Door guard

Halloween is almost here, and you may be worried about how your dog is going to handle all those trick-or-treaters coming to your front door. Here’s how to take charge of the situation well before trouble begins.
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This article quotes Dale Stavroff, in his book Let the Dog Decide. Some of the quoted material has been edited for length.

These steps assume you have already taught your dog to lie down on command.

“Schedule a visit by a friend. Arrange with the friend that he or she will knock or right the bell only once, and then be prepared to wait until you open the door.

“At the appointed time, have the dog at your side with the long line attached to the flat collar, and await your friends ring or knock at a distance away from the door that is greater than the length of the line.

“If the dog charges the door at the sound of the doorbell or knock, stand on the line with your back turned to the dog. Keep your back turned for a moment after the dog comes to the end of the line knocks itself down with the force of its own momentum, to allow the dog time to get back on its feet and see that you and your hands are not responsible for what happened.

“Turn around, call the dog to you, and reassure it with benevolent eye contact, a treat, and a pet.

“If the dog does not charge the door . . . it will almost certainly still be feeling some agitation and concern, so reassure it with benevolent eye contact, a treat, and a pet.” [My note: This approach is very different from Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer's technique of stabbing the dog in the neck with your fingers and saying “Shh!”]

“Walk to the door with the dog and put it in a down [position.]

“Open the door and welcome the visitor into the house while the dog remains in the down. This gives the dog and opportunity to see and sniff the visitor from a little distance and to observe that the two of your are interacting comfortably.”

At this point, you should be watching for your dog to relax in the down position. Once the dog relaxes completely, you can release the dog to investigate your friend more freely. Your friend can give the dog a treat at this point, which should confirm in the dog’s mind that approaching the visitor in a relaxed state is the right thing to do.

You should repeat these steps over the next several days with different visitors, particularly those you dog has never met before. This will help your small dog generalize his behavior in as wide a range of circumstances as possible.

Take Action:

1. Do the steps listed above.
2. Repeat the training as often as possible over the next two weeks and you should have a calm, well-behave dog when visitors come calling.

Let us know what you think.

Use the Reply section below this article to tell the rest of the community about your trials and successes with training your small dog not to charge the front door.

Photo courtesy of tobyotter@flickr.com

Trick or treat!

“Trick or treat. Give me something good to eat. Don’t hold back and don’t be lazy, or I’ll drive your small dog crazy.”

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. What’s not to like? You get to dress up in a costume and play another character. It’s an excuse to eat a bunch of junk food. The house decorations are fun. Someone almost always hosts a great party. Your small dog barks his brains out when the doorbell rings every 90 seconds between sundown and around 9:00 p.m.

Okay, maybe you’re not so fond of that last item.

The Horror . . . the Horror!

If your small dog creates his own horror movie by terrorizing trick-or-treaters at your front door, you have two choices:

1. Put up with the commotion and hope your dog doesn’t try to make a Halloween snack out of a trick-or-treater, or
2. Arrange it so your dog can relax when . . .
   “. . . suddenly there came a tapping,
   As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
   `’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
   Only this, and nothing more.’” (The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe, 1945)

Frankenstein’s Formula

A dog that charges the front door and barks is extremely anxious about the intruder/threat on the other side. Any attempt to counter the dog’s behavior with voice commands and physical manipulation, such as poking the dog in the neck, will only fuel the dog’s anxiety. You will get much better results by applying the two primary principles of training:

• Arrange it so the dog’s undesirable behavior fails to serve the dog.
• Offer a substitute behavior that works for the dog.

I’ll explain how to do these two steps in my next article.

Tricks and Treats

Your other option is simply to place your dog in his crate with a suitable distraction, such as a long-lasting chew stick or toy. Ironically this technique is very similar to the first because you are arranging the situation where:

1. Charging the front door is going to fail because it is not possible, and
2. Eating a dog-safe Halloween treat is a great substitute for eating little kids in costumes.

I’ll be back before October 31st with an article explaining the training steps to stop your dog from charging the front door. Happy Halloween.

Small dogs have a higher tendency towards leash aggression because their small stature makes everything seem large and threatening. This is Royce.

Tamara J. a reader of this column commented:
“Love your articles on small dog syndrome. How about some information and helpful tips on handling leash aggression. I believe this is part of my boy’s small dog issues.”

Have I got a story for you. Back when we first opened Kelsey’s Dog House, and I thought I knew everything there is to know about dog behavior, I learned the hard way there is always something new to learn.

It was the end of our first week in business. Without blowing our own horn too loudly, apparently Kelsey’s Dog House was something people in our community had eagerly anticipated. Our daycare area was already very busy with happy dogs. Our boarding area had five dogs in residence. Our grooming schedule was full, which isn’t saying much when we only had one groomer–my wife. We had not anticipated this instant run-up in business, so it was just Dawn and I running the entire operation. Talk about looking like chickens with our heads cut off. We were running around like maniacs to keep up with the sudden and unanticipated demand.

So there I was, as all good stories begin, minding the daycare and boarding areas, when a family of five walks in with their beautiful Golden Retriever. The dad tells me the family is interested in placing their dog in our daycare program. Could they have a look around? Before showing them around, I asked the usual questions including “Is your dog friendly around other dogs?” The answer was yes. In fact, Dad said, their dog was previously part of a daycare program at another facility and got along very well. Satisfied that the Golden was probably a good candidate, we began the tour—all six of us, with the dog pulling Dad along at the end of a leash.

I showed the family the front areas, bragging about the gleaming new grooming equipment. They said it all looked very nice. Then the entourage shuffled towards the daycare and boarding areas, where about ten other dogs were roaming, playing or resting. The Golden’s tail went fully upright and the fur on her back stiffened. I didn’t pay too much attention because I was busy extolling the virtues of our playcare area. The party continued to the backyard, where a few dogs were enjoying the sunshine. The Golden started to growl. No big deal, I thought, it’s was just first-day jitters. Dad tugged a bit on the leash, and said “Shh.” The Golden started barking at a Boston Terrier who was sniffing the ground a few feet away.

