Originally Posted by LadyMischief

First off YOU NEED TO RELAX!! You are projecting your stress, upset and tension to the dog, not to mention thinking in your mind that he's a bad dog and shouldn't have done that, and all that is goign to do is stress him out, confuse him, scare him, and he is more likely to follow instinct again. What your dog did was a natural, instinctive prey reaction, and be hella glad the people were calm. In fact the mother and the little girl were the ONLY ones acting correctly in this scenario, being calm. You can literally leave permanant mental scars on your dogs if you don't move past the incident and back into positive mind territory, and you will never allow your dog to move past the incident either! Remember, PACK LEADER mentality. A pack leader doesn't get stressed out, weep, cry or get upset, in fact, in a dog that is already unsettled from something like this, that is the WORST THInG YOU CAN DO fOR YOUR DOG! Get the mental image of him hurting the little girl OUT OF YOUR HEAD, and start thinking about how you WANT your dog to behave. The training in this instance MUST start at home! PACK LEADER, babe, calm, assertive, but most of all CALM!

If you can't calm yourself down, now is the time to send the dog somewhere else and take some time to colllect yourself. He needs to look up to you, and right now you are an unstable factor in his home pack. It's these kind of situations where a dog will step forward and try to take the dominant position. If you want even a SHRED of his respect left for you, buck up, get over it, and move into training with POSITIVE thoughts in your head not negative thoughts about what you don't want him, but a mental picture of how he SHOULD behave. SUPER important. The WORST thing you should do in a case like this is lose your cool.