female yellow lab biting

[Joshlr]

We have a yellow lab who is about 16mths old. She was spayed at 7mths old. She was well trained from a puppy and brought up really well. We worked with her day in and out and made sure to always correct her when she would bite as a puppy. Just this week she has started to show some aggression when she does something wrong. If she does something she isnt suppose to and either my wife or I go to grab her by her collar and put her in the garage or her designated area she will bite or growl and lift her lip. It has only happened twice. The first time she wondered onto the road and my wife went to get her and pull her by the collar accross the drive and she bit my wife rather hard. She was corrected when she did that. The second was in our house when she did something bad I went to pull her by her collar and put her into her bed and she growled and tried to bite me. After both incidences she was tremendously scared. She is a great dog and this week was the first she has ever done this. My wife works with her more than I and I was shocked when she tried to bite her. What scares us is that the father of our dog was somewhat aggressive. We found this out recently that he was known to have bitten people. The bloodline of hers wasn't that good either. I dont know if something like that is passed on through the genetics or if there is a way to get her to stop this. We are very attached to her and are deeply concerned because we are having our first child in Feb. We also know that she is approaching 2yrs old and that aggression and behavior are really not exposed completely till then. It also scares us because she is a lab and typically that breed is pretty tame. We are scared to think that she will continue to do this but have an extremely hard time trying to justify anything to do with putting her to sleep if she continues to act this way. Please help. Thanks

[prolibertate]

I'm a bit concerned about some things. If you can gove me some information in rwegard to my questions, I may be able to give you some better advice.

What type of training do you do with her and for how long? Have you continued any training up until the present?

How was she corrected when she bit as a puppy? And how old was she when you got her and started her training?

What do you mean by the statement "when she does to do something wrong"?

When you put her in the designated area or garage, how long are you leaving her there?

Can you clarify the statement "when she did something bad I went to pull her by her collar and put her into her bed"?

Agression is not genetic; also it's not something that shows up at a certain age such as at 2 years old. The term aggression is misused in the dog world a lot. Many dogs growl before biting as a signal that if you don't stop what you're doing, and they can't get away from you, they may bite you. That isn't aggression; many times they're growling and end up biting out of fear. Grabbing their collar and dragging them somewhere would count as making them fearful. Also, dogs go through several stages where they can become fearful of things; 6, 18 and 24 months are some of these times.

Putting a dog to sleep without the services of a behaviorist being sought first isn't justifiable. This dog isn't turning 'aggressive' due to her genes or getting older. She's reacting to something else, which could be a fear response to something and which may be easily fixed. If you can answer my questions, I'll be happy to give you what help I can.