8 month old corgi incredibly territorial/reactive

[u/biznessracoon]

Hi everyone,
 
I apologise in advance for how long this post will be, but I am hoping someone else has been in this situation and may have some advice for how to proceed.
 
I have an 8 month old female corgi (spayed). I have had her since she was 9 weeks old.
 
She has never been a people-dog, and I put a lot of effort into socialising her early (taking her to cafes prior to getting her full vaccines etc) thinking that was the right thing to do, and I put a lot of her earlier introvertedness/nerves down to just being a shyer dog, thinking it could be improved on with exposure.
 
By 4-5 months, it had become apparent to me that she was moving beyond just being a shy/introverted dog and was genuinely fearful of other people. She only shows love/affection for me and my mum. I engaged a behaviourist and behaviour vet around this age, and she was prescribed Prozac, which she has been on since.
 
She has always LOVED other dogs. At 4 months, I put her in dog daycare two days per week, and she is thriving there. She has come a long way with her carers – to start, she wouldn’t engage with them at all. She now approaches them happily/excitedly, and displays clear favouritism towards a few of them (but is tolerant of all in that environment).
 
In public, I find she is generally fine with people so long as they do not attempt to engage with her. As soon as someone looks at her and attempts to speak with her, she loses her mind. She becomes heightened, stiffens up, barks relentlessly at them, hackles up etc. If we are somewhere like the dog park – where people are focused on their own dogs and not her – she is generally fine and you wouldn’t look at her and think there was anything off about her.
 
But where I am really struggling is within the home. I live on my own and in a 1 bed apartment, so I don’t have many visitors, but when I do, she loses her mind. The same hackles up, barking, stiffened stance – and she is completely relentless. She puffs and sneezes at them, stalks back and forth, won’t let me anywhere near her etc. Because of the living space, there aren’t many options for where I can put her that she can disengage without it feeling like a punishment to her. There is no clear spot where I can put her so she can see what’s going on but is separated.
 
It’s getting to the point where I do not feel I can have anyone over. I don’t have a huge number of friends here, as I only moved to this city in April, so it’s not like I can get friends just to come over and sit in the space for 30+ minutes to partake in training, but that is what the advice online largely involves.
 
Does anyone have any advice on how to approach this? I feel like we have made a lot of progress outside, but I am feeling increasingly discouraged by, and anxious over, her clear territorialism/increasing reactivity in the home.
 
Thank you in advance!

[u/SudoSire]

The dog probably isn’t going to connect them being in another room as a punishment, and truly even if they did, safety comes first. Even if she hasn’t yet, she’s showing lots of signals that she cannot be loose with guests and might bite. If you have no other room, you should be using a crate and give her like a lick mat and hope she calms down. But if you have another room it’s perfectly okay to set her up nicely in a bedroom and she can chill instead of practicing this behavior you don’t want. You can choose to be doing this temporarily while you work on it, or as a long term solution, or as a “most of the time  she goes to the other room, but we also train with people I want in her circle.”  My dog will never meet contractors or maintenance people for instance, as they simply don’t have to and it’d be hard to train. 

Unfortunately yeah, you are going to need some willing people to help desensitize her to people in the home if that’s her issue. It can be paid trainer to start, but it’ll have to be someone. As your dog starts that process, she should be muzzle trained and use it. There are various protocols you can experiment with to see what things or combos will make your dog more accepting. Games like Treat and Retreat, place commands, potentially meeting all guests outside first and even let them settle/sit first, then dog can come in, having guests ignore dog completely.  But also, I would not do 30+ training sessions necessarily as you might just trigger stack. Start shorter. 

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