MY DOG DOESN’T LIKE OTHER DOGS: 5 STEPS TO STOP THE BARKING AND LUNGING

First published on positively.com and reprinted here with permission

We’ve all seen it.

Person and dog are walking along the street.

Dog spots another person or dog and goes ballistic. Barking, lunging, ducking and diving, in a flurry of teeth and claws, looking for all the world as if she wants to eat everyone in her path.

Then we see the poor owner trying to deal with this explosion. Usually he tries to restrain the dog physically, shout at her, maybe yank her around on her leash, before beating a disorderly retreat to lick his social wounds and repair his dignity.

The social pressure to appear to be in control of your group - whether they be people or animals - is very strong.

And if we let it, it will make us act in a way we don’t like, indeed a way which is not like us at all!

This can be doubly hard for men.

Why? Because they are expected to be totally in control. And to ensure by whatever means that that control is not challenged or defied. Inability to stop their dog kicking up trouble is perceived - erroneously - as a sign of weakness. So rationality goes out the window, and they act out of character.

The man who was dandling his baby on his knee an hour before is now yelling and yanking his dog about in a way he would hate to see on video. The question is: Why are people so quick to punish their dog?

But my dog is being defiant!

Let’s backtrack a little and find out first of all why your dog is doing this.

The answer, in the vast majority of cases, is fear.

Not aggression, viciousness, nastiness, defiance, stubbornness - just plain, tail-wetting fear.

It may be that the dog was not sufficiently socialised in the critical early weeks; it may be that she had a bad experience which has coloured her perception of strange people or dogs; or it may be that it’s just the way she is.

She’s a delight in the house, brilliant with the kids, but when she’s out she turns into a screaming monster. She sees something that frightens her. She’s on the leash so is unable to flee, so she does her best to look ferocious to repel the invader. She’s shouting “Get away from me! Look - I have teeth! Don’t make me use them!”

None of this is a challenge to your authority! So trying to be the boss is not going to help one bit.

The opposite is true. If your dog sees something that frightens her and then you weigh in and frighten her more, this is going to make matters a lot worse!

Shouting at your young daughter when she shows a fear of spiders is not going to help her overcome her genuine fear of them.

So it is with your dog.

So how can I have a calm walk without all hell breaking loose?

The harsh treatment of dogs advocated by some popular TV programs does not sit well with the way you choose to relate to your family. But there’s no need to treat your dog any differently!

Once you understand that your dog is afraid, this changes your response entirely. She is no longer to be castigated, rather to be helped to cope with a situation which is terrifying her.

This is where your strength and courage come in.

Without fear of what other people may think of you, you’ll be freed to make the right choices to change the dynamic - not just right now, but in the future too.

1. The first thing is to give your dog distance. If the other dog is too close at 30 feet, then get 60 feet away. Think of your little girl and the spider.

2. Let your dog know that she never has to meet a strange person or dog ever again - you will always move her away just as she sees them. Yes - this will turn your previously ordered and linear walk into a bit of a chaotic zigzag, but it will be a calm and peaceful zigzag! This will build her confidence to the extent that this step alone may eventually enable her to pass other dogs without comment.

3. Relax your hands. It’s highly likely (and totally understandable) that whenever you see anything approaching, you tighten the leash in a vice-like grip, tense up, breathe faster, and generally give the appearance of being just as afraid as your dog is! So do the opposite: breathe slowly, lower and relax your hands, say to your dog in a calm voice, “Let’s go!”, and head off in the other direction.

4. Ditch any nasty collars and gadgets promoted for keeping your dog under control. These can only serve to make her more frightened. Imagine putting a straitjacket on your frightened little girl and forcing her to confront the spider! It will magnify the fear immensely. Use a soft collar or harness and a loose lead. No chains. No spikes. No batteries.

5. Reward your dog when she does it right! As soon as you turn away from the impending threat - whether it be 10 feet or 100 feet away - congratulate her warmly on her brilliant self-control! Her lack of stress and distress will be a huge reward in themselves - feeling panicky and afraid is no fun. Always carrying some tasty treats in your pocket will make it crystal clear to her that she has done something that has really pleased you. Dish them out freely when she’s achieved a calm response. Scatter them on the ground for her to hoover up.