“She’s not usually like this,” said Dad.

“She’s probably a little nervous because all this is new for her,” I said. The six of us shuffled back inside, where a few more dogs were milling around. The Golden was now at full growl and I was beginning to sweat. The family looked nervous as well. Dad shouted “Pipe down.” Suddenly—there is always a “suddenly” in these kinds of stories—the Golden leapt to the full length of her leash, lunging at a Brittany Spaniel. Before the Brittany could react, the Golden chomped down on the Brittany’s ear. I jumped in and immediately grabbed the Golden by the collar, an action which any expert on dog behavior will tell you not to do. Fortunately, stupid luck allowed me to separate the two dogs immediately without any further damage.

The Brittany Spaniel had a shallow puncture in her ear. We took her to a vet for a closer inspection. It turned out to be a superficial wound that healed without problem. The family with the Golden left immediately, with Dad still muttering that his dog was not normally like this.

What is the moral of this story? When a dog feels threatened, it has two options:

1. It can battle its way out of the situation—fight.
2. It can run away from the situation—flight.

Both options, fight or flight, are coping behaviors. There are other ways for a dog to cope, but left to its own instincts, a dog will only fight or flee from a threat. In this story, the family and I set up the Golden Retriever for a fight in a most obvious way, although we were blind to it at the time. The dog was on leash and had only one option when it felt threatened. It was forced to move through an area that had multiple threats. It was burdened with an obligation to protect its entire family. None of us paid any attention to the warning signs and the dog’s desire to flee the situation. To the contrary, our response to the dog was fueling the dog’s agitation. From this I learned to introduce a dog to our playcare area without the family present and with only one or two smaller and exceptionally calm and non-threatening dogs in the room. If the dog shows any sign of discomfort, we either leave the area and give up, or we try a fresh introduction to another non-threatening dog. I’ll talk more about threats in a moment. For now, let’s focus on the dog’s options.

If a dog is running freely, he or she has both coping options available when faced with a threat. The dog is free to run away, and it’s free to attack the threat. If the dog is on a leash, one of those two options is taken away. The dog can still attack, but the option to run away is gone.

Dogs are not stupid. They may not be able to rationalize as we can, but they are aware of their situation most of the time. As soon as you snap a leash onto your dog’s collar, your dog is instantly aware that its range of movement has been limited. That is not to say it won’t try to explore those limits by pulling against the leash as you walk; or by refusing to move forward when you do. In fact, the whole business of learning what it can and cannot get away with on a leash gives the dog advance knowledge of what will happen when it encounters a threat. The dog learns it can’t run away on leash, therefore the only option is to fight. Generally, we do not give a dog on leash the fight option either, so we see pre-fighting behavior, such as growling, teeth baring, barking, lunging at the threat, etc. This is the essence of what we call “leash aggression,” a learned tendency to fight first.

We are halfway to a solution. Before we get there, we have to consider what your dog finds threatening. As always, the answer depends on the dog. If your dog was socialized around other dogs and people at a very young age, chances are it will not feel threatened by these things as an adult. Without socialization, a dog can only guess at what is threatening. If a dog judges that another person, dog or situation may:

1. Cause injury, or
2. Take away its food or territory, or
3. Attack another member of its pack/family, then . . .

its a threat.

It’s a “guilty until proven innocent” mentality. Further, a dog that has been out in the world for a while learns it does not pay to be indecisive. Indecision can kill, cause injury, or loss of property. Better to treat everything unfamiliar as a threat, fight now, and ask questions later.

It does not matter that you or I can clearly see that the mailman, for example, will not rain destruction on our house. Your dog does not have your power of rationalization to deduce that the mail carrier is benign. All it sees is a strange person, wearing strange clothing, carrying a large, bouncing bag on his shoulder, striding confidently towards your front door. It’s a threat.

If a dog does not rationalize, then what exactly is the dog doing to determine whether something threatens? When assessing a threat, dogs look at many different cues given by the threat—posture, movement, eye gaze, size, etc. Size has the highest priority on the dog’s list of cues. When time is short and your dog has to make a quick decision about what it is assessing, size trumps all. Typically, bigger equals more threatening. That explains why dogs about to fight, stand as erect as possible and puff up their fur. They are trying to look bigger and therefore, more threatening.

If you own a small dog that has not been socialized around other dogs, any unfamiliar dog larger than your own will be perceived as a threat. On leash, given no option to flee, your small dog is likely to spoil for a fight. Although any dog can display behavior known as leash aggression, we are more likely to see this behavior come from small dogs because most everything they face is larger and more threatening.

You cannot surgically or chemically remove a dog’s instinct to fight or flee. You also cannot pre-expose your dog to every strange situation he or she may encounter. Is the situation hopeless? Of course not. You can give your dog a third coping option that is not native to dog behavior, and believe me, this option is not a cakewalk to teach. You may need the help of a professional dog trainer to make it work.

Before I get to that third option, let me tell you what will absolutely not work. When your dog is displaying leash aggressive behavior, any attempt to physically or verbally overwhelm your dog will only pour gasoline on the fire. Yelling at your dog, yanking on the leash, jamming your dog into a sit position, spanking, or wagging your finger in his/her face are all sure-fire ways to stoke your dog’s agitation. In fact, these human behaviors are part of the repertoire used to teach fighting dogs to behave aggressively.

The third coping option you can offer to your dog is movement into a down position, i.e. lying down. Is that it?! Is that the payoff of this entire article, a lousy obedience command and response? Believe me, if you can verbally direct your dog into a down position as an initial response to a threat, you will have overcome thousands of years of genetically programmed dog behavior. It is a big deal, and very difficult to train as a response to a threat.

