02 Apr Recognizing Aggression: Part 1
AGGRESSION: I hate the word.
Why? Because we use it too much and we use it wrongly.
Dogs are reactive, especially the working breeds or what I refer to as “survival breeds”. Why survival breed? Because if they aren’t cautious, reactive, and alert, a cow will stomp them into the ground in two seconds flat, or a wild animal will devour them. I use the word reactive, and it fits better.
What is the difference? Aggressive means I intend to kill you, and believe me, if a dog goes into that mode they usually hurt you in the blink of an eye or they can kill another dog or cat before you can react and save it. You might get lucky and forestall serious damage. Dogs deal with their problems with body language and with teeth. Teeth that tear bone and carcass. So if they are serious believe me, you will know.
So please quit calling reactivity “aggression”. It is not even close to the same. You label a dog that way, it is seen as hopeless in our society–and often we are so very wrong.
Let me talk about a year old pup we rescued in NY. A misread pup at a year old. He is leash reactive, wants to play and his body language gets a bit wild and so he was misread as “aggressive” by his foster. This is easy to do, and you don’t want a dog attacking another dog. Now he has been in daycare and is playing with the same dogs he acted out with on leash. I knew this was likely, but leash reactivity can be scary and we have to test it out sometimes. Why does he act this way? He wanted to play, but on leash he felt vulnerable and trapped, so he acted tough and hoped someone would read him right and drop the leash and let him go meet the dog. Some dogs feel safe on leash, but others feel trapped/restricted.
There are ways to test leash reactivity vs. dog aggression safely, but your heart will be in your throat and you have to do it right. That is why I teach this. There are tricks that are tested and tried. Throwing dogs in together immediately is bad business. It can work, but think about it: would you like to have a bunch of strange people converge in your face or space? All over you, smelling you and saying “come on come on let’s go lets romp” when you just met? That would overwhelm most of us. Think about it. We need to quit setting our dogs up to fail. We are doing this to them, you know?
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