Softly, softly, catchee monkey

You are going to make huge strides forward, but you are also going to have setbacks.

See it as a slow progression. Fear is a very strong emotion and doesn’t disappear overnight. You’ll be able to look back in a while and say to yourself, “We couldn’t have walked past that dog a few months ago!”

As you switch from fearing other people’s opinions to focusing on your dog’s needs, you will know that you can make the right choices for your dog’s well being.

 You already do that with your family. Just forget about macho men on the TV beating up their dogs and treat your dog as you treat your children - with empathy and kindness.

It’s not about control, or showing who’s boss. It’s about ensuring the safety and happiness of everyone in your care.

Now you can have the calm walks that you crave!

For a four-part email course that will walk you through this, step by step, head over to www.brilliantfamilydog.com/growly-dogs

 

Leave your dog's past behind

Dogs, as I frequently remind you, live in the present.

It’s now they care about. And they are remarkably able to renew themselves every day.

While we want them to enjoy stability and routine - and that suits us as well! - they are so much more adaptable than many people seem to think.

There is no need to have set hours for rising, exercising, sleeping, eating. As long as these things happen during the day, your dog doesn’t care when they happen.

I’m often told, “My dog has to have his walk at x time or he becomes anxious / difficult / wild …”

But this is just a reflection of what you’ve taught him to expect - and what he’s taught you to comply with! ;-)

As long as your dog gets what he needs, it really doesn’t matter much when he gets it.

An interesting experiment

I’ve run a number of week-long workshops for thousands of owners of reactive dogs. And one thing I found happened with predictable regularity was that when I’d tell them how to make a massive change in their dog’s behaviour, they’d say, “Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”

If this was their response, it showed that their minds were not open. Not as open as their dogs’ minds!

For example, I’d tell them to keep their reactive dog home for three whole days. No walks. (There was a specific scientific reason for this, it wasn’t just a whim on my part.)

And they’d say, “No! My dog will be climbing up the wall! He’ll go mad with too much energy! He’ll never settle without his daily walk.”

Many of these folk were persuaded to give it a try anyway - persuaded by me or by their fellow workshoppers who already knew how well this strategy worked.

And they’d report back a few days later that they were blown away with how calm their previously anxious and agitated dog had become! They couldn’t believe how their dog had accepted this new regime.

They now had a dog calm enough to actually work with! They could now start to use the techniques I went on to teach them, and have a fighting chance of them being effective!

No dog can learn when in a constant hyped-up state - which is what the over-stimulation of worrying walks was giving them.

You see, these kind owners thought they were doing their best for their dog by continuing to do things which were actually making the dog worse!

They were set on their path and it was very hard to budge them off it - despite the fact that after years they were making little or no progress with their dog.

🐾 It was their dog who was able to show them what worked.

🐾 It was their dog who showed herself to be the more adaptable of the two!

🐾 It was their dog who had clearly read and understood these wise words from Yung Pueblo:

Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting, it just means we stop carrying the energy of the past into the present.

This is so perceptive, and so true!

We - humans, that is, not dogs - have a way of taking an experience and turning it into an unarguable fact. We set it in concrete. And we use it as a reference for ever more.

“This happened once, therefore it’s the way it will always be.”

No! That happened once. Decide what information and learning you want to take from the experience, and move on!

Your dog may have reacted in a certain way once. It doesn’t mean that’s the only way she can ever react!

She may need our input to show her a better way, but that means that our minds first have to be open to seeing that better way.

Many of the students in From Growly Dog to Confident Dog were despairing of moving forwards - BUT they had the open-mindedness to keep trying to find a way to help their unhappy dog (that’s what a reactive dog without help is - unhappy).

