Preventing Dog Aggression
Stop Dog Agression Before it Starts
The full definition of aggression, as described in “Nelson’s Biology of Aggression” textbook includes the fact that threats intended to make you go away are also considered aggression. Even setting the definition aside, while most people look at the first few snarls or snaps as a fluke because they are so infrequent, doing so is similar to responding to reports that your child has gotten into a fight at school while using a bat or knife as a weapon, by saying, “Well it doesn’t happen very often.”
With dogs, all snaps and snarls or signs of fear need to be taken seriously because with practice they can turn to overt aggression leading to a bite. That is, unless you take steps to understand and remedy the situation, the dog is not likely to get better. Rather, these dogs tend to get worse.
For instance take this common scenario, Mr. Blue states, “A friend came to the house and went to pet Fifi. Usually Fifi avoids people or barks but then warms up to them. She would never hurt a fly. But yesterday when my friend reached for her this time she lunged and bit. I don’t know why.”
Or the scenario may sound more like this, “We were walking down the street and we saw a cute Shih Tzu. I asked the owner if my daughter could pet the little dog and if the dog was friendly. The owner said, ‘yes’. But when my daughter reached out, the dog backed up for an instant and then leapt forward and bit her. The owner was shocked and said to me, ‘She’s never done that before.’”
In both of these cases the owners failed to read their dog’s signs of fear or to take in consideration that their past fearful or reactive response might progress. Instead of thinking or saying, “She’s never done that before,” a more appropriate thought would have been, “ I guess in the past I’ve just been lucky that she had never bitten YET!”
Dogs can respond to fear by fleeing, freezing or fighting. For many dogs, the only question is at what point will they decide that fighting works best. With this in mind, it’s important that when you see signs of fear or even if your dog already barks and lunges and nips, you should address the issue immediately instead of relying on luck. And hopefully address it successfully before it turns into a bite.
How to Fix Aggression
Ideas of how to address aggression vary among dog trainers with some saying you should have the dogs face their fears, the way you would deal with a fear of speaking in public or making friends in a room full of strangers. For dogs it would involve something like placing them in a room of people they prefer to avoid and hold them down to show them you’re in charge. This type of technique, where you introduce the dog to the situation or stimulus full force, is called flooding. The idea is that the dog should calm down instead of becoming hysterical.
This approach can definitely work in a small subset of dogs, just like giving a speech in front of an auditorium may cure some people of their speech fears, this method can especially work in those situations where dog aggression or fear are not too difficult. Situations where even though they may bark aggressively or even bite, if you got them out in public a lot with little training other than making sure that they are somewhat controlled, instead of pacing and lunging and barking.
Putting Yourself in the Animal’s Place Reveals the Pitfalls of Flooding
While some dog trainers would go with the method described above, veterinary behaviourists, Ph.D. behaviourists, and those who base their methods on the science of animal behaviour favour a graded approach that relies on changing the pet’s perception of the event and training more appropriate responses. To really understand this approach, you first have to understand the nuances of treating fear. You must first put yourself in the place of a fearful pet. For instance, imagine you are afraid of spiders. Then, imagine how you would feel if spiders were allowed to walk right up to you. Even if the spider is harmless or a baby, you’d want to get away. Now imagine someone held you so that you couldn’t escape and even held your mouth so you couldn’t scream when the spider was so close you feel it’s course hairs. Undoubtedly, this treatment would help some people to improve.
But it’s likely to cause others to get much worse. They may stop struggling, not because they’re no longer fearful, but more likely because they are catatonic; they have given up. Their internal emotional state of fear has not changed but they are now expressing it in a different way, more like a possum playing dead. When you look at it from a more empathetic perspective, it’s pretty clear. Animals, including humans, respond to fear by fleeing, fighting or freezing and remaining very still. When fleeing and fighting don’t work, freezing is the only remaining choice.
As a result, the arachnophobe who’s held while spiders dangle in her face may finally freeze, but she will most likely still fear spiders even if she’s not allowed to show her fear when you’re around. You might think, “Well, no harm done,” but the repercussions down the road are that she becomes more fearful of spiders and that her fear may generalize to anything that reminds her of spiders—locations where she’s seen spiders, objects that she can’t immediately identify. Basically she may develop a post traumatic stress of sorts.
Similarly with dogs, putting them into the scary or reactive situation and just holding them down may cause them to look better on the outside but feel more conflicted on the inside. They may learn to hide their signs of fear because acting out their fear gets bad results. Then down the road, when they are in a scary situation, they may no longer give a warning growl. Instead, when they can no longer handle the fear, they break it in a bite out of the blue. So the outward warning signs of their inward emotional state have been extinguished leading to a more dangerous dog.
