The last few days have been quite crazy. Nanook started being a little aggressive towards our youngest son, he is seven years old. Today Nanook grabbed our sons pillow pet and when he reached down to get it Nanook growled at him and lounged for his face....in not a playful way at all. Max backed up in time and only received a scratch. This literally escalated so fast. He is not this way with any other family member and maybe he is just not feeling well or something but I can not let this get worse.
I know he likes to take things but he has never had an issue with us taking it back until now.
Is there anything I can do to help this situation.

Honestly my suggestion would be to get some professional training for him while he's still young. You don't want this to escalate even further and because there is children involved I would seek out someone immediately. There's only so much that we can tell you from being online but at least having someone there they would be able to tell you the behaviours you are seeing and work directly with you and your dog!

To be on the safe side a trainer would be the way to go, but you need to make sure they know about behavior and not just training, it seems like the two would go along with each other but they dont. Petsmart from my experience wouldnt be the type of training you would need here. We only had one dog go to the store for puppy play time and training and it may have been just that person but they didnt know what they were doing in my opinion when it came to behavior. In the mean time i would take away toys when he gets like that, i know its hard with kids but even the childrens toys or pillows need to be up. And when your doing any training have your son help, that way he will be seen as a treat provider also! I do this with my three year old nephew already the dogs cant quite understand him most of the time and he gives the treat to quickly or eats it unstead but they know that he will give them a treat and that if he has one they need to sit for him.

There is this dog training facility I was going to look into in Aug for him when I start working again but I guess I should do it sooner.
We got up this morning to 3 puppy teeth on the kitchen floor, I just swept yesterday so they all must have fallen out over night. We were thinking maybe they were bothering him and that is why he has been cranky. We looked him over and also found a small stick in his foot as well.
Maybe these are the reasons he has been cranky the last few days...no excuse to bite though.
We had Max give him his breakfast this morning and they seem to be buddies again.

Could definetly be at least part of what was wrong. I would just keep on with max giving food and treats for a while and watch closely then. If he seems more comfortable now and there arent any problems then waiting for training classes should be fine

He does seem more himself today, thank goodness. We checked his mouth again and noticed 2 more teeth getting ready to fall out. I felt so bad for Nanook and Max yesterday.

I would suggest having Max feed Nanook, (with your supervision of course) even help walk him if he can. Sometimes they don't see little ones as alpha. We had a greyhound female like that, she was herding the kids lol. NILF training is good for this problem too. Until you are sure it's ok and I'm sure you will just really supervise the two and don't leave them alone together.

Balonsmom wrote:

I would suggest having Max feed Nanook, (with your supervision of course) even help walk him if he can. Sometimes they don't see little ones as alpha. We had a greyhound female like that, she was herding the kids lol. NILF training is good for this problem too. Until you are sure it's ok and I'm sure you will just really supervise the two and don't leave them alone together.

I agree he might be seeing him as someone in the pack who's below him therefor he gets first pick of all the toys and food...

I just wanted to thank you guys for your input. Max has been feeding Nanook his meals and is in charge of handing over the treats during training time. He has calmed down a lot and no more incidents have accord.

Good he may be realizing that Max is indeed higher them him, it's really important to keep this up for quite a while too. Glad its working!

Also, whenever you go to take anything away from him, give him a treat when you take something away from him. It will make him less aggressive when you need to get something from him that he absolutely can't have.