Here is why the down position is so valuable. First, it is a position of submission. Remember, size matters. When your dog lies down, he/she is reducing his/her size profile. The down position is also submissive because it is the polar opposite of the attack posture. Second, laying down is associated with resting. Getting your dog to lie down is the first step towards slowing his/her heart and breathing rate, which is a positive movement away from the physiological response a dog has to fighting. Finally, a down position is a learned response to you. By lying down, your dog will cede control of the situation to you. As natural followers, dogs would prefer that you take control of their safety, they just don’t know how to do this naturally. They have to learn it. When your dog learns to give control over to you, it takes a huge burden off his/her shoulders and it can relax.

It is critical to teach your dog to lay down on cue reliably in a non-threatening situation. When a threat arises, your dog should be able to immediately and automatically respond to your voice and drop into the down position without being physically forced to do so. There are plenty of good resources on how to teach your dog to lay down on cue. You already know how much I admire and follow Dale Stavroff’s training guidance in his book Let the Dog Decide, and there are many other sources.

If your dog has a long-standing response known as leash aggression, you will have your work cut out for you trying to teach a new coping response. Don’t give up. The results may save your dog’s life.

Bella and Freddie play tug

“Jeffreeeee! Get down here and clean up this mess!”

“Jeffreeeee! Put your toys away before I trip and break my neck!”

“Jeffreeeee! I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after you!”

“Jeffreeeee! Your dog is out of control. Put his toys away!”

Sound familiar? I suspect you have heard or made the first three cries of despair, (especially if your kid’s name is Jeffrey.) The last cry doesn’t seem to come up as often. It should. Toys, especially dog toys, can be instruments of evil. Sure, you can trip over one lying on the floor and hurt yourself; but I am talking about something even more sinister. Toys can corrupt your dog’s behavior, and I don’t mean spoiling your dog with too many gifts. I am talking about giving your dog a method, plus permission, to take over the house.

When a dog goes outside, how does he/she establish territory? The answer is in the question. Your dog goes outside. He or she lifts a leg and urinates in places where other dogs are likely to stop and sniff. (Yes, many female dogs use this method too.) If another dog invades your dog’s territory and marks a spot, you can be sure that will be the first place your dog visits to re-mark with urine. Marking is a dog’s way of saying “This is mine. Stay away.”

As an aside, if you notice your dog thrashing the ground with his paws after urinating or defecating, that is not an attempt to bury the waste with dirt. To the contrary. Your dog does not want to cover up his territory markers with soil. When your dog scrapes the ground like a bull preparing to charge, he/she is further marking the spot with scent from oil glands in the bottom of his/her paws.

What in the h-e-double hockey sticks has this got to do with the stuffed toy you bought from the pet warehouse for Fluffy Fluff Fluff? Everything. If your dog is housetrained and restricts his urine marking to outside, he has no way to mark the inside of the house unless you give him the tools with which to mark. Toys, especially an abundance of toys, can become the orange traffic cones of a dog’s indoor world.

I will not go so far to suggest your dog wakes up every morning and reviews a battle plan in his head:

“Let’s see. . . The enemy is moving south from the living room into the kitchen. I’ll lay down a minefield using a Nylabone and a Mr. Fuzzy Squirrel. If the enemy attempts to counter with a flanking maneuver from the dining room, I’ll answer with a gauntlet of Squeaky Bean Bags and a Rubber Tug-and-Pull.”

Without really thinking about it, your dog will strew all of his toys around the house. Each toy is saturated with his scent. Given enough toys, your dog can mark the entire house as his territory.

It is his territory, you may argue. There are no other dogs in the house so it is his. The toy argument is moot. Actually, if you look at the deed or rental contract for the house, it probably has your name on it, not your dog’s name. I know that is a bit cheeky of me, but it is your house after all—an important distinction when you think about dog behavior.

In many other places in this forum, I have said when it comes to the relationship between a dog and its owner, either the owner is in control of the dog, or the dog is in control of the owner. As far as the dog is concerned there are no gray areas. When a dog believes it is in control of the owner, the dog behaves according to the dog’s own rules, not the owner’s rules. This is the crux of what some people call Small Dog Syndrome.

A dog displaying behavior lumped under the catch-all phrase Small Dog Syndrome is a dog that is controlling its owner. In order for a dog to control its owner, it has to first establish its own territory—a castle where it can be king. When you give a dog a bunch of toys to spread around the house, you are essentially giving your dog the keys to the castle. Before you know it, the new king has ascended to the throne and the king begins to issue orders, i.e. Small Dog Syndrome.

The solution is simple. Take away the keys to the castle. No, I am not saying you should make your dog’s world a wasteland. He can have a toy when he earns it for good behavior. He can even have hundreds of toys, just as long as those toys are given out:

One at a time,
at the right time,
and for a limited time.

When the dog is done playing with the toy, you will do well to return it to a place out of the dog’s reach.

Dogs are not nearly as complicated as some of us believe them to be. Their natural rules of behavior are fairly simple and straightforward. Problems arise when we clutter their lives with things that we value as humans. Showering a dog with toys not only clutters your house, it also clutters your dog’s understanding of his role in your house.

Let's play!

(Photo courtesy of playerx @ Flickr)

What I am about to write may be rejected out of hand by some dog owners. I hope not, for the sake of their dogs. Emily Dickenson wrote a poem that begins “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” I’m not very good at skipping around an issue or zigzagging my way to the truth, so here it comes, served straight up and ice cold. You, or someone you know, may be unintentionally teaching your dog to bite. If you rough-house with your dog and allow him/her to mock bite you repeatedly, don’t be surprise if one day that dog tries to take a chunk out of you or someone else.

“But it’s all in good fun.”

“We are just playing.”

“He knows the difference.”

“He seems to enjoy it.”

