[Paddy's person]

Hi, I'm Toni and I have a 1 yr old Yorkshire Terrier named Paddington.
I have worked really hard to train him well. I never let him get any treats without sitting/lying down, he doesn't sleep in my bed, he goes through doors after me or my fiance, he is learning to give up a toy when i say "drop it" (but at this point only does it for a treat), yet he is still a brat around other dogs. He doesn't care if humans touch his food or his toys or his rawhide (though he'll whine for you to give them to him he does NOT bite or growl) but if another dog so much as looks at him when he has a ball at the dog park, or even sniffs something that he sees from far away that he wants he turns into the tazmanian devil dog!!! Its like 5lbs of fury growling and leaping at the dog with teeth showing no matter what size the dog is. Because he is small most people think it is cute and funny but I DONT!! I think its embarrassing and I want to stop it. So if anyone has any advice on how to stop my terrier from being a stereotypical terror. PLEASE let me know.

Thanks in advance!
Desperate yorkie owner

[nattiej1976]

I truly sympathise with you on this one, my dog is very much the same. Humans can remove food or toys from him without any sort of problem but if another dog goes near them, all hell breaks loose.

To be honest we have tried to train him out of it, but have not had too much luck on that one, we have only been able to make his aggressive protection attack a little less severe so in our instance I have conceeded to the fact that it is not a good idea to take him to off lead areas and to keep him under lead controll at all times when we are outside of the home.

Sorry this may not be much help to you, but I will be keeping an eye on this post as there may be some ideas that come up that might help me too.

[Paddy's person]

I would suggest some classes, and not private, but with other dogs to socialize your dog. Ask around and you will probably find a trainer that specializes with small dogs, or at least, dogs that need to be socialized.

Yea he has not had any formal training classes yet, just me using what i have learned from books and things. So I definitely plan on taking him to some as soon I'm officially done with school in 3 weeks. What really baffles me though is that he has had soooo much socialization! Since the day he was fully vaccinated at 4mo old I've been taking him to Yorkie and small dog meetups and dog parks all over NYC and he never had a problem....until someone brought out a squeekie ball.

Now he's obsessed and when we go to the dog park all he wants to do is sit there with his ball, when he plays with balls all the time at home.
I have stopped playing fetch with him with balls and squeekie's since the last time we went to the dog park to see if he'll forget that he's obsessed with them but with his memory I doubt it will work.

[Paddy's person]

This problem is still driving me absolutely insane.
We had been not going to the dog park for a few weeks and trying to teach him to ignore toys at home with the "leave it" command. So we decided to go later today when there wouldn't be as many dogs. There were only two there, a lab and a small american staff mix. Not huge dogs but of course bigger than 5lb paddy. He was doing his usual ball stuff but not acting afraid of the other dogs or anything. Then suddenly the american staff wanted to play and was play bowing and wagging his tail and barking. Paddy did his usual crazy antics and started growling and leaping at her. We restrain him and it gets worse and the dog won't leave him alone. So the growling barking went on for like 10 minutes.I was totally embarrassed and frustrated at my terror of a dog.\

He has played with bigger dogs before and never had a problem, but for some reason in this dog park he acts like he is terrified of bigger dogs, though he never has his tail down between his legs at all. So I don't really know whats wrong with him.

I definitely am going to seek a professional to help with this ASAP because I'm about to tear my hair out. He's soooooooo good everywhere else and played sooo nicely with a female yorkie last week for hours. I want him to get rid of this behavior so he is a perfect little doggie. Is that an unrealistic expectation??