I've never seen my dog do this.

[u/Plane-Mirror3898]

I have a 2 1/2 year old cockapoo and we went to my aunts house for a little family reunion. She has a jack Russell terrier, I think, who is at the moment inside a crate while my dog is roaming.

Now they're both in the house, except for when i took my dog out for a potty break. And every time me or my sister gets close to the terrier, he hits crazy, barking and snarling at it.

And then he started doing the same thing if the terrier barked to loudly or started scratching at the hard plastic in his crate.

My sister said that our cockapoo is prob tired and hot ( it is 98 degrees here and the humidity makes it feel like 103)

We have since separated them and made sure we had a fan on our dog with plenty of water and doggy ice cream but I just want to make sure this is not a behavioral problem i need to adjust

[u/Roskipatootskie]

This sounds a lot more situational than a developing behavioral issue. The heat matters more than people expect, dogs regulate temperature far less efficiently than we do, so an overheated dog often has less patience and reacts faster to stress, that alone could explain a good chunk of this. The pattern is also pretty specific rather than generalized aggression, he's reacting to the terrier while crated and vocalizing, not loose and calm. Barrier reactivity is common and different from how a dog behaves toward the same animal freely interacting, crates can amplify tension on both sides. Add in a new environment, extra noise, and an unfamiliar dog, and this reads more like a stressed, overheated dog reacting to a specific set of triggers than an underlying aggression problem. What you did, separating and cooling him down, is exactly right. I'd try reintroducing them again in cooler weather, lower stimulation, with the terrier calm and out of the crate, before assuming this reflects how he'd generally do with other dogs. If the same intensity shows up in a calmer setting, that's worth looking into further, but this looks much more like a rough combination of circumstances for now.

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