Does anyone have any tried & true advice on how to improve a dog's meeting
skills with other dogs? The dogs are all adults, all rescues and only react
to strange dogs. I see this alot with the Boxers and outside of just
telling people "this is how he/she is at first, just give the dog a few
minutes" I'm not sure what else to do.

My female Fancy has atrocious meeting skills. She presents an aggressive
front to any strange dog she meets either on-leash or off. She is better
off-leash but she still acts aggressively. The best way to describe it is
that she's both inviting the other dog to scrap with her and saying she's
ready at the same time. She means it to an extent as she will defend
herself in a heartbeat but she doesn't really want to fight if that makes
sense. Her actions produce the expected reaction from most other dogs
though and who can blame them?

A female I have here now is the same. She is 100% submissive with other
dogs of both genders and all sizes. She allows them to mount her, get rough
with her, eat her food, take her chewies and so on. The thing is, you'd
never know that about her if you watched her encounter a strange dog. When
she was brought to my house, Ely (a male foster pup) ran out the door to
greet her and she pounded him into the ground, held him there and bared her
teeth. He was non-threatening in every way as his body language (wiggling a
mile a minute) left nothing to wonder about. However, here is a dog (albeit
a smaller one) running up to you so why not pound first and question later?
When introduced to the Min. Dachshund, Mary lunged and snapped. My foot,
harshly side-swiping Pebbles out of the way, was all that saved her from a
broken neck (good thing I didn't do damage with my reaction).

Now imagine me having to introduce Fancy and Mary. I had no help so I
waited a while and crated Mary to let her decompress some. Finally I got
tired of playing musical crates and wondering so I crated Ely & Pebbles, let
Fancy into the backyard then got Mary and took her out there...leashes
hanging loose on both girls. I walked to the water hose, turned it on and
waited thinking I'd need to hose them down to break up a fight but I wanted
it done with and out of the way so we could move on (the dogs are generally
tolerant of each other after the initial spat..sometimes it takes two or
three spats). Alot of posturing, paw to the shoulder or side, hackles
raised, growling and circling went on but after 5 minutes all was fine
because neither girl took the other's bait. Mary also cannot be taken into
a vet's office waiting room or Petsmart.

This all happened over a month ago and Mary, Fancy, Ely & Pebbles are great
friends (well Pebbles is a snob, she tolerates the big dogs) but it makes me
wonder if there's a way to improve the meeting skills of dogs like this.
Mary is being adopted by my sister in 2 weeks (she already adopted Hunter)
and rather than being able to meet her halfway, I'm having to drive 6 hours
because I know what will happen at a roadside meeting and I can't imagine
being able to convince my sister that Mary will be fine on the way home.
She'll be fine after she's allowed off-leash with Hunter in their backyard
and I am there to supervise the introduction but its times like this where I
wish there was a trick to getting dogs like her to be friendly towards
strangers.

These two girls are only examples of a good portion of the Boxers we get in
rescue. They are *not* dog aggressive but act that way when meeting strange
dogs for the first time. Its a fear reaction that I have no idea where it
comes from. Some dogs are only like this on-leash while others are like
this regardless. It doesn't bother me (actually I am surprised when two
Boxers don't react this way to each other since its such a common sight to
see) but it can put a damper on adoption meetings and can also make
prospective adopters wary of adopting a dog like this because they want to
be able to take the dog places.

--
Tara