“My dog wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

I’ll get back to these statements in a couple of minutes. Right now, let’s approach this issue with a look at dog aggression. Veterinary behaviorist, Dr. Bruce Fogle says in The Dog’s Mind there are eight different reasons why a dog might behave aggressively. Some of the reasons are obvious, such as predatory aggression and pain-induced aggression. There are two items on his list that provoke controversy. The first is idiosyncratic aggression. Idiosyncratic aggression suggests some dogs have a hidden pre-disposition for violence driven by their genes. By this he means although a dog may appear to be calm and easygoing most of the time, a dog with the wrong combination of genes has the potential to snap, literally and figuratively. (I’ll cover this more thoroughly in a future article.)

Dr. Fogle also talks about learned aggression, something we are all familiar with. For centuries, people have trained dogs to be guards, cooperative hunters, and blood-sport fighters. Training does not teach a dog how to be a predator. That comes naturally. Training attempts to direct when and where a dog uses predatory aggression. It usually involves 1) Stimulating a dog so its energy level peaks; and 2) Training a dog to direct that energy towards a target—human or animal. (Hold on to these two bullet points. We will be back to them in just a moment.) What happens next depends on the desired outcome. A person may train a dog to use its energy to simply grab and hold its target. A dog may also be trained to inflict injury or kill its target. Police dogs in particular are trained to grab and hold in a manner that more closely resembles fetching than attacking. With the exception of dog fighting, aggression training always includes a way to call the dog off its target reliably. I realize what I have described here is very rudimentary. I have done this purposely. The details of guard-dog and other predatory training are best left to professionals who can do it safely and reliably. As for dogfight training . . . let’s not even go there.

If we can all agree that what I have just described is learned aggression, intentionally taught to dogs by people, then we can move on to how people accidentally teach a dog to be aggressive. When a person roughhouses with a dog, what is that person doing? He or she is stimulating that dog to a higher level of energy. That covers bullet item 1 as I described in the previous paragraph. What about item 2? How a person roughhouses with a dog makes all the difference. If the dog is allowed to use its teeth to mouth or even slightly nip the person doing the roughhousing, that person is doing exactly what a trainer would do to begin to teach a dog to attack a target. Even if the person is not trying to provoke the dog to nip or mouth, a dog will likely nip and mouth the person simply because it has a limited number of tools for making physical contact and teeth are one of those tools.

Many dogs have a hard time regulating their own behavior, especially behavior that is occurring at a fever pitch. This is why professional trainers spend so much time teaching a dog to turn off its aggression behavior on command. Without human control, a dog on the attack may fight to exhaustion or death. This is the tendency that makes organized dog fighting possible and so tragic.

In its frenzied state, a dog may shoot past the bounds of normal behavior and really chomp down on its human opponent. Dogs that have a genetically programmed tendency towards aggression are especially prone to sudden and spontaneous biting. When that first bite happens, the dog will have crossed over a line from which it may never return. There are ways to re-train something called bite inhibition, but once that line is crossed, re-training may be impossible. (For more on training a dog to bite inhibit, see this article.)

This is what it comes down to. Noted animal behaviorist Temple Grandin is on record as saying a dog that never bites a person is simply a dog that does not know it can bite a person. Once that dog crosses the line and bites someone, it now knows it can bite. The records of animal control units around the country back this up. A dog that has bit someone in the past is likely to bite again.

A game of roughhouse may all be in good fun. It may just be playing. The dog may enjoy it. Under normal circumstances, the dog would not hurt a fly. I have no quarrel with any of those statements. The argument that fails the sniff test is this: “the dog knows the difference” between play biting and aggressive biting. A dog bite is a dog bite. If a dog breaks a person’s skin with its teeth, it’s a bite, and play drops out of the equation. A dog that bites once can never be trusted again. It is not worth ruining a dog for life simply for a few moments of roughhouse play.

Closing thoughts: It is just my opinion, but I believe roughhousing fills a human need more than a dog need. There are so many better and safer ways to play with a dog with enthusiasm and high energy. There is a huge difference between a roughhouse game in which a dog makes contact with a human using its teeth and, say, a game of tug-of-war in which a dog uses its teeth to hang on to a rag or toy. As long as the dog uses its teeth to hold an inanimate object, animal behaviorists agree there is nothing wrong with a rowdy game of tug-of-war. A game of chase, or hide-and-seek, flying disc, or kickball/soccer with your dog are also great, high-energy alternatives that require little or no equipment or preparation.

******

Coming up next: Why playing with your dog is vital for the dog.

From the ASPCA: May I Pet the Dog?

There will be many times when your child encounters a dog and no one will be around to provide guidance on whether it is safe to approach that dog. The dogs that cross your child’s path will be perfectly harmless under most circumstances. As bad luck would have it, one day there will be a dog who tries to give your child the signals that say “Leave me alone!” Will your child be able to recognize those signals when the time comes? Here are some basic rules any child can learn to avoid getting bitten by a dog.

This information is directly quoted from an article by the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

“Did you know that 50 percent of all children in the United States will be bitten by a dog before their 12th birthday? Did you know that 800,000 bites a year are severe enough to require medical treatment, while 1 to 2 milion go unreported?

“The vast majority of dog bites are from a dog known to the child—his or her own pet, a neighbor’s or friend’s. You can help prevent this from happening to your child. Please discuss with him or her the appropriate way to behave around dogs. The following activity will help you and your child understand the difference between safe and potentially dangerous interactions with dogs.

“The following is a list of pledges that you can recite with your child:

1. I will not stare into a dog’s eyes.
2. I will not tease dogs behind fences.
3. I will not go near dogs chained up in yards.
4. I will not touch a dog I see loose (off-leash) outside.
5. If I see a loose dog, I will tell an adult immediately.
6. I will not run and scream if a loose dog comes near me.
7. I will stand very still (like a tree), and will be very quiet if a dog comes near me.
8. I will not touch or play with a dog while he or she is eating.
9. I will not touch a dog when he or she is sleeping.
10. I will only pet a dog if I have received permission from the dog’s owner.
11. Then I will ask permission of the dog by letting him sniff my closed hand.”

