hi, we've had jake since he was a pup, he's now three and all his life he's been great, not snappy in any way towards people

however on boxing day, he skidded on some ive and cut open his front left paw
he had to have four staples in, which the emergency vet put in then and there after cleaning the wound and with a lot of help from me to pin the poor boy down

everything was good, he let me put a bandage and tape a bag around his paw every day to keep it clean and dry in all the snow we had, no problems
10 days later he had the staples out by our regular vet, who he growled at for going near his foot - perfectly understandable, but a shock to us at the time as he's not growled at anyone before
he was fine, after the two seconds it took to remove the staples and didn't show any other signs of aggression

until i took him into college for grooming, my lecturer was showing me how to trim his leg skirts, she trimmed his right leg with no problems, but when she went round to check his left leg he growled really loud & bared his teeth

which really scared me, so i quickly grabbed his head & pulled it to my chest
she's a dog groomer by trade, so i explained about his accident & she understood why he did it

later in the day though we took him for a walk around campus and went to sit in the SU with him for a while, people were wanting to come up & stroke him, and he was baring his teeth at them too, even went for one lad, but he was fine with the people he had met before, and more worryingly , when my friend took him out for a wee, a girl we know approached him and let her stroke him, but when they came inside and jake came back to me, when the girl tried stroking him again he bore his teeth at her, so i hope it's not just me causing it

i'm a bit worried now that he'll be funny towards anyone new introduced to him

any thoughts?

Hi I probably wont be much help,
But I have had two rescue collies. First one had no problems with agression to start with... then he used to end up chasing my mums carers out the door.
The one we have now has been an angel for 2 years. Now hes suddenly started getting a bit iffy when new people stroke him. You can tell hes not happy coz he stops wagging his tail and goes all kinda stiff. My vet has said that its quite a problem in collies. I basically wont let anyone new touch him now. Its strange... hes fine with my dog trainer touching him and other people at our club but when people come into our house hes normally worse. Sorry I cant help really but thought id share my experience!

i think he's remembering being hurt and is very wary of being hurt again. For peace of mind maybe a trip back to your vet may help. Collies are so intelligent and i love them.

Poor dog - sounds like he needs a confidence boost after his nasty experience.

I'm going through a similar thing with my pup - she's frightened by traffic.

Perhaps you could try calmly walking your dog through busy streets, just getting him used to being around people again.
It might be worth bribing someone [!] to approach the dog with a pocket full of doggy treats so that strangers are seen as friends again.
And how about gently stroking his injured leg while giving him fuss and attention [and more treats?!!]

Hope that helps - my last dog was a collie cross and I know they have l-o-n-g memories, but they're naturally a friendly breed, so I'm sure he'll bounce back.

I thought that would be the problem, it wasn't at our regular vet that the stapling happened, it was another practice within out vet's group, and another vet who did the procedure

i have come to realise that the boy is quite a nervous dog anyway, which probably doesn't help matters

i'll look into another vet trip. he needs weighing again before he's wormed, so it might be a good chance just to get him into the practice where nothing happens to him!
could be a chance to talk about breaking his obsessive behaviour (all he does is sit and watch our budgie when we're in the living room :-/)

this sounds like a good idea actually, but it would need someone who'd be very dedicated to helping him to do that!
and a few control measures
not sure how he would cope with a busy street to be fair though, or how i would

i'd probably be a little on edge myself in case he did turn!

I completely understand this - it's human nature on our part, isn't it?

The problem is that the dog senses our anxiety, it raises his stress level, which in turn raises ours ...

How about just taking things one very small step at a time, getting both of you back into feeling confident and in control?

Oh, and I'm sure you've thought of this, but using a Halti headcollar on your dog is a huge help, too.
It gives you so much more control over the dog's movements, but they're a very gentle way of getting the dog to do what you want. I'm a big fan!

he's on a halti on walks anyway for pulling

that said it doesn't stop him pulling really, so