A Small Dog

Unintentional Dog Bite Training

Posted on 21. Mar, 2009 by Jeff K. in Having Fun with A Small Dog, Small Dog Aggression, Small Dog Behavior

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.

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

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Tags: dog aggression, dog bites, Dr. Bruce Fogle, play