********

This is a very good list, but I have to comment on item 11. Dogs have a super-keen sense of smell. (You can read more about a dog’s sense of smell in this article.) They can smell a person from a long way off provided the airflow in the area wafts the scent in their direction. Indoors, they can smell you as soon as you enter the room. Putting a fist, or even an open hand in a dog’s face is not only unnecessary, it is a semi-aggressive move. I would advise parents to teach their children not to do item 11. Better to have the child simply stand in place and let the dog do what it wants. If the dog approaches calmly for a better look, that is a good sign. If the dog appears uninterested in the child, or the dog actively avoids the child, the dog is saying “Leave me alone.”

I also believe it is important to teach your child how to pet a dog. A dog may be perfectly willing to be petted, but if your child touches that dog in a manner that startles or hurts the dog, the encounter may turn sour quickly. The basic rules for petting are these:

1. Slowly and gently.
2. Out in front. (Do not approach the dog from the rear to pet.)
3. On the side or on the chest. (Avoid sensitive areas such as the face, ears, feet and rump.)
4. Pet, don’t grab.

Most children learn well with visual aids. The ASPCA has a very good handout that uses pencil sketches to teach a child about when it is safe to pet a dog. Here is that handout, in .pdf format, which you may click to download and print:

May I Pet the Dog?

Coming up next: How you or someone you know may be accidentally teaching a dog to bite.

Bite mark from a Maltese puppy. (Photo courtesy of Julianna at Flickr)

To date, I have been bitten by small dogs four times while working at Kelsey’s Dog House. In every case, the bite was minor. I could put some antibiotic ointment and a small bandage on the wound and then go back to work. This is a pretty good track record considering I work and play with hundreds of different dogs each year. In each case in which I was bitten, I believe I did something to instigate the bite. On the other hand, those who believe a dog should not bite, no matter what, have a defensible argument. So who is right? Or more appropriately, what is right? Are there some circumstances in which it is okay for a dog to bite? The answers are straight ahead.

Dr. Bruce Fogle, D.V.M. says in his book The Dog’s Mind (pp. 112-133,) there are eight reasons why dogs behave aggressively. (Note the following subheadings refer to aggressive behavior, which can be anything from posturing, to growling, to actually biting.)

1. Dominance Aggression: In which a dog does what is necessary to establish or defend its position within the hierarchy of a pack.
2. Possessive Aggression: A form of sibling rivalry in which one littermate or housemate will fight another for access to a parent or owner.
3. Fear Aggression (including pain-induced aggression): In which a dog reacts to a frightening or pain-producing stimulus.
4. Protective Aggression: Guarding behavior in which a dog tries to keep others away from its toys, food bowl, etc. May also be known as territoriality.
5. Inter-male Aggression: Partly, but not completely caused by testosterone surges, inter-male aggression can continue well past puberty.
6. Predatory Aggression: Self-explanatory, though we sometimes forget dogs are born predators.
7. Idiopathic Aggressive: A form of aggression, with some controversy surrounding it, that says some dogs are genetically pre-disposed to aggressive behavior. There is a behavior pattern, commonly called “Jekyll-Hyde Syndrome” in which a normally passive and happy dog suddenly turns into an aggressive monster. Studies have shown brain activity resembling an epileptic fit during these episodes.
8. Learned Aggression: Dogs can be taught to be aggressive. Almost any dog can be trained to be a guard dog. Some dogs are raised for the fighting ring. Enough said.

What you have just read is a list of eight reasons why a dog may be inspired to bite. These are just reasons, but they are not imperatives. Just because a dog has a good reason to bite, does not necessarily mean that dog will bite. To put this in another perspective that strikes closer to home, we can look at human behavior to understand why dogs act aggressively. It turns out the same reasons that can lead to aggression in dogs apply almost one-for-one in humans.

We humans can act aggressively to dominate other people. We can act aggressively within the realm of sibling rivalry, or to protect personal property and territory. We can lash out at others due to fear or pain. (Have you ever snapped at someone when you have a very bad headache?) Those of us who play contact sports or engage in combat simulations are exercising a form of predatory aggression in a benign environment. We read about psychopathic killers in the newspaper who are likely responding to genetically programmed, and physiologically-triggered aggression. Studies have shown that some, but certainly not all individuals who were beaten and abused as children are more likely to replicate that behavior as adults, a form of learned aggression.

My point is this. Before we declare ourselves superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, we need to realize we humans generally follow the same rules of behavior that influence dogs and other animals, especially when it comes to aggressive behavior. What may set some of us apart is our ability to rationalize our way out of acting aggressively. For example, you may have had thoughts of harming someone who really angered you, but that did not mean you acted on those thoughts. You had the capability to think your way out of doing something rash. Even then, you did not come by this thought process naturally. In order to rationalize away from violence, someone at some time had to teach you to detour away from violent behavior. Perhaps one of your parents punished you as a child when you hit your brother or sister. Or, you learned you could go to jail for a serious offense. However it happened, at some point you learned there are bad consequences for acting violently.

Lo and behold, the same process applies to dogs. Dogs must learn to be non-aggressive. Some of the learning takes place within a dog’s litter when it is a puppy. As puppies play with each other, and as they interact with their mother, they learn some degree of “bite inhibition.” Bite inhibition is exactly what it sounds like. A puppy learns that it cannot clamp down on its littermates or on its mother. If a puppy gets overly rambunctious with its playmate or mother and bites down too hard, that playmate or mother will yelp and then retaliate. The puppy gets an auditory response and then immediate punishment for biting too hard. It learns to not sharply bite other dogs during play, feeding, and other day-to-day activities in the litter. Note that I said “sharply bite.” Dogs literally have thick skin that has a low density of pain receptors. Puppies actually bite each other fairly hard. They only let each other know a bite hurts when that bite is hard enough to poke tissue underlying the skin, or hard enough to puncture the skin. So when I say a puppy learns bite inhibition, what the puppy really learns is damage inhibition.

