Dog Bites and What We Can Do to Prevent Them
Once a year, the dog behavior community comes together for Dog Bite Prevention Week and lots of great information gets shared. Unfortunately, there is also a near constant stream of misinformation on dog behavior making the rounds at any given moment. It’s prolific and it is hurting dogs and the people who care for them.
A large piece of the work we do at Dog Possible is significant behavior modification cases. We see a high volume of human aggression cases and a lot of dogs with bite histories. The vast majority of those bites could have been prevented with better information and different choices made at some point (usually several points) in the dog’s life.
Here's our top 10 wish list for bite prevention:
1. Recognize that all dogs are capable of biting and that from the dog's perspective, there is no such thing as an unprovoked bite. While some dogs may have a response that is out of proportion to the situation, there is no such thing as a dog who bites for no reason. There is also no such thing as a dog “who would never bite.” Under the right (or wrong, rather) conditions, every dog is capable of biting.
* Dr. Ilana Reisner has an excellent read on the subject.
2. Learn to listen to what our dogs are telling us. Dogs are communicating all the time but when it comes to signs they are uncomfortable, we often miss their more subtle communications and don't respond until more obvious signs like a growl, snap, or bite.
*Here are some of our favorite dog body language resources:
The Labs and Co
Forever Hounds Trust
iSpeakDog
3. Learn how to respond to behaviors like growling and recognize that they are our dogs' effort to *avoid* escalating to a bite. As we mentioned above, dogs do not bite for no reason and they are often communicating with us in ways we may not understand. Behaviors like growling are a dog’s way of saying, “Please stop. This is making me uncomfortable.” When we punish or ignore those earlier warning behaviors, a dog may stop offering them and may become more likely to escalate to a bite with less warning beforehand.
*Pat Miller has a very good post on 5 Ways to Respond to Growling.
4. Understand the risks associated with using fear and pain to influence behavior (and recognize when we are in fact using them). Their role in creating and escalating aggressive behaviors, suppressing the warning signs dogs as a social species rely on to avoid resorting to violent behavior, and creating an unhealthy lack of behavior through trauma and learned helplessness is well established.
*Eileen Anderson has an excellent and easy to understand summary.
*And a more in-depth post on how this applies specifically to dogs already demonstrating aggressive behaviors.
5. Develop a better understanding of the word "aggression" and recognize that it does not refer to an overall disposition of a dog. Aggressive behaviors occur within a specific context, most typically as an attempt at distance increasing or self preservation from a perceived threat. What we’re looking at during a consult are the situations in which your dog is exhibiting aggressive behaviors, whether or not this behavior is appropriate or proportional for the situation, and what we can do to help modify and/or safely manage this behavior and the situation(s) causing it.
*Lisa Mullinax has a wonderful post on understanding aggression.
6. Do a better job differentiating between minor and serious bites and how they impact risk assessment and management. Not all bites are created equal and the circumstances and severity of a bite are important factors when assessing risk and creating a safe plan forward.
* We prefer this bite scale developed by Cara Shannon.
*And for dogs who have inflicted injurious bites, we also love The Muzzle Up Project.
7. Recognize the significant role pain (and other medical conditions) can play in behavior and in particular in defensive behaviors. The degree to which this goes undiagnosed and underplayed is enormous. A dog in pain is more likely to react defensively, to have a lower threshold for that defensive reaction, and to have that reaction be more severe.
8. Read up on something called trigger stacking and how a confluence of stressful events can push a dog over threshold and into a defensive response. In the context of trigger stacking, any one of those events by themselves may not have been enough to elicit that defensive response. But when layered together, it can become more than the dog can handle. We have three favorite posts on trigger stacking and they are all concise, easy reads.
*Dogs Do Not Bite Out of the Blue by Yaletown Dog Training
*The Stress Bathtub by Reactive Champion
*It’s Only Funny Until Your Dog Runs Out of Spoons by Your Dog’s Friend
9. Understand just how tricky safe interactions for dogs and young children can be and that a huge part of that comes down to the behavior of the children and the ability and willingness of the adults to proactively manage and teach.
*We love, love, love The Family Dog and Family Paws as resources for dog/child safety.
*And for more on what kids can do with dogs, here’s our take.
10. Stop it with the misinformation. Seriously. This is perhaps the single biggest foundational issue when it comes to safer, happier relationships between humans and dogs.
It is incumbent open those positioning themselves as behavior professionals to ensure they have the knowledge, skills, and qualifications *including* continued education in an evolving field to ethically do so. It is incumbent upon the media to stop promoting misinformation (come on Netflix & Nat Geo...enough with elevating harmful practices and unqualified men). And it is incumbent upon the general public to recognize that they are probably not qualified to be giving behavior advice on Facebook unless that advice is a recommendation to find a qualified trainer.
Believe it or not, despite the glut of misinformation and everyone's an expert mentality, the reputable leadership bodies and qualified experts in the animal behavior field are in agreement on the big stuff and most of the smaller stuff. Best practices in the field are grounded in evidence and experience and the majority of "debates" come from those unwilling to let go of objectively harmful practices.
Here are some of those leadership bodies:
American Veterinary Medical Association: https://www.avma.org/
American Animal Hospital Association: https://www.aaha.org/
American College of Veterinary Behaviorists: https://www.dacvb.org/
International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants: https://m.iaabc.org/
Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers: https://www.ccpdt.org/
The Association of Professional Dog Trainers: https://apdt.com/
The Pet Professional Guild: https://www.petprofessionalguild.com/
Fear Free Pets: https://fearfreepets.com/
Canadian Veterinary Medical Association: https://www.canadianveterinarians.net/
British Small Animal Veterinary Association: https://www.bsava.com/
European Society for Veterinary Clinical Ethology: https://esvce.org/
