The Things that make Dogs Bite People.
I read somewhere that on average, 70-80% of a behaviourists case load is reactivity and aggression. It’s certainly the case in my own work. And I believe that one of the best ways to get really good at resolving behavioural issues is to understand how they start in the first place.
When it comes to dogs that bite people, I’ve seen some pretty bad horror stories. But it isn’t the worst case scenario’s that teach us the most about why dogs bite. It’s the plethora of every day stories, and the consistent patterns in human-dog relationships that help to paint a clear picture of why bites happen.
In this article, we’re going to explore some of the most commonly correlated behaviours - and talk about how these can end up resulting in dog bites. If your dog has bitten you - fair warning. You’re probably going to be called out on some of your less desirable attributes.
Dog’s Don’t Like Rough Play.
Starting off with a controversial one, but a point that I am willing to drive home. I have never yet met a dog that really, genuinely, fundamentally enjoyed wrestling and rough play with a human being. I have met a huge number of dogs that tolerate it to a greater or lesser extent - but all of them show clear stress indicators, and in most family scenarios where a dog has bitten someone, it is highly likely to be the testosterone heavy teenager (or adult!) who loves to play rough with their dogs.
It always amazes me that people with young adolescent dogs under two years old are willing to argue how much their dogs love rough play, despite the fact that the entire reason they are in contact with me is because the dog has bitten someone. If you have a dog that is still developing - you cannot say with any certainty what the long term outcome of your current relationship patterns is. Most issues bubble under the surface until about 18 months old, until a dogs tolerance levels begin to drop quite quickly and aggressive incidents rapidly develop.
Let’s go through the push back:
“But James, my dog actively seeks them out for rough play and gets excited about it every evening”.
Congratulations - you have identified that the individual in question has created a consistent pattern of behaviour that your dog is responding to. Dog’s don’t ‘like’ and dogs dont ‘want’ like humans do. Both require the ability to premeditate, or perceive past and future events which all of the science indicates that dogs cannot do. What dogs do is react to stimuli - and the stimuli in this case is the Gladiator in the family. That individual represents high competition, conflict and physicality, and your dog is responding to that pattern. ‘Like’ has absolutely nothing to do with it.
In the dog world, wrestling and physicality in the form that humans call rough play has an uncomfortably close relationship to fighting and aggression - and is typically avoided or shut down very quickly. It is very normal for dogs to try and ‘conflict resolve’ by trying to turn the aggressive advances of other dogs (and people) into play. In an open environment, where it easy for the dogs to move away and practice avoidance (and no, your dog doesn’t like being chased either) the likelihood of aggression is relatively low.
But in the evening, indoors, when your dog wants to be left alone to sleep? You are highly likely to start to see your dogs discomfort with your presence. Growling, snapping or snarling. Why? Because they associate that individual with competition, conflict and physicality - and the change in environment means that they are no longer willing to tolerate it.
Impulsive, Invasive, Emotionally Unpredictable People
A client of mine told me some advice that he was given by his father, and they are words that have never left my mind. Never be unpredictable to a dog. Those six words beautifully distilled something that I had been struggling to summarise for a long time, that is core not just to the dog experience, but the wider animal experience.
When it comes to working with dogs, predictably in terms of your actions, intention and emotions - which Cesar calls your Energy, is a massive component of how a dog perceives you. And if a person is not predictable, that can cause big problems in a relationship. For example, someone who experiences Euphoric Highs and crushing lows is very difficult for a dog to read. One moment, they may be exceptionally calm, only to burst into extreme levels of excitement (high pitched noises, frantic arm movements, and other erratic behaviour) or other ‘excitement adjacent emotions’. Anger and frustration and deep expressions of sadness also represent a stark contrast to calm behaviour - and the key detail to understand here is that our dogs can’t predict it.
One minute, a person may want nothing to do with the dog. They they want to smother them in affection, squashing them against the sofa or climbing into their bed/crate with them. Then they might decide that they want to get the dogs hyped up over a toy and run around the house. Only to then quickly get angry and frustrated when their dogs inevitably do something undesirable, and start to deal out harsh physical corrections. We use the phrase ‘the arsonist and the firefighter’ - the person who spends their life behaving in a way that actively causes problems that they then spend a great deal of energy trying to resolve.
