Aggression in dogs
Aggression in dogs is rarely unpredictable. To prevent it, it is essential to understand how it works.
A. What is aggression in dogs?
Always keep in mind that aggression is part of a dog's normal mode of communication. Any dog can bite at some point. A dog that has never bitten might start, and a dog that has bitten before might never bite again — or might bite again.
The reason some dogs are highly aggressive while others almost never are is explained, among other things, by what's called the tolerance threshold — what the dog can endure, both in absolute terms and in terms of having his hierarchical rank challenged. For example, a dog with a mild temperament may turn to aggression only after being pushed around fifty times, while a dog with a strong temperament will resort to aggression at the very first push. Aggression is not at odds with sociability.
Very sociable dogs can be very aggressive. Sociability is the ability to communicate, and since aggression is an integral part of canine communication, an aggressive dog is not an unsociable dog. Aggression is not an end in itself — it is a means: a way to maintain or acquire social status. As such, aggression serves a social function, that of maintaining cohesion within the pack. It is also used as a defense against fear, or when a dog is injured or feels weakened. It is used to catch prey — this is the predatory instinct, present in all dogs to varying degrees. Aggression also serves to defend territory. In short, aggression is used to resolve hierarchical conflict, to defend oneself, to defend one's territory, and to catch or kill prey.
B. Who is attacked by a dog, and why?
A large share of attacks are directed at family members and close companions — these are attacks tied to the hierarchical status the dog has been granted, or to the status he wants to reach. A dog will use aggression to control whatever gives him power, and power remains his main pursuit, especially since he no longer has to worry about meals — which, in the wild, took a great deal of energy, energy he had to conserve for hunting. A dog will therefore bite to defend his status or to claim a new one.
After their first heat, females suddenly enter the adult hierarchy, and will abruptly defend the status they believe they've acquired, or attack to claim a new one — there is a clear peak in aggression in females after the first heat. In males, the push for status is much more gradual, occurring at several points that correspond to surges in testosterone, and at social maturity — between one and two years of age — the dog will defend his acquired status more fiercely. A dog's status is defined by the places he occupies in the territory, by where and in what order he eats, by whether or not he initiates physical contact, and by sexuality.
In your home, visitors or passersby entering the property may become targets of aggression because the dog is defending his territory. The people a dog meets on walks — joggers and cyclists especially, because of their rapid movements — tend to trigger the predatory instinct: the dog may chase, and even bite, what he perceives as prey.
Children are often bitten during two particularly sensitive periods: when they first start moving around on their own, and again at puberty. A study by the Canadian Hospital Injury Reporting and Prevention Program clearly demonstrates this. Across all ages, bites to children under one year old account for 6.5% of cases; that figure rises to 22.1% for the 2–4 age group, stays roughly similar at 23.6% for 10–14 year-olds, and drops to 5.3% for 15–19 year-olds.
As children become mobile, they explore the world they've been observing for months, and the dog is part of that world. Children grab objects, and will want to grab the dog too, even climbing on him in their excitement at discovery. The dog may then act aggressively, pushing away contact he finds unpleasant or trying to control the child. For hierarchical reasons, a dog with a strong temperament won't always tolerate contact initiated by a puppy, or a puppy placing part of his body above the dog's own (which is read as dominance), and will use aggression to set limits. The dog's attitude is the same whether it's a puppy or a child doing this.
Fights between dogs are common: two dogs fight when neither wants to submit, and they will keep fighting until one of them does. Some fights can escalate quite far if neither dog submits; however, as soon as one submits, the fight should end immediately. A dominant dog will assault a subordinate to call him to order. A dominated dog will attack a dominant one to try to take his place. Puberty is a critical age for dogs in terms of aggression — this is the age at which the puppy, now becoming an adult, must position himself among his peers, and aggression is the main means by which he does so.
C. Aggression in dogs as a pathology
This chapter is purely informational and won't be developed further, since truly pathologically aggressive dogs often react unpredictably and are difficult to control. Rest assured, though — aside from fearful dogs, I have encountered very few dogs in this category. Aggression takes on excessive and unpredictable proportions when a puppy has been poorly socialized and poorly imprinted.