Here are some thoughts from a few of them:

This course has been a revelation. I don’t know where we’d be now if it weren’t for Beverley’s training, I just dread to think. - CR and Lois

The good news is that I can see that Rumpole and I have made loads of progress since starting this programme - we are both more confident. - JS and Rumpole

This past week she has walked past or near several dogs without a bark even though a couple barked at her. She has also said hello to some. I never thought it would be possible - but after 18 months of determination - it's paying off. I'm so glad I didn't give up - although several times have felt like it. The learning and structure of the course and this group has reassured me I'm doing the right thing and kept going - thank you. Keep going guys it really is worth it! - AT and Ginny

I have been in the From Growly Dog to Confident Dog program for just three months and I cannot believe the progress my dogs have made in such a short period of time. Your mission of trying to reach out to every person who wants to help their dog’s life improve is evident in everything you do. - SB, Charlie and Maggie

Want to leave your dog’s history behind and start a new life together? Start with this free Masterclass, and talk to me in the chat. I WILL understand you, and I will respond and help you as best I can.

Why Did My Dog’s Reactivity Get Worse, When I’m Trying My Best?

First published on positively.com and reprinted here with permission

Does your reactive dog seem to be getting worse?

More fearful, anxious, or aggressive - not less?

There are a few key strategies you can put in place very easily that will make a dramatic difference to how your dog perceives the world.

Here’s an excerpt from my three books on Growly Dogs - Essential SkillsEssential Skills for your Growly but Brilliant Family Dog

This is Chapter 5 from the first book Why is my dog so growly? It’ll get you started on the road to change.

Chapter 5: Why did it get worse, when I’m trying my best?

It will get worse - unless dealt with

There are some things that dogs do that will go away on their own. Some puppy behaviours, like chewing, submission-weeing, digging, will simply evaporate if carefully managed. But there are other things - usually the things we really don’t want! - that will build and build, getting worse and worse, until we decide to act.

When we do something for the first time, a neural pathway in the brain is built. To begin with this pathway is fairly narrow and hard to find. Think, learning to drive a car - it’s all foreign to us and hard to remember the sequences. But the more we repeat that thing, the wider and brighter the neural pathway becomes until we can just slide down it without a thought. It becomes our go-to response. We can drive on auto-pilot!

So every time your dog does something, he’s building those neural pathways bigger and stronger. He doesn’t have to think hard, as the learner-driver would to locate which pedal to press. It becomes his automatic, instant, response. In the case of our reactive dog: “See dog: bark!”

While this all started as a fear response, it’s now become a habit as well. So while we change the fear response, we will also be teaching new and better habits.

It works for the dog 

If there’s something that’s frightening you, your first instinct is to get away from it. If you can’t get away from it, you’ll try to get it away from you. Hence some manic responses to a wasp in the house!

When your dog puts on a song and dance routine of barking, whining, lunging, and prancing, at the sight of another dog, he’s trying to get it to go away.

And this often works! Either

• the other dog is frightened off and moves away

• the other dog’s owner thinks “this is a nasty dog” and turns away, 

  OR

• the barking dog’s owner is shamed into beating a hasty retreat

If it works, he’ll keep doing it. Because he has no other course of action to rely on. 

Fight or Flight

This well-known expression really comes into its own with the reactive dog. It’s the reason many people think their dog is “fine” off-lead, but turns into a monster on-lead. As we saw in Chapter 1, this dog is usually not as “fine” as people think. It’s only because the off-lead dog has the freedom to move away (flight) that things don’t go badly wrong.

Once your dog is tethered to you, however, he knows he can’t flee, so this leaves only fight. This can all be made worse by the fact that he’s unable to express his body language and calming signals. It’s difficult to look nonchalant and relaxed if your head is being held up in the air.

Trapped in a tunnel!

This feeling of being restrained or trapped can also be made worse by being in a “tunnel”. This is the stuff of nightmares for many people: ahead is an all-consuming fire, behind is a crush of people and cars - panic!

For your dog this tunnel could be made up of walls and hedges and parked cars, as on a street pavement, or can be a real tunnel of a narrow footpath with walls and trees either side. Even being 10 yards from a field barrier - trees, or a hedge - can prompt the fight reflex, as the flight option is limited.

And what does the owner bring to this party?

Sadly, we often make this all far, far worse.

I know we don’t want to, and we think we’re doing everything we can to stop it. But we do tend to add fuel to the fire.

If you’re like 99% of reactive dog owners, you’ll be in a continuous state of shock and apprehension when out with your dog - just waiting for something to kick off. So you wind the lead round your hand a few times, just to be sure, to be sure. You keep your dog on a tight lead, close to you - as if creeping through enemy territory and waiting for mines to start exploding any moment.

