will always teach you more about their social interactions (if you have an open mind) than humans alone ever will.

I'm wondering if they tried drugging the dog as an option as well.

I'm actually surprised that this is the first time anyone has done this, and maybe it's not. I've personally wondered myself if this wouldn't be a viable soulution before resorting to "Plan B - Kill the Dog". It would be interesting to see if this changes the dog's behavior either directly, or indirectly due to the humans possibly losing their fear of being bitten and having more confidence around the dog. Yeah, there's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but let's

I also just found this thread... Run free, Penny.

For the same reason you can't tell an emotionally based trainer or owner they are ruining their dogs by the way the are acting around them or interacting with them, and then making up excuses (blaming others) for why their dogs are neurotic messes. Unfortunately, most of this is about human motivation and emotional need (especially with over-nurturing women), not logic and science. The blame game is available for anyone who chooses to use it. And, so is honesty.

Mine smells like Spam.

Yeah, your dog could be trying to tell you something, such as he is in pain. Other than that, I'd drop the physical confrontations (which may be coming across as a subordinant challlenging for position) and establish dominance by how you act around the dog rather than what you actually do to the dog. They are always watching. And your behavior says volumes about whether or not you are leadership material in the dog's eyes. For now I'd say hands off, and hire a professional.

Good points Kim. The problem I've seen with oversocialization, is it often ends up in boundary frustration because the dogs were conditioned to meet-and-greet too much, and rarely (if ever) taught to ignore, accept boundaries, or even get told "no" in the presense of other dogs. Standard Classical Conditioning gone wrong, and then often misdiagnosed as "reactivity". The worse cases are dogs who were "socialized" by going to the dog park when they were young. The

[quote user="lynnsmith"] Yes, I understand. However, not all forums are about general topics and some do involve topics that have to do with actions that could lead to injury or harm or even death to others. I guess nothing ever happens in this forum that could be injurious to anyone or anything and everyone agrees. That is good. [/quote] Sure things happen that lead to injury or harm to others through enabling, denial, personnal motivation and agendas on dog boards. I watched in horror

I'm glad you let the snake go and took the tank back. If he's that apathetic about letting a snake slowly starve to death, what makes you think he would remember to feed a few fish or keep the tank clean? Keeping an aquarium system healthy and functioning is probably too much for him to deal with. I hope he grows up and gains some compassion along the way.