A puppy gets very limited bite training while in its litter. It does not learn to avoid biting inanimate objects because inanimate objects provide no feedback. It does not learn to avoid biting people, because in the first few weeks of life, a puppy has infrequent or no contact with people unless it develops under the watchful eye and hand of a responsible breeder. It also does not learn that biting is unacceptable in absolutely every circumstance. (Review Dr. Fogle’s eight reasons for dog aggression to understand why dogs may not bite inhibit in every circumstance.)

Now the puppy comes to you. It becomes your responsibility to fill in the gaps in a puppy’s education about biting. Again, looking at Dr. Fogle’s eight reasons, it would seem you have your work cut out for you. It turns out it is extremely easy to teach a puppy not to bite. The only difficult part of the process is timing. If you fail to teach a puppy to not bite people prior to the end of its twelfth week of life, you are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing the dog not to use its teeth to resolve its problems for the rest of its life. Here is the key statement, and really the point of this whole article:

Once a dog learns it can use its teeth to bite people, biting people will always, and I truly mean always, be an option for that dog.

A properly trained dog—one that has been taught prior to the end of its twelfth week, to never bite people—will never even consider its own teeth a weapon. According to renowned animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, a dog that does not bite people simply does not know it can bite people.

Let’s assume you have taken in a puppy prior to its twelfth week. Hopefully, the person who cared for this puppy prior to you receiving it has already taught the pup not to bite. Any good and responsible breeder will do this training. Assuming the puppy still needs training, here is how dog trainer Dale Stavroff says to go about it:

1. “Get down on the floor with the puppy and wriggle your hand in front of its mouth to invite a nip. What you are doing here is mimicking the behavior of prey animals, as children unwittingly do before they are nipped.
2. As soon as the puppy’s mouth touches your hand, scream as if you are in agony, jump, away from the puppy, and turn your back to it. I like to go and face the wall with my head bowed. The point of this behavior is to show the puppy that unlike its thick-skinned littermates, you are too sensitive to endure any contact from its mouth.
3. Repeat this procedure several times a day, if the puppy will even mouth you at all after this experience.

Very few puppies will continue to mouth and nip you after you do this once, much less two or three times. If a puppy does persist in mouthing and nipping:

1. Lay the back of your stronger hand against the puppy’s head, and wiggle the other hand in front of its mouth.
2. When the puppy’s mouth touches your wriggling hand, shout “No!” in a commanding voice, and with the back of your other hand, push the puppy away forcefully. What your are doing here is imitating the behavior of a female dog with her puppies when one of them suckles too hard.” (From Let the Dog Decide, Marlowe & Co. 2007.)

As I said, bite inhibition is very easy to teach, as long as it is done early enough. This brings up an important point about taking in a new dog. The dog you decide to take into your home must already be completely trained not to bite, or you must receive the dog at an early enough age to teach it bite inhibition with regard to people. If you decide to adopt a dog that has a history of biting, do not kid yourself into believing you can completely de-program biting behavior or that the dog will be “okay now that he/she is in a better home.” And please keep this last point in mind. Every dog has its breaking point, just as every human has limits. Given enough pain, or enough fear, or a human that is pushing a dog past that its limits, a dog will defend itself with its teeth.

Is it okay, in some circumstances, for a dog to bite? That is an ethical question, and dogs do not naturally behave according to human ethics. They behave according to nature. We can teach a dog to adopt our ethics and suppress their natural behavior. While we humans can use our words, rational thought and other resources to resolve our problems, sometimes dogs run out of peaceful options. When running away or shutting down are no longer options for dogs in distress, all that is left is to try and make the problem go away with teeth.

Up next, a short and practical article on bite-proofing your child. After that, I ‘ll have an article on how you, or someone you know, can accidentally teach a dog to bite.

This spot is mine! Keep out!

Awhile back I wrote a piece called “Small Dog Syndrome.” That article has drawn more attention from people seeking help with their small dog than anything else I have written. It bothers me that so many people are having problems controlling the behavior of their small dogs. It also bothers me to think that many people believe their dog is possessed, for lack of a better word, by a force that is beyond their control. Small Dog Syndrome is not a malignant growth or deformation of your small dog’s brain. It is not a force of nature, nor an unlucky combination of inherited genes. It is not part and parcel of a specific breed. It is not a trait, not a personality quirk, not a special ability, nor is it an inability. Your dog does not hold his own internal dialogue with himself in which he says, “Hey, let’s really piss off the human today.” Small Dog Syndrome is not even a syndrome. It is a shame the phrase has found its way into our vocabulary because it probably causes some of us to throw up our hands and say “My small dog has Small Dog Syndrome. He’s damaged goods and he will never get better.”

Beeee-loney! Small Dog Syndrome is simply a short-hand description of a whole range of behaviors that have very specific origins. These behaviors also have very specific, (and controllable,) reasons for occurring over and over again. There is nothing to fix inside of your dog. Your small dog is responding correctly(!) to his environment. That’s right Buckwheat, either you, someone else, or your living arrangement together is triggering specific responses from your dog that help him cope and survive in his own dogged way. Here is a partial list of coping behaviors we commonly lump under the label Small Dog Syndrome:

• Your small dog claims and defends a specific territory by marking with urine, or by growling, barking or biting when you or someone else approaches.
• Your small dog claims and defends a specific piece of property by growling, barking or biting when you or someone else approaches.
• Your small dog defends himself by growling, barking or biting when you or someone else tries to touch him.
• Your small dog seems unresponsive to any or all direction you try to give him.

Let’s look at one specific behavior, what triggers it, and most importantly, what to do about it: defending territory.