And the second you spot another dog - BANG! Off goes the first mine. You gasp and breathe in sharply, you go trembly and flustery, you tighten that lead even further, gripping it to your chest. “Oh no!” says your dog, “What’s she so afraid of? What have I got to bark at?”

Your understandable fear and anxiety over your dog is now triggering your dog’s outburst. 

A loose cannon

It may be that, up to now, you’ve really had little understanding of why your dog behaves as she does. You know all too well how she behaves! It seems to you that she is unpredictable. She’s lovely at home, so why does she put on this other persona when out?

You’ve come to distrust your friend. 

And this feeling of unease, distrust, panic, seeps into even the calmest of walks. Your dog is now on her toes! If you’re afraid, then there must be something bad out there. Your dog will work hard to locate it and try and keep it away.

How stressful a pleasant walk with your dog has become!

This is no fun for either of you, and this is what we are going to change. But wait, there’s more you need to know first.

A social pariah

Maybe you’ve found that the only way out of this nightmare is to walk your dog at 5 in the morning, or at dead of night - at The Hour of the Difficult Dog. The only people you see are other owners of difficult dogs, who will scurry away like rats in the sunlight as soon as they spot you.

You have now become a social pariah. When you first got your dog, you had happy visions of companionable walks with friends and their dogs. What has happened? Walks have now become a chore. There’s no fun here for either you or your dog.

You know that what you’ve been doing up to now is not working. So here’s a complete turnaround for you - and you’ll be quite amazed at the difference it will make!

ACTION STEP 4

As soon as you spot another dog,

1. Relax

2. Soften your hands on the lead, keeping it loose


3. Breathe out


4. Say cheerily to your dog, “Let’s go!” while you turn and head the other direction

I can hear your protests already! Just try it. We’ll address problems and fallout later.

To read more, go to www.brilliantfamilydog.com/growly-boxset where you’ll find all three books, available on Amazon in ebook and paperback - and a box-set of all of them at once.

And to get started straight away with lessons to help your Growly Dog, watch our free Masterclass for Growly Dogs

"

Can you help my Reactive dog?

This is a question I get all the time!

You get a dog for your life and for your family because of all the pleasure it’s going to bring you.

You’ll be able to care for another creature, teach her and nurture her. You’ll be able to go for long tramps across hill and dale, enjoy a coffee at your local cafe, with friends. You’ll be proud to show off your dog to visitors to your home, and go for group walks with others and their pets in the park.

NOT.

It just didn’t work out that way for you.

Your dog is difficult. She barks at all comers. She shows her teeth to other dogs. You daren’t let her off the lead for fear of what may happen. And as for sitting quietly in a coffee shop or enjoying family visiting your home … that seems a pipe-dream.

And naturally you are grieving for the loss of your dog. The dog you thought you were getting.

I get that. I really do.

But all is not lost!

You really can enjoy many of those things. But you have to change a few things first.

 You think I mean you have to change your dog, don’t you!

Train him to within an inch of his life. Stop him pulling on the lead. Force him to change his attitude to other dogs, bikes, joggers, visitors …

But no, I don’t mean that.

What you have to do is change what you’re thinking! Yes, really! It’s not about teaching your dog a different way to be. It’s about looking at a different way YOU can be. A better way to reach your dog’s mind and make the changes you so devoutly desire.

Many people come to me in a state of near-despair. They think it’s all their dog’s fault. Or they think it’s all their fault.

Can you imagine the relief when they find that it’s neither their dog’s fault NOR their fault?

And the flood of relief they get when they find how easy it can be to change things - once they make the changes to their own thoughts first!

Results

I absolutely love it when I get emails like this one:

“Zoe is so much better in every way – much calmer, gaining confidence, more trusting of life. Thank you Beverley, for being there, and for all you do.”

Or how about this one?

“These training sessions with you really have been invaluable and Romy’s really benefitted so thank you very, very much from the three of us.”

 Or even this:

“The best thing that has come out of this program is that our relationship has just grown and grown – we both trust each other and look out for each other.”

I am touched that I have been able to help these good people and their equally good dogs!

And their results came mainly from how those owners changed their own thoughts and feelings about the whole “reactive dog” thing.

