Good evening everyone!

Last weekend, we discovered Baron has some toy aggression when it comes to other dogs. We were at the dog park with probably about a dozen other dogs and a St Bernard was carrying around a duck. Baron went for it, but did not growl/snap/snarl or anything but I still thought I should mention it.

Later, a sweet yellow lab had a ball in her mouth and he physically grabbed it out of her mouth. When she tried to recover it, he snapped, snarled, and went after her. Her owner grabbed her, we yelled grabbed him, and both parties went separate ways for some distraction (praise for following sit/down commands). We released Baron and he immediately went after the same yellow lab who again had a ball and did the same thing, so we leashed him and took him to the other side of the park for a bit (it's not very big). With reassurance from other dog owners and extra eyes to help us keep an eye on him, we let him loose again and he did well but I made a point to collect any toys I did find, which is not a real solution as other owners clearly bring toys for their dogs for a reason. Things went well after that for the rest of our stay.

My question are what can we do to break him of this terribly rude (and potentially dangerous) habit? How should we react when he does go after another dog like that?

Thanks everyone!

Tesla had a slight issue with toy aggression when he was younger. What worked well for us was to teach him that *all* toys belong to us and that other dogs have *our* permission to have them. Starting with toys at home by randomly taking things from him and then giving them back after a few seconds, we eventually worked up to taking things from other dogs while we were at the park (with permission from the humans, of course). Once he got that message, we even went as far as to redistribute toys between dogs (Tesla included) by taking them from one mouth and putting them into another.

Now he has zero problems with toy, food, or treat aggression because in his eyes I own the entire world and he needs my permission to have *anything*. And while Tesla would take something he thought belonged to a "lesser" dog, he would never dream of taking anything that was mine. But since I own everything, nothing belongs to those lesser dogs so he doesn't take anything. That being said, we were also careful to not scold him for playing without our express permission or to take anything he is allowed to have the moment he picked it up. So he also knows my permission is implicit, but can be rescinded at any time.

Anyway that's just what worked for me.

i did much the same thing as Dan when we got Waya. Dakota did NOT want to share his toys and Waya, trying to establish her dominance would NOT let him have any. Now they know if they don't play nicely with MY toys they don't get to play with them at all.

Thanks for the input! He does perfectly fine at home when I take his toys (or put my hands in his food bowl, take food away, etc) for a few seconds at a time. Unfortunately, we only have him as far as dogs go, so the only times we are around other dogs is Sunday mornings at the dog park. We had been taking him to my Sister in Law's, but her youngest has been under the weather (and now on crutches too) so he haven't been there in a week or two. :C

Any advice for moment-of reactions, should he go after another dog?

Your lack of other dogs at home is why you have to be proactive about teaching this lesson in public. Don't wait for Baron to be toy aggressive, instead pointedly demonstrate your ownership of the items in the park before anything happens.

But of course you're still going to run into problems for a while. What I do at parks for any inappropriate aggressiveness is put Tesla in time out. Were I to catch him being toy-possessive, I'd walk up to him and take the toy from him then make him watch me give it back to the other dog ('make' here is pretty easy, since he's interested in the toy he'll just watch on his own). Then I'd put him in the entryway to the park and make him just sit there for a while, exiled from the fun. That part is rather tricky, as you more or less have to ignore them while they're in 'jail' but at the same time make sure they don't get let out accidentally by someone entering the park. I typically stand there with my back turned and ignore him, and if someone were to want in or out I hold him by the collar (passively...just so he can't get into the park or out the front) without otherwise acknowledging him (no looking, no talking, just holding) until the other person had passed.

YMMV. Tesla is particularly responsive to being temporarily kicked out of the family, but some dogs aren't.