If you have a dog that barks or growls at people in the street, or visitors to your home and you are worried that it might bite someone, or even if your dog has bitten either you or someone else, then a canine behaviourist is the person to call.
Dogs usually behave in this way because they are fearful, or because they think it is their job to protect the things they choose to protect in the way that dogs naturally do. Sometimes the dog may have an undiagnosed health condition which is impacting their behaviour. Only very occasionally is a dog unmanageably aggressive and dangerous to the point where a canine behaviourist cannot help.
One of the dogs I grew up with was a miniature poodle called Trixie. She was fabulous, she loved her family, she walked beautifully on the lead and had great recall when off it. This isn’t what most of my friends from that time remember though, they remember her as the dog you shouldn’t touch.
Trixie was brilliant at sidling up to visitors to our home and sitting really close to them. Whichever family member who was in the room at the time would say “don’t touch her” at which point Trixie would snuggle even closer to the visitor. At some point, the human instinct to stroke a dog that is pressed against your leg prevailed and the visitor would reach down to stroke her head. At which point she would have a very good go at biting them. Sometimes she succeeded.
Nearly half a century ago, in the pre-internet age, there weren’t many people talking about how to help a reactive or aggressive dog to cope with life better. I only recall three available options from those days: keep her away from people when she looks like she might bite them, punish her for biting or have her put to sleep.
Luckily for Trixie, our family took the first option and, if we missed the signs, one of us would say, briskly, “well, I did say don’t touch her”. If blood had been drawn, we offered a plaster. As time went on, we all got much better at reading her body language and so the experience for visitors to our home improved considerably.
Thankfully, for people as well as dogs, times have changed. These days, a good canine behaviourist can help you to understand why your dog is reacting in this way and explain to you what the triggers are. They’ll then teach you what to do to provide the right leadership and lifestyle for your dog so that he or she can relax into a more contented and appropriate place in your home. Your dog walks will be more pleasurable for both you and your dog, and your visitors will be safer too.
If you are experiencing behaviours like this from your dog and you’d like to understand what to do to help him or her, do get in touch.