my dog has been growling at my wife the last couple of days. why is that?

Question

We bought him as a puppy, four years ago. He is a St. Bernard.

Answer 1

she is pregnant

Answer 2

My friend had a St. Bernard before and it was fine. Has you wife abuse or yelled at the dog recently? If so the dog will growl but will not bite because the dog is scared that it will get abused again. Don't worry though. If the St. Bernard continues to growl I would suggest you take your wife to the doctor because your wife may have a health problem or is pregnant. Dogs will get jealous when your wife is pregnant. Mostly a female dog. Or the dog might be the one with health problem so take him/her to the vet. He/She is most likely to have brain damage. (it makes him/her forget many things and will get scared.

Answer 3

I experienced the same problem myself with our former family pet Dalmatian.
He became violent due to a mistake my then sister-in-law did while handing him his bone.
The dog has been given a new home & I haven't heard of it since then. Your problem could be that it feels threatened/ envious of the attention you're giving to your spouse, maybe?
Though generally, St. Bernards are sociable breeds whereas Dalmatians are temperamental. I would strongly suggest that you seek a "dog whisperer" a kind of psychologist but for dogs that may help you in this matter.
Have it settled as soon as possible to avoid any harm to you/ wife.

Answer 4

If this is a new behavior, get him checked out by a vet. Often St. B's have aggression issues, and many times it is caused by a thyroid imbalance. This needs to be looked into asap. If the vet determines that there is no problem, then call a trainer or behaviorist who is a positive based trainer and specializes in aggression issues. Join yahoo group Clicker Solutions.

Answer 5

Dogs are pack animals. In a pack, only the alpha female and alpha male breed. He is chalenging your wife. He sees you as the alpha, but does not see her as the other alpha, and is therefore trying to keep her away from you. You have to get him to see her as a higher ranking pack member than he is. Maybe she should start providing him with food and water. Make him see her as his provider. Does he only growl at her when she tries to get near you? If so, let him come up to you, and then have your wife get close. As soon as he starts growling, you walk away from him. The reason he is growling is because he wants you all to himself, and is being posessive. When you walk away, you are taking away his reason for growling, and it has backfired on him. He made the person he wanted to be near leave, instead of getting you all to himself.

Answer 6

is your wife healthy? sometimes dogs detect something is wrong inside their owners' body before others do. i've heard lots of special interest stories on the news, etc. where a dog acted weird 2 the owner and turns out they had cancer, etc. if your wife feels sick, maybe she should go for a yearly physical. i'm sure i'm just being an alarmist, not trying to make this a fearful answer, but it was definitely the first thing i thought of. hush-up, fido!

Answer 7

Maybe your dog smells another man. Just kidding, of course.

Answer 8

Maybe she's pregnat, dogs get really jealous if they've been with you for a long time.

Answer 9

he may sense something is wrong
I don't want to alarm you, but I know someone that this happened to and it seemed the dog had detected the person had skin cancer.

Answer 10

my dog gets jealous of me sometimes to when i'm close to my bf but if i just give him some attention he usually gets over it.

Answer 11

Becase she is shady.,.,doggs know that kind of stuff.,.,she prob is hidding something from you..,,sorry dude.,.,