What to do next?

So, in an effort to reach more of you, and to help transform the lives of even more dogs and their people, I’m running a free Masterclass for your Growly Dogs (that’s shy, anxious, reactive, or aggressive, dogs) - entirely free.

I’d love you to come along and start on your own new journey with your much-loved dog.

Click here to find out just what you’ll get and how to sign up!

“I was feeling hopeless, overwhelmed, stressed and isolated. I felt like a failure because I did not know how to help my reactive dog ..... and then, one fine day, I found Beverley Courtney.”

This could be your story too!

And to get started straight away with lessons to help your Growly Dog cope with our world, watch our

Free Masterclass for Growly Dogs

My dog’s NOT afraid of fireworks! But why?

Fears have been high up in doggy discussions recently. It’s the Fireworks season in the UK and this is what’s brought them bubbling to the surface again.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November - gunpowder, treason, and plot!

And one thing common to a lot of these discussion threads was the surprise registered by owners of reactive dogs who were not upset at all by the noise. Some of these new owners had got prepared for the onslaught and were expecting the worst - then were utterly astonished that their dog couldn’t care less about it all.

So perhaps a little look at the subject of fear would be helpful here. 

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Is all fear the same?

Humans are born with only two fears: fear of falling and fear of loud noises. And these fears are stimulated in the Apgar tests for newborns, to elicit the startle reflex and check that all is well neurologically with the baby. All other fears are learned.

So fear of ghosts, planes, spiders, heights, and so on, are acquired on our journey through life. Many of these fears are developed early on, and can be heavily influenced by our family's response. A mother who is afraid of spiders can quickly transfer this fear to her children, while the mother who is happy to pick up an insect and take it to a place of safety is likely to have children who are curious about the other species in their environment and not fearful of them. It’s also true that a natural predisposition to be cautious around predators means that people are more likely to be afraid of creatures than of … bicycles, or trees.

Now the jury is out on whether dogs are born with any fears. Certainly there will be a predisposition to fear certain things, and the social influence of the mother and the environment in which the pups are reared are definitely going to have a big effect. Hence the supreme importance of early and proper socialisation for puppies up to the age of 12-15 weeks (jury is out on the timescale too).  

But we can certainly influence this fear by showing extreme fear ourselves. 

Will I make my dog worse if I cuddle her?

Fear is an emotion. And you cannot reinforce an emotion. It’s either there or it isn’t. You can only reinforce a chosen behaviour. While it is not possible to reinforce the emotion of fear - that is, to reward it and encourage it and make it stronger and more likely to occur - by giving comfort to a frightened person or dog, it’s certainly possible to plant the idea that fear is the correct response to something. Hence the general firework advice to mask the noises and flashes as much as possible (loud tv, curtains drawn, prepare a den) and carry on as normal yourself.  

You can't make your dog more afraid by comforting her.

And this advice also extends to not making your dog afraid of other dogs by being afraid yourself! So many people anticipate a bad outcome at the sight of another dog - maybe because their dog is reactive and has barked and lunged in the past - that they will tense up, breathe quickly, panic, tighten their grip on the lead, winding it six times round their hand to shorten it. This is telling your dog that you are afraid of the incoming dog, and that strange dogs are inherently dangerous. As you’ll see in the Growly posts on this site, your first response at sight of an incoming dog should always be

• Relax hands

• Relax shoulders

• Breathe out

• Relax lead

This will be telling your dog that you are ok with the incomer. (Whether you are or not is beside the point!)

What’s conditioning? And what’s counter-conditioning?

So fears grow in people and in dogs through experience, through social learning, and from a pre-disposition - self-preservation is all-important, so being afraid of things about to pounce on you is sensible. There’s also genetics to factor in. Some dog breeds are more alert to strange things in their environment than others, and are going to be faster to develop fears - unless that careful socialisation, familiarisation, and habituation, is done.

So your puppy is being conditioned to certain fears through his life experience. A snake appears and mum runs away from it: noted - snakes are dangerous.

Counter-conditioning is when we weigh in to lessen a fear, or lessen the impact the fear will have, by changing the association in the dog’s mind to something good. If every time that pup sees a snake you stuff pork pie in his mouth - his emotional response is going to change, over time! No, we don’t want him getting curious about the snake and approaching it - but we equally don’t want him to panic and run off - into the path of our modern-day killer, a car.