When dogs are in a group, there's a pack effect that can override even a submissive individual's normal restraint from aggression. When a dog has been poorly imprinted — meaning his environment at the breeder's deprived him of stimulation — he will develop fearful behavior in a wide range of situations. This is called sensory deprivation syndrome. A fearful dog has a strong tendency to bite defensively; he will feel threatened in many situations. Although this reaction is natural, the bite is no longer "ritualized," because the dog no longer controls the pressure of his jaw — in other words, the bite is no longer inhibited. These bites often cause very serious injuries.
This pack effect is worth returning to: what's pathological is not group aggression itself, but the fact that this type of aggression breaks a golden rule among dogs — that submission stops aggression. When a dog hasn't learned canine social codes, because he was deprived of contact with his own kind from an early age, his tendency toward aggression increases dramatically. That said, studies have shown that a dog raised without contact with its own species, but within a sociable group of another species, can still learn to socialize with its own kind later on. I have met only one truly unsociable dog in my career: a male who attacked females for no reason and kept biting them even after they submitted. This dog also tried to attack humans for no reason.
Some dogs are aggressive because of an underlying biological dysfunction that makes their bites completely unpredictable; if there is no treatment, euthanasia unfortunately becomes unavoidable.
How to prevent aggression
A. Dominate your dog
To control and channel your dog, it's essential to dominate him. Letting him dominate you instead would place on him the heavy responsibility of ensuring the group's survival — he would then be in charge of managing everything vital in your household, and aggression is one of the tools he'll use to do that. Dominating your dog relieves him of managing the group, which considerably reduces the risk of aggression — bringing it close to zero for the family, unless the dominated dog attempts to assert himself. Generally, a dominated dog's attempts to regain power, if handled correctly, aren't often a problem. What's more problematic is trying to assert yourself against a dog that has become dominant in adulthood: this becomes very difficult if the dog has a strong temperament, and almost impossible if he threatens you and is physically stronger than you.
A client of mine is currently looking to rehome her dog, a two-year-old Golden Retriever. She became aware of the need to set hierarchical rules too late, after the dog had already realized his physical superiority. This dog has already bitten her twice when she tried to stop him from doing something. With a dog like this, the moment he uses aggression to try to dominate you, you would need, right at that moment, to physically dominate him — for example, by pinning him to the ground — otherwise he will always have the upper hand, and you will never properly control your dog.
If the whole family dominates the dog, the risk of bites becomes extremely limited for household members. That said, this in no way removes his guarding or predatory instincts, his aggressive reactions out of fear, or his drive to assert himself outside the family circle — although for some dogs, this urge to dominate may lessen if he doesn't see himself as dominant over you. But to keep control of your dog around outside threats, excellent obedience is essential, and that obedience cannot be achieved without first dominating your dog. If your dog dominates you, it's simply incoherent to expect him to obey you — and if he has a strong temperament, brute force will be your only way to make him obey, which will never get you the same level of obedience as dominating him properly would.
So how do you dominate your dog?
Dominating your dog doesn't mean being physically stronger than him — in packs of wild dogs, it's not unusual for a very small dog to dominate much larger ones. It has more to do with strength of character, intelligence, and your ability to be more stubborn than he is. To dominate a dog, you have to control what is vital to him: you need to show him that you manage food, territory, physical contact, reproduction, movement, and, to some extent, play. Dominating your dog doesn't necessarily require physical force — though in some situations, force does serve to signal and confirm your dominant status. If you back down from a physical confrontation once it has started, you will encourage your dog to use aggression again in future conflicts.
B. Make your dog obey
Getting your dog to obey is necessary to prevent aggression toward people outside the family. You will never eliminate a dog's predatory instinct, but you can prevent him from taking off after prey, or call him back if he's already running. To stop him from defending the territory represented by your house, you can train him to stay in a specific spot — on his bed, for instance — which relieves him of having to decide who may enter or leave your home. If a dog has a very strong temperament, he should be trained to stay put when strangers come and go through different parts of the house. Obedience also helps rein your dog in during tense interactions with other dogs, and helps you manage him when he's afraid. When physically intervening with other people nearby, it's important to keep your dog at a distance, since he may try to defend or attack someone. It's equally important to keep a dog away from the center of a group — whether of people or dogs — since that central position gives him the power to manage the interactions between everyone around him. Achieving this level of obedience in every one of these situations isn't easy: your dog must be submissive to you, which comes through house rules, and you will likely also need the help of a competent professional.
