Many, if not all species of animals have a wide variety of different aggressive behaviors which can be attributed to many different reasons. Reasons range from the animal trying to defend itself against what they have perceived as a threat or it could be due to competition for food, territory or a mate. Whatever it might be, aggressive behavior can be found in many animals and not just in dogs, though domestication as well as selective breeding has minimized much of the aggressive behavior in domestic dogs. Dog behavior like herding, watchdog barking, dog to dog compulsive fighting, pointing as well as retrieving are all stylized forms of predation and aggression. Aggression can be expressed toward another dog or toward a human.

A typical dog behavior problem related to aggression is that of their aggression towards strangers. When a dog appears to be uncomfortable being around strangers or dislikes only a certain stranger like big men, people in uniform or even kids it could be because he or she was not socialized fully. A dog that is fully socialized would be relaxed in an environment where there are many elements included such as a new place and new people. So how does one socialize a pet dog? It is as simple as giving your pet enough exposure as well as positive experiences. This kind of dog training should be done while they are still young as your dog might have problems if they were only exposed socially at a late age.

There are also cases wherein pet dogs are aggressive towards family members. The usual causes for this type of aggression in dogs are poor tolerance of body handling as well as resource guarding. Defense of their food, territory or sleeping locations as well as other resources is an adaptive trait which is selective in many group-living carnivores. Like their untamed brothers, this dog behavior could ever so often manifest itself in our pet dogs in the form of being overly possessive towards their food dishes, bones, sleeping places like the sofa, toys and even garbage! Fortunately, there are measures that an owner can take to help make their pet dogs more relaxed around their resources.

So what can a dog owner do to help treat aggression in their pet dogs? Well you should first understand that many under socialized dog's aggression can be improved gradually with the combined help of remedial socialization and classic conditioning. The speed and the chance of improvement when training dogs will depend on your pet dog's genetic make-up, their age and the severity of the problem as well as the owner's compliance with the given instructions. So it won't only require effort from your pet dog but from you as well.

An important factor to mention as well is how well developed your dog's bite inhibition is. Puppies learn the "soft mouth" through play biting other puppies in a constant manner. Basically when a puppy bites another one a little too hard, that other puppy would yelp and stop playing. If this repeats constantly, the puppies would then learn to not bite too hard so that their playing will continue. So when you stop puppies from play-biting, they won't learn "soft mouth" and would grow up with a higher risk of dog to dog aggression.