People who run hot and cold, however they choose to express it, represent a great deal of discomfort and confusion to dogs - and if your dog doesn’t know how you are going to behave from one minute to the next, sooner or later they decide that they don’t want to interact with you at all. Your dogs teeth are there to remind you when you have damaged your dogs trust, or aren’t treating them with respect. Chaos and unpredictably will not be tolerated in the dog world.
To make a very blunt point on this - because I’ve seen it enough times. Cracking your dog over the head as a punishment or even just repeatedly grabbing them by the collar in frustration to try and manage certain behaviours, and then stroking them ‘when they do the right thing’ isn’t ‘punishing the bad and rewarding the good’ - its just building a pattern whereby you dog has absolutely no clue what you’re going to use your hands for next. There is no point getting annoyed that your dog ‘bit that hand that feeds them’ if that hand was being used to deliver a correction 5 minutes earlier.
Poor Conflict resolution.
This one could also go under the list of ‘reasons why your dog doesn’t listen to you’ - but it’s also a really clear indicator of bite risk in certain circumstances. The principle is really simple - when you ask your dog to do, or not do something. Do you follow through and ensure that you create a healthy outcome, where everyone is calm? Or do you rely on your dogs inherent understanding of the words you are saying to expect them to understand exactly what you want? Whilst you are shouting or begging chaotically behind them?
If your dog is barking at the window and you want them to stop barking at the window - make sure they come away from the window, and go and lie down and relax.
If your dog is jumping at the work top, move them away from the work top and make sure they are sitting politely and calmly.
If your dog has a tendancy to run around and ignore you, make sure you have the ability to bring them back to you and sit down calmly beside you.
Dogs learn through the outcomes that we create - they learn to anticipate what will happen next and respond. Which means that if we don’t create healthy outcomes, our dogs will start to fill in the gaps. What happens in practice is that our dogs start to be the ones delivering corrections and trying to put their own outcomes in place. They will start to address your own chaotic reactions to their behaviour, they will start to manage your space - keep you away from the window that they are guarding, snap back at you when you try to put them back on their lead, or escalate into a fight over whatever they’re stealing off the worktop. You presence needs to be calm, and the outcomes you create need to be as reasonable as they are inevitable, otherwise you can fully expect that your dog will start to push back against your interventions.
People who don’t set boundaries on their space.
There is an important scientific principle called “Correlation vs Causation” - which refers to the extent to which two things can be closely related to each other, but not necessarily the cause of one another. One of my favourite references for weird, unrelated correlations if you want a giggle is this website:
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
What on earth does this have to do with dogs? Some things cause other things. Others are very closely correlated, but not directly causatory factors. The relationship between proper management of space an aggression is an example of this.
When it comes to dogs which represent a significant bite risk, it is very often the case that these dogs have few if any boundaries on how physical they are allowed to be with people generally. These are the dogs that will charge and jump up at people when they come through the door. The ones who knock over Granny or the grandkids when they come for Sunday lunch. Dogs that will shove in and beg at the table or literally climb up and steal food, or jump on people as soon as they sit on the sofa and sit on them. As in literally, sit on their heads.
Does that mean that dogs who get incredibly excited at people who come through the door are guaranteed to become aggressive towards people? of course not. But there is a strong correlation between the two. So why is this? When we look at things from a behavioural point of view, the association that dogs have with people is that they can move towards people and touch people as excited as they want, as frustrated as they want, as demanding or pushy as they want - and by extension, as aggressively as they want. It represents a lack of association about the value or a persons personal space, and the likelihood that there will be a boundary of consequence for causing injury - in general.
One of my biggest red flags when it comes to dog training is a dog that is being incredibly physical or over the top with either me or the owners in a training session, (jumping and grabbing, pulling at clothes, humping legs, etc) whilst the owners are explaining how it’s “just so overly friendly”. From the dogs point of view, friendliness left the picture a while ago, and it’s become a case of canine thuggery. Heavy pupil dilation, tense musclature, no impulse control. Those dogs are the ones I know I have to be very careful with - because they don’t give a damn about human beings and have no concept of consequences.
To put it another way, dogs that live in an environment without healthy boundaries, with inaction or avoidance towards dangerous behaviours (even if the intent isnt aggressive) - dogs that live with people who let their dogs quite literally walk all over them are some of the most dangerous dogs around. And in those circumstance, yes. Thats entirely the fault of the humans responsible for their care.