Your dog is going to be afraid of things he’s learnt to be afraid of. It follows that without that experience he’s not going to have the fear in place. Of course there are dogs who are so psychologically damaged that they have a generalised fear of everything. But even these can be brought to a level of comfort with patience and dedication, and possibly medication.

So being afraid of snakes is not going to make your dog also afraid of cars. And being afraid of other dogs is not going to make him afraid of horses, or sheep, … or fireworks. 

Cricket will sleep through a thunderstorm!

Cricket the Whippet will sleep through almost anything!

In my own household I have two (Lacy and Coco) who will ignore most fireworks, but bark at a very loud bang - it’s an “alert bark” not a panic attack - one (Cricket the Whippet, the professional sleeper) who is not at all bothered, and Rollo the usually independent Border Collie who gets very unhappy and worried.

During the firework season Rollo sticks to me like a limpet, wedging himself under my legs and following me pathetically wherever I go. It’s at least reassuring that I am considered a place of safety. The situation is manageable without medication, as he doesn’t panic and damage himself trying to escape - as some dogs do.

The interesting part - for the purposes of this discussion - is that Rollo is not what is commonly termed “reactive”, while Lacy and Coco most definitely are.

Border Collies are a sensitive breed with superb hearing. So if they’re going to be worried about anything it’s understandable that loud and sharp noises would be up there. But it’s not automatic that a Collie would be noise-sensitive, any more than the dog who is afraid of men in hats, for instance, should also fear children. 

So what you can take away from this is that fears will exist in your dog; you can minimise those fears with appropriate socialisation at the correct age; you can help make those fears manageable with careful training; and that a fear of one thing does not automatically imply a fear of anything else. 

Want some more help with your fearful or reactive dog? Here's a free email course that will get you on the road to success!

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Are you a Firefighter or a Planner?

I get so many emails along the lines of 

      • “How can I stop my dog doing xyz?”

      • “Every time x happens, my dog does y”

      • “My dog does xyz out of the blue.”

      • “My dog always does xyz - I say NO, but he doesn’t seem to learn and does it again next time.”

Let’s take these one by one.

1. “How can I stop my dog doing xyz?”

Far, far, easier than stopping your dog, is to ensure he doesn’t start!

It may be that you’re new to living with a dog, and you can’t foresee what’s likely to happen. Once you have a few dogs “under your belt” you get much quicker at spotting hazards in advance. So, if your dog already has an established behaviour pattern that you don’t like (and if he was re-homed with you, he may have come with this habit already well-learnt), you want to look at what causes that action to happen. 

Once you know the precursor, you have a chance to change the outcome

Perhaps your dog jumps up on visitors. What happens before he jumps?

1. Visitor arrives at house and knocks at door (huge excitement!)
2. Visitor is admitted (excitement unparalleled)
3. Maybe visitor tries to greet the dog, in self-defence (dog is massively rewarded for lunatic activity)

So you have three clear points there where you could make changes. 

1. When visitor arrives, or - if expected - before visitor is due, settle your dog in his crate or another room with a chewtoy or stuffed foodtoy.
2. As the visitor is admitted to the house, your dog is either safe in his crate or other room, or is on lead beside you with your foot on the lead, and cannot jump.
3. If visitor wants to greet dog (preferably when you ask them to) dog has to stay sitting in order to earn this mighty reward.

So there you have three easy fixes to a nuisance behaviour with little effort - just a little advance planning.

2. “Every time x happens, my dog does y”

This is along similar lines as the first point, but this time my correspondent has picked up on the fact that something happens first, then the dog reacts. So we’re ahead already!

Sometimes the full question may read:

“Every time another dog walks towards us on the street, my dog lunges and barks.”

What’s happening here?
1. Strange dog (and probably strange person) are advancing towards your dog
2. Your dog is afraid of this incursion
3. Your dog is on lead and cannot exercise the “Flight” part of “Fight or Flight”, so he puts on an aggressive display to frighten away the intruder
4. Other dog and owner turn and go, or hurry past, or you turn and go (Result! The threat has gone! The barking and lunging worked!)