First, here is what I mean by “territory.” Territory can be anything from your entire house or backyard, to a corner of your living room, or a spot under one of your tables that holds 1/16th of your orchid collection. Your dog may stake any of these spots as his own. I am not talking about a quiet spot your dog enjoys retreating to for a snooze. I am talking about gangster-style turf. If you approach, he barks. If you get closer he growls. If you reach for him, he bites. What the . . . ?

In the last paragraph I used the word “your” over and over again. After all, it is your house, your backyard, your living room, your chair, and your table. Unfortunately, your dog behaves as though one or all of these locations belong to him. It is not a moral decision on his part. A dog is territorial by nature; and if you cede territory to him, he will take it. Once your dog has control of his own little piece of pie, he will test to see what else he can claim. Before you know it, the dog is the head of household with all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining. Once in control of part or all of your property he will try and control all or part of you. Again, it is not a moral decision on his part, it is just nature at work.

If your dog was highly rational and could make subtle distinctions, perhaps you could give him exclusive use of the couch while still expecting him to obey you in other ways. But your dog does not rationalize and cannot make fine distinctions between controlling one thing but not controlling everything else. Here is what it comes down to. Either it’s your house, your dog, and your rules, period. Or, it’s your dog’s house, your dog owns you, and it’s your dog’s rules, period.

Let’s say you are more partial to owning the house and dog rather than the other way around. I am just guessing this would be your preference, but I could be wrong. Assuming I am right, it is time to get with the program. Let’s go to an example in which your dog has staked a claim under the coffee table. If you try to dislodge him, he barks and growls. Nice doggy. Keep the coffee table. I’ll just go sit over here and rest my drink on my lap. Bingo! That growling stuff works for him. But you can fix this situation.

First, if you are at all concerned about getting bitten as you try to deal with your dog, call in a professional dog behaviorist. I’m not talking about hiring someone who read a few books, passed an on-line course, and now knows how to teach your dog to sit. I’m talking dog expert. There are two reasons to do this. 1. You don’t need permanent teeth marks on your shin. 2. Even more importantly, if your dog’s threats intimidate you to a point at which you cannot get in there and take control, all you will do is strengthen his threatening behavior.

I am not directing you to do the following, because I do not want to be responsible if you do get bitten. But hypothetically speaking, if I were to trying to defeat a dog’s defensive behavior, here is how I would go about it. (Do I sound like an O.J. book title? I didn’t do it, but if I did . . .)

I would approach the defending dog, showing no fear. This means no eye contact, no verbalization of any kind to the dog, and certainly no touching—initially. One great technique is to talk to someone else in the room about something other than the dog. Talking to someone else off-subject helps reduce your own anxiety and projects to the dog: “What I am doing with you causes me no concern.” I would also be thinking to myself, “This is my spot, not Spot’s spot,” assuming your dog’s name is . . . you get the idea. No matter how vocal and threatening the dog becomes, I would move in slowly and steadily regardless of the dog’s response. The last thing I want to do at this point is let the dog’s behavior control my response. I would calmly and gently lift the table away from the dog and set it aside. (If it takes more than one person to lift the table, my helper would position himself at the end of the table farthest from the dog.) At this point, the dog will likely exit the area, having lost the boundaries of his territory. If he remains in place, I would shuffle closer without making eye contact or saying anything to the dog. When within a couple of inches of the dog, I would stop and stand there, again, thinking “This is my space.” Eventually the dog will settle down because his threats are producing no tangible results. When he does settle down, I would move in further so my leg was touching the side of his body. If he has not moved away at this point, I would use my leg to place gentle but insistent pressure against his side. At this point, he should vacate his spot.

I would expect when the table goes back into place, the dog will try and re-stake his claim. I will have to redo the steps listed above, but I would expect the dog to give up and retreat sooner. Eventually the dog will give up on the table and try another spot. The key to completely defeating the dog’s strategy is to systematically dislodge him from any place he insists on claiming. This means not only moving him away from established territories, but also occasionally moving into any resting area and expecting him to get out your way. You do not have to be a jackass about this process. Your dog will learn to fear you if you are obnoxious. Simply walk up to where the dog is sitting or lying and politely say “Excuse me,” as you move in with a purpose. (Let me emphasize being polite. Do not yell or use a threatening tone at any time. Project calmness and reasonable purpose.) Either place or take something in that area; or clean that spot. In other words, show the dog you have a sensible reason to displace him.

One last caveat before I wrap this up. Some may say this whole approach of displacing a dog is unnecessarily aggressive. No where in here did I mention aggression. Your approach should be the opposite of aggressive. Insistent yes, but gentle, silent insistence without emotion. And for goodness sake, do not, I repeat do not, kid yourself into believing you can lure a dog away from his territory with cookies. Yes, you say, positive rewards are best. If you lure your dog out with cookies, you can be positive not only will your dog remain territorial, but he will also set up his territory as a cookie-getting launch pad.

Let me wrap this up with an observation. My sister-in-law has a souvenir magnet on her refrigerator that says “This house is maintained for the comfort and convenience of the dog.” It is a funny phrase because it rings so true for so many people. She has absolutely no behavioral issues with her dogs which makes her either lucky or good. Who knows. The point is, many of us cede our houses and our lives to our dogs, believing our dogs will understand their arrangement and naturally respond with good manners and appreciation. The truth is, dogs will do what dogs do. Given free reign, they will stake their claim on us and our houses, using the tools they have to defend themselves and their territory. It is not Small Dog Syndrome, but it is natural behavior. We can fix it by acting or we can toss in the towel by believing our dogs are in the grip of something beyond our control. Time to choose.

