Excerpted from Fight!: A Practical Guide to the Treatment of Dog-Dog Aggression by Jean Donaldson
A good meet and greet consists of the two dogs smoothly making muzzle to muzzle contact followed by some mutual rear investigation. Then either play will break out or the dogs will go their separate ways. A male may urinate on the next available vertical surface.
Meet and greets may feature stiffness, posturing and snarky stuff. The latter sometimes indicates some lack of social skill or confidence, or simply routine friction in normal dog interactions.
It’s a good general policy with unknown quantity dogs to break meet and greets off after several seconds, if the dogs don’t do so themselves. I recommend allowing posturing, stiffness or standing over, provided there is rapid enough behavior change, i.e. the dogs don’t get stuck in some volatile looking stance such as a stiff and growly T-position (perpendicular to each other with one dog’s chin or chest over withers of other). If there is some snarking or if they get stuck in some stiff posture, break them off. Happy talk them while walking away if one or both dogs are too stiff.
If you want to try again after breaking it off, wait a couple of minutes before re-engaging to let them cool off. Keep the dogs moving during the break and keep up the happy talk even as you disengage. Put the problem dog(s) through some obedience paces at some distance. Then try again.
For more information on ways to separate aggressive dogs as well as ways to use behavior modification to retrain an aggressive dog, download Jean Donaldson’s Fight! A Practical Guide to Dog-Dog-Aggression.