So we want to change this to:

Get lots more help for growly dogs in this free 4-part email course

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1. Strange dog/person advancing - turn and go the other way, or cross the road
2. Demonstrate to your dog that he needn’t be afraid, you will take care of him
3. Keep hands soft on the lead so he doesn’t feel trapped, and make distance
4. The other dog has gone without the need to be shouted at!

3. “My dog does xyz out of the blue.”

So you can see by now, that your dog never does stuff out of the blue. Unless your dog has dementia, there’s always a reason, just like there is for anything we do. 

The trick is in identifying the reason so we can fix it at that stage, without waiting for the full bad thing to happen.

And one of the commonest times I hear this statement is in regard to dogs reacting - perhaps leaping up and snapping. There’s always a reason!

Perhaps the dog is resource guarding - a speck of food, his owner, a shred of tissue, a toy - and someone got too near. Perhaps he felt another dog was threatening him, too close. Perhaps someone leant over and scratched his bum without permission! (How would you feel if a stranger scratched your bum without so much as a “by your leave”?)

Dogs always run through a sequence of calming signals before biting. Granted, they may run through it pretty fast, especially if they do it a lot. But they do do it. Just as you’d be unlikely to spin round on that stranger and pull a knife: rather, you’d fix him with a frosty glare and maybe say something loud enough for others to hear. 

Kendal Shepherd's Canine Ladder of Aggression

So the dog who bit “out of the blue” will probably have tried to turn away, gone still and stiff, shown the whites of his eyes, given a stare, wrinkled his lip, mumbled a growl, swished his tail stiffly, maybe snapped - all steps ascending the Canine Ladder of Aggression - before he felt forced to bite. Fighting is dangerous for all parties, and is not entered upon unless it’s the only choice. 

By the way, dogs are so much faster than us, that if a dog is going to bite you, you are going to get bitten. There is no “He nearly bit me but I moved away in time.” If you are genuinely threatened by a dog, your best course of action is to avert your gaze and posture, keep your arms still, and stop being a threat. 

Teaching children to “be a tree” when confronted by a dog they don’t know is an essential skill: 

• Plant your roots (keep your feet still)

• Fold your branches (fold your arms across your body)

• Watch your roots grow (look at your feet)

A child running away screaming and flapping arms and legs is a great target for a chasing dog!

4. “My dog always does xyz - I say NO, but he doesn’t seem to learn and does it again next time.”

Here we have a combination of acting too late to affect the outcome, and using punishment to try and fix the situation. Both are doomed to failure.

We’ve seen above that you have to identify the precursors to an action if you want any chance of changing it. If your dog “always” does whatever it is, this means it’s a firm habit which you are allowing to happen every time. Change something! Find out what the sequence is and interrupt it. 

If you wait till he’s done it and punish, he’s already been rewarded and you are too late

And as for saying NO, this really is not going to help. Saying NO gives the dog no information about what you do want, and just tells him that you are angry with him and adversarial. You’re not on the same side as him any more, so he can’t expect any help from you. This is exactly what we don’t want in our relationship with our dog! 

Instead, decide on what you want him to do instead, teach him how to do that, reward his response enthusiastically, and you now have a new go-to action for that situation. 

Let’s revisit the first example above:

1. Your dog jumps up on a visitor (fun - visitor dances and flaps hands)
2. You shout NO (more fun! You’re joining in with him now!)

How about, instead:

1. You ask your dog to sit on lead as visitor arrives (you have taught and rewarded this endlessly)
2. Dog sits as you welcome your visitor
3. Dog is rewarded - either with a treat, or by being allowed to greet the visitor calmly

No firefighting!

A lot of these “beginner” mistakes can easily be avoided or changed with a little foresight. Don’t expect your dog to be a small hairy version of a civilised human brought up with our society’s values. 

He’s a dog.

So think of how he sees the situation - get inside his head and think like a dog - then you can pick out the turning points where you can directly influence the outcome, with a happy dog!

You have to be proactive, not a firefighter. This is true of life in general, and never more true than in developing the magical bond with your dog.

Lots more help can be found in other articles here at Brilliant Family Dog, and specific “recipes” to change things you don’t like can be found in our free 8-part email course.

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