I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.
Napoleon Bonaparte

“Outta my way. Comin’ through. Step aside,” “Stand back or I’ll bite,” “That’s mine, mine, mine,”

Is your small dog a General Napoleon? Further, do all small dogs compensate for their small size by being overly assertive? The answer is a qualified “yes.” Yes, small dogs will compensate for their small size with aggressive, sometimes bratty behavior. The qualification is: if you let them. There is a label for this type of behavior. It is called Small Dog Syndrome. As with any label, the title is mis-leading.

Royce, our 10-pound Min Pin thinks he weighs 110 pounds.

Small Dog Syndrome is a label that implies a small dog will try to act larger than life to protect itself and its own interests. As with the fabled Napoleon Bonaparte, many of us believe a small dog has to puff up and bluster because everything in a small dog’s world seems large and threatening.

A small dog will act larger than life to ensure its own safety.

Here comes the contradiction. The leader in any dog pack is certainly not a small dog. The leader is usually the largest, strongest male. All of the smaller, weaker dogs follow. In nature, the only time a small dog will take control and fend for itself is when it absolutely has to. So why would a small dog feel it has to take control and fend for itself in the comfort and safety of a household?

A dog’s world is black and white, not only in eyesight, but also in thinking. Dogs can problem solve, but their power to rationalize is slim to none. When it comes to “Who’s in charge at home,” there is no gray area. In the home, either the owner is in control, or control belongs to the dog, period. Remember, a dog equates control with safety. If the dog’s owner is in control, the owner is responsible for the dog’s well-being and the dog can relax. If the owner is not in control, the dog’s well-being is compromised, and the dog believes it has to fend for itself. A small dog that feels it must take control will do so in a big way. A small dog controls and defends its territory by being extremely assertive–barking, growling, biting, ignoring direction from people, marking with urine, claiming furniture and possessions, etc.

The last piece of this puzzle asks the question: Why do small dog owners let their dogs take control? Let’s toss aside the notion that owners of small dogs are all dull and incompetent. The notion is ridiculous, (speaking as the owner of two small dogs!) The puzzle piece begins to find its spot in the picture when you consider how many small dog owners view their pets. Many owners of small dogs view their pets not as small dogs but as babies. Why? Let’s go to the experts:

The following excerpt is from the book In the Company of Animals, by James Serpell, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 76.

Place a puppy or kitten on someone’s lap and nine times out of ten you will provoke a stock emotional reaction: the person will tend to caress and fondle the animal, bring it close to his or her face, look into its eyes, cuddle it, and accompany all these stereotyped actions with a chorus of incoherent, but equally stereotyped, verbal endearments. . . In other words, just the sight of the baby animal seems to be enough to override normal behaviour and replace it with something resembling the sorts of actions and activities that human parents generally direct toward their own infants. Biologists have coined the phrase “cute response” to describe this reaction.

The Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz has explained the cute response in the following terms: when one compares the majority of baby vertebrate animals . . . one finds they all share certain physical features in common. Their heads are far larger in proportion to their bodies than adults, their limbs are shorter and chubbier, their eyes are bigger, and their jaws, mouths and noses are smaller and less protuberant. . . Animals or representations of animals displaying some or all of these characteristics tend to be perceived as “cute” and, according to Lorenz, are able to release an innate desire to protect and nurture.

If we humans have a built-in biological response to the “cuteness” of babies that alters our behavior, it is not hard to see why we treat small dogs differently from their larger cousins. Many of us are pre-disposed to view our small dogs, with their cute and baby-like features, as perpetual puppies. Instead of treating our small dogs as dogs, we treat them as babies, going easier and gentler on misbehavior than we would a large dog with adult features. Then there is the problem of scale.

When a small dog pees in the house, it is usually a small puddle. When a large dog pees in the house it is usually a flood. When a small dog rips a hole in a bedspread, it is usually small, barely noticeable, and easily repaired. When a large dog gets a hold of a bedspread, you will be shopping for a replacement the next day. When a small dog jumps up on you, it is a love tap. When a large dog jumps up, he may knock you over. A small dog’s bad behavior is more apt to be overlooked than a large dog’s misbehavior because it may be perceived as inconsequential, or even part of the overall “cuteness” package.

“Look at little Ralphy pawing my leg. Isn’t that just adorable?”

Little by little, (pun intended,) a small dog learns it has no limits on its behavior. It can do what it wants, therefore, (in the dog’s mind,) no one is in control. If no one is in control, then the small dog must and will take control. This process is more accurately labeled Small Dog Owner Syndrome.

A superior officer in the Air Force once told me, “If you are going to come to me with a problem, you had better also come armed with a good solution.” Here is my solution to Small Dog Owner Syndrome:

1. Be aware of the problem. Realize that there are specific biological responses that are contributing to the situation. Namely, you may be naturally responding to your small dog as you would a baby. Secondly, the dog feels a biological imperative to take control when you do not.
2. From the moment your new small dog settles into your house, begin to set limits and boundaries on the dog’s behavior. Insist on—

a. Perfect housebreaking.
b. Specific places where your dog can and cannot rest, rather than giving him/her carte blanche on the furniture.
c. No barking, except to alert you to emergencies, such as intruders in the house.
d. Basic courtesy, such as not jumping up on people.
e. Eating when, where, and what you specify.
f. No chewing on anything other than chew toys you provide.
g. Following basic commands, such as sit, come, stay, down.
h. Yielding to you when you pass or when you need access to an area the dog is occupying.

3. Be consistent in your treatment of your dog. Your dog’s black and white view of the world means there is always a clear line between who is in charge, and who must follow.
4. You do not have to be a drill sergeant. Everything I have describe above can be delivered positively, calmly, and with love.

In other articles I will have more specific advice on how to accomplish everything on this list. With awareness and practice, you will be able to erase Small Dog (Owner) Syndrome from your vocabulary.

P.S. You can find more on Small Dog Syndrome here at my newest podcast.
Updated February 25, 2009: You can find another article on this subject titled Territoriality: One Key to Small Dog Syndrome by clicking here.