What Are Your Other Options
If flooding dogs can have such detrimental effects, what’s your choice? For decades, scientists and psychologists dealing with such fears have been using a combination of two techniques: desensitization paired with what’s called classical counterconditioning (DS/CC) or desensitization paired with operant counterconditioning.
What do those fancy scientific words mean? They’re actually pretty simple. Classical counterconditoning basically means you’re going to change the pet’s underlying emotional state, in this case from fearful to happy. Operant counterconditioning means you’re going to train more appropriate behaviours such as focusing and engaging in behaviours with you rather than barking, lunging, or being reactive around the scary people. Desensitization in essence means you’re going to start with the scary person far away or less threatening somehow and when the dog can deal with that level of scariness, the person moves closer or acts scarier.Changing the Dog’s Emotional State (Classical Counterconditioning)
Now let me explain in a little more depth starting with desensitization and classical counterconditioning (DS/CC). For humans who were afraid of spiders traditionally, what would happen is they would work on some relaxation techniques and think happy thoughts about being in happy places so that they started out in a positive emotional state. Then you’d introduce the spider in a form that was not that scary. For some people that means a picture of a small spider or a cartoon drawing of one because a real spider would be too scary. Once the human could remain in a positive emotional state, the fake or real spider could be moved a little closer or made just a little scarier. The goal at each stage though is that the human does not feel fearful and that they can stay below the threshold of fear.
For dogs, instead of telling them to think happy thoughts, we pair the process with something they like, such as playing fetch or eating treats. For instance, the owners could give the dog a rapid sequence of treats while the scary person was nearby and stop the treats when the person moved away. The continuous stream is important because the treats have to come fast enough to keep the dog in that happy state. If the gap between treats is too long, then the dog may start slipping into his fearful state. Alternatively the unfamiliar person can toss yummy treats continuously while staying far enough away that the dog is only associating them with happy thoughts. In either case once the dog is comfortable with the person at one distance, the person can move closer, or if the dog is comfortable with the person standing stationary, the person can start moving while treats are being delivered. The dog should be on leash or controlled in some other non-restrictive way if he has a history of lunging.
It seems like this process would take forever, but if you always stay under the distance or threshold that scares the dog and you make sure the environment is comfortable and the dog starts out hungry, and the person is careful to follow all the rules of movement around the dog, the dog can actually progress quite quickly. For instance in veterinary hospitals that use this technique, dogs that were previously untreatable or that caused a ruckus each visit can often be handled in the span of just 5 minutes if the rules of modification are closely followed. For other dogs though, just like people with spiders, multiple sessions may needed.
Training Dogs to Perform More Appropriate Behaviours
The other approach that science-based trainers and behaviourists use is to train dogs to perform alternate appropriate behaviours. This helps to take the dog’s mind off the scary person or object. But the trick here is that the dog must enjoy the alternate behaviours since no matter what they will still be associating the scary object with an underlying emotional state. For instance some people recommend that if your dog wants to bark aggressively at a passerby you make your dog sit. The issue of HOW you get him to sit is important. If you make your dog sit by giving a choke chain or pinch collar jerk or use some other coercive method, the dog may sit but may associate the scary person or situation with pain or more negativity. Hence the dog may get worse.
Furthermore, if he’s still looking at the scary person, he’s probably still thinking of how scared he is. If, on the other hand, we train the dog to sit and look at us for rewards then the dog is learning to behave well and to associate the scary object with good things. Typically in all but the easiest cases, I recommend more than just training the dog to sit. I like to engage the dog in more exciting/fun behaviours to get his mind focused on fun interactions with me. That is, I’m distracting the dog but in a way that he forms a positive association with the situation.
The Better Your Technique, the Faster the Dog Will Progress
Realistically regardless of whether you choose to just put the dog in a positive emotional state or to train fun behaviours that are incompatible with barking, lunging or acting aggressive/fearful, there is technique involved that can speed the process. And the exercises often involve more than just training the dog in the fear-inducing situations. For instance, I generally start dogs off on my version of the learn to earn program where they learn to automatically say please by sitting for everything they want while owners simultaneously learn to communicate clearly with body language and movement. The ultimate goal here is that the dog develops a habit of looking to the owner for guidance so he’s more likely to look to the owner for help in the scary or aggressive situation. The owner is learning how to direct the dog better so that the dog understands exactly what the owner wants.
In any case, if you’re trying to work with your own dog and not clearly getting good results, it probably means you need help from someone who can coach you. If your dog has actually bitten someone or you have little control you should seek the help of an animal behaviourist. Ideally, find someone who knows both the science and who can coach you through the technical training skills.