C. Control your dog's interactions with those around him
As a general rule, you should never initiate physical contact with a dog without first calling him over, and you should never approach a dog that is lying down. Approaching a lying-down dog necessarily means approaching from above him, which can be read as a posture of dominance — especially if you then pet the upper parts of his body. When petting a dog, it's best to do so under the chin or along the sides, rather than placing your hand on the head, neck, or back, which can be read as a sign of dominance. What significantly reduces the risk of bites — though the risk remains real — when petting the upper parts of a dog, is that the dog often associates that contact with petting, which he finds pleasant. The danger is greater with dogs of strong temperament. Never allow anyone to make rough contact with your dog. Again, it's best for people to call a dog over when they want to pet him: a dog is not a stuffed toy, and shouldn't be forced into unwanted contact. If, once called, the dog wants to make contact, he will come forward; if not, this approach prevents him from needing to use aggression to refuse.
Although the large majority of dogs readily accept spontaneous human interaction, let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of bites recorded every year in France, and that it's better to be overly careful than not careful enough. Your dog should never be left unsupervised in contact with someone he doesn't know, and even with people in your close circle — however gentle you believe your dog to be — it's worth recalling a few basic rules: don't take a bone or toy out of his mouth; don't disturb him while he's resting; always make physical contact with him only after calling him over; don't approach, step over, or grab an injured or weakened dog. Don't let a dog take part in games that mimic chases or brawls.
An important rule to follow is that a fearful dog should never be cornered: if he has no way to escape, he will become aggressive to get out of the situation — and as we've seen, when a fearful dog bites, he no longer controls the pressure of his jaw. You should never leave a dog alone with children: according to the Canadian study mentioned earlier, in 71.2% of dog bites directed at children, the dog involved is known to the child and lives in his immediate environment. When meeting a dog you don't know, the best way to avoid any risk of being bitten is to adopt as neutral an attitude as possible; until you can tell whether he's friendly, ignoring him is the safest course of action. All of these rules make sense once you recognize the dog for what he is: a domestic wolf. So never forget that the dog is, at heart, a domestic wolf.
D. The importance of breeding conditions
The breeder bears almost the entire responsibility for a dog's sociability and balance; the future owner's role is only to continue the work already done by the breeder. Certain shortcomings in how a litter was raised may be impossible to fully make up for later. Two points are especially important for a breeder to respect. The first is that puppies should never be separated from their mother until they leave for their new home. If, for whatever reason, the mother can't care for the puppies herself, they must at least be in contact with adult dogs — because it is largely the mother who teaches them the inhibited bite. Around 5 to 6 weeks of age, puppies' teeth come in, and during play — and also during nursing — a puppy will tend to hurt its littermates. The pain felt by the mother, and the cries of puppies bitten too hard by a sibling, trigger a reaction from the mother: she will growl at the offending puppy, and bite him if he doesn't submit. When a bite is painful, the bitten puppy will also bite back, but harder. These interactions teach puppies to control the pressure of their jaw, and also that submission stops aggression. Without this learning, what would otherwise be a harmless nip from an adult dog could become a serious bite. Unfortunately, many breeders separate puppies from their mothers early — whether out of ignorance, or to avoid damaging the udders of mothers being shown in beauty contests.
The second very important point is what's called the imprinting period. This period runs from 3 weeks to 3 months of age. It will serve as a frame of reference for the dog's entire life. During this period, puppies must be strongly stimulated — across each of their senses individually — and frequently surprised. The more they are during this period, the less fearful they will be as adults. It's generally accepted that a puppy raised in the countryside until 5 months of age, in an environment poor in stimulation, will struggle to adapt to city life and to change. This imprinting period is essential because it conditions the dog's overall balance and his baseline level of fearfulness. As we've seen, a fearful dog is often driven to bite defensively, and will no longer ease the pressure of his jaw when he does. The more fearful a dog is, the more likely he is to bite, and the more severe that bite is likely to be. Choosing the right breeder is therefore essential.
Want the complete method? Everything in this article is part of my online course — obedience and behavior problems, step by step, without treats.