What to Do After Your Dog Has Been Attacked by Another Dog

Get the physical injuries treated, then keep your dog completely away from other dogs for two weeks, and do not test whether they are still okay. What you do in the first fortnight largely decides whether this becomes a single bad memory or a permanent reactivity problem. The most common mistake, made with the best intentions, is taking the dog back out among other dogs quickly to prove nothing has changed. That is exactly how a scared dog gets a second bad experience and concludes the world is now dangerous.

The first 24 hours

• See a vet even if you see nothing. Dog bites cause crush and shear injuries under intact skin. Punctures seal over and abscess three to five days later. A dog who was picked up and shaken has soft tissue damage that will not be visible for a day.
• Photograph everything, including the other dog and the owner's details, before you leave. You may need this.
• Ask specifically about pain relief. A dog in pain reacts faster and harder to everything for the next week, which is precisely when you cannot afford it.
• Report it. Not for revenge. It creates a record if that dog does it again, and in many jurisdictions the report is what triggers any obligation on the other owner.

Weeks one and two: decompression

The single most useful thing here is complete avoidance. Not gradual reintroduction, not counter conditioning yet. Just nothing.

• Zero exposure to unfamiliar dogs. Change your walking route entirely. Walk at 6am if you have to. Drive to a quiet field. If your neighbourhood makes this impossible, skip walks for ten days and do sniffing games and chew work in the house instead.
• Keep the household calm. Fewer visitors, less noise, normal schedule.
• Increase sleep. A stressed dog needs more rest than usual and most will take it if given a quiet space.
• Do easy, familiar training. Five minutes twice a day of things the dog already knows well. Success is calming. Do not teach anything new.
• Do not comfort in the moment of a startle, but do not avoid your dog either. Just be normal and unremarkable.

Stress hormones take roughly 48 to 72 hours to clear after a single acute event, longer if there is pain. Two weeks with no further incidents gives you a dog whose baseline has come back down, which is where rehab actually starts.

Read what you have got before you plan

At the two week mark, take stock honestly. There are three broad outcomes and they need different responses.

1. No lasting change. Maybe a quarter of dogs. Slightly wary for a week, then back to normal. Resume ordinary life, but keep a bit more distance from strange dogs for a month.
2. Situational caution. The most common. Fine with dogs generally, but sharp with dogs that resemble the attacker, or in the location where it happened, or when approached from behind. This is very workable.
3. Generalised reactivity. Barking and lunging at any dog at any distance. Harder, and normal after a serious attack. This needs a full protocol and often a trainer in the room.

Be careful about the dog who seems completely fine in week one. Suppression is common, and a dog who is shut down looks calm. Look at sleep quality, appetite, whether they are startling at noises indoors, and whether they are still initiating things they used to enjoy.

The rehab timeline

Only start once the two weeks are clear and the dog is eating and sleeping normally.

1. Weeks three and four, distance only. Find dogs at 150 feet or more. Mark and feed on sight. No approach, no greeting, no attempt to socialise. Two or three short sessions a week.
2. Weeks five to seven, close the gap slowly. Ten to fifteen feet per week, and only while the dog stays loose and takes food. One bad session sets you back about a week, so err on the side of far away.
3. Weeks eight to ten, parallel walking with a known safe dog. Not a puppy, not a bouncy adolescent. A calm, neutral adult, walking the same direction at thirty feet, narrowing over several sessions. No nose to nose contact.
4. Weeks eleven onward, controlled proximity. Same safe dog, same field, off leash on a long line if the space allows, with both dogs free to move away. Keep it to five minutes.

Expect the whole thing to take three to six months to reach a stable place. Dogs who were attacked as adolescents, or who were pinned and shaken rather than snapped at, take longer.

The things that make it worse

• Testing the dog. Taking them to the dog park in week three to see how they do is a decision that costs months.
• Forcing greetings. A dog who is told to say hello and cannot leave learns that you will not protect them, which is the foundation of leash reactivity.
• Tightening the leash on sight of a dog. Your hand telegraphs. Practise breathing out and letting the leash stay loose while you turn away.
• Punishing the barking. The bark is the dog asking for distance. Remove the bark without changing the feeling and you remove your warning system.
• Apologising your way through it socially. You are allowed to say no. Body block, turn, and walk. You do not owe anyone a greeting.

Your own part in it

Handlers get quietly traumatised by this too, and dogs read handler tension faster than anything else in the environment. If you find yourself scanning constantly and bracing every time you see a leash, that is worth acknowledging. Practise the turn away as a mechanical drill in an empty park until it is automatic, so that under pressure your body does something useful instead of freezing.

The free blueprint. Download the Reactive Dog blueprint has the threshold and distance work laid out in detail, and it is the right structure for weeks three onward.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.