You guys are all awesome. I’m pursuing to be a dog trainer, and all this info is just amazing!!!
I guess I didn’t describe his behavior too thoroughly: he’s got a lot of “instincts” going on as well. I’d love to get him into herding or Treiball to redirect it, but there is just nowhere to do it (people suggest letting him herd my cow. My cow thinks he’s a dog, so it doesn’t work out LOL).
He is fantastic with people. Never has attacked anyone (except he freaked at a couple old bearded men…they creeped me out too, so I didn’t mind lol).
Soon as he sees a new dog though? A switch flicks and he gets tense and fussy. If the other dog is anxious too, he goes nuts. He mellows down when he’s sitting, but when moving it’s almost impossible to redirect his focus.
I don’t see it as aggression at all, I like to call it fear-anxiety. One trainer had her chill dog and had him stand. We let Loki approach his rear, Loki nipped at him nervously, sniffed, then was fine. I also think he has a degree of leash reactivity; because once he was in an open field and a tiny dog approached him. Immediately I thought, “great! I have to apologize to the owner for my dog killing theirs…” But Loki just followed it and sniffed it. When it growled/snapped, he was fine.
Other times, he does have aggression. He’s got into several scuffles with my other dog, Shasta. Whenever they run together, Loki will almost always growl and bite Shasta’s legs.
I’m sorry if I’m doing a lousy job at describing him….he’s one of those cases where you’d have to see to understand.
Haywood, Aussie/ACD was my first thought when we adopted him. I was researching Kelpies out and saw that he has some very very similar physical/personality traits, plus I saw an Aussie/Kelpie that looked /almost/ exactly like him (the only difference was that it had more Merle to black ratio, and both ears were flopped at the tip instead of just one)
