Prevention And Rehabilitation

One of the least understood causes of problems with dogs is defensive behavior. This problem is both genetic and caused by how the dog is handled. A dog is born with a tendency to be highly defensive, not very defensive, or in the middle range. People change dogs, often in a dramatically damaging way, without understanding the harm they are doing.

Defensive behavior is about survival. It’s the fight-or-flight response when a dog has been thrown into a panic state by fear, pain, or both. Unfortunately people frequently push dogs into this state without realizing they are doing it.

Housetraining and Destructive Chewing

Until a dog has established the habits of eliminating in the place desired by the owner and chewing only the items approved by the owner, misunderstandings between dog and owner run rampant. People are highly offended by house-soiling and damage to possessions, unable to believe the dog has no way of understanding how humans feel about these behaviors.

When a dog behaves submissively, the human is positive this means the dog feels guilty. The dog doesn’t understand, so is likely to repeat the mistake. This infuriates the human, now convinced the dog is doing it spitefully.

Another human uses verbal language so to a human it's possible to explain what you are mad about: those shoes cost $100! A dog has no idea of money or other value to our possessions— how could the dog know? In dog terms it’s not an insult to eliminate in any particular place.

The dog truly does not know why you are angry, and may decide it’s necessary to hide from you to eliminate because elimination makes you mad. Now you’ve driven elimination underground by putting the dog on the defensive, and the task of housetraining will be harder. Worse, you have damaged your relationship with the dog and the dog’s trust in human beings. This pattern of human behavior often makes a dog more defensive, more panicky, and quicker to shift into that fight-or-flight survival state.

The same happens when people become angry at dogs for chewing human possessions. Yelling, chasing, cornering the dog, punishing, or any other form of frightening the dog can cause dangerous defensive dog behavior. It’s over normal dog chewing behavior that aggression often starts. People corner the dog, and a dog who would choose “flight” as the panic reaction has that option removed and no choice left but to fight this frightening human. There is nothing good about putting a dog into this state. It leaves you with a lot of repair work to do, if you hope to have a dog with a good temperament.

Punishment has a tendency to create defensive behavior in dogs. Some types of corrections, done deftly, are quickly over and have the dog performing a correct behavior (thus the term “correction”) for which the dog can be rewarded. This can be a learning experience, but it requires skill from the handler. One example of a correction is to rush a dog outdoors when you see the dog having a housetraining accident indoors, and praise the dog outdoors. If you do this with good timing and without frightening the dog, it can result in the dog getting the connection between eliminating outdoors and you being pleased.

By contrast, if you catch the dog eliminating indoors and have a fit, scaring the dog and prolonging the rebuke--even if you only use a harsh voice--that is not a correction but is punishment. A correction puts the dog in the correct behavior and rewards that behavior so that the dog wins. You win, too; it’s win-win, if done properly with a light, quick, upbeat touch. Punishment that inflicts pain or fear will likely teach the dog something entirely different from what you are trying to teach. Instead of learning not to potty inside or not to chew your shoe, the dog will learn to fear you, hide from you, run from you, and when cornered to defend against you.

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Children often cause defensive behavior in dogs because they just do not understand what they are doing to the dog. Especially prior to school age, children lack the mental capacity for empathy to understand that their behavior can hurt the dog. Children under school age should never be alone with any dog because the child is not ready to treat the dog properly and a panicked dog may hurt the child.

Often the results of a child’s treatment don’t show until the puppy matures enough for defense drives to begin emerging. This may not happen until adolescence or after. The young puppy seems not to mind what the child does, and when the adolescent or young adult dog rises up to defend against children, parents think the behavior came out of nowhere. Usually, though, the seeds were planted earlier by parents not knowing how to properly control children’s treatment of the family dog.

Sometimes these dogs’ attitudes toward children can be rehabilitated, and sometimes they cannot. It’s especially understandable when a small dog is never able to regain trust of children because kids can indeed easily harm a small dog and the dog knows it. 7 h,D CW7Dpl cCW:tiMbcCWg8t sWyhbc

Many people now know that puppies require “socialization,” but what is that? The common idea is that it means to take the puppy everywhere and expose the puppy to everything. Much of the time this has exactly the wrong effect, because the puppy is given the wrong experiences, and that teaches the puppy the wrong things.

Good socialization provides a puppy with a foundation of positive experiences. Ideally before the puppy has a bad experience with something, lots of good experiences have given the puppy the belief that such people, places or things are normally fine. Then the pup can take a bad experience in stride depending on how resilient the genetic temperament is.

If you take a pup out and carelessly let bad things happen—such as being jumped by aggressive dogs, mistreated by children, terrified by gunfire or otherwise traumatized—the puppy is likely to grow up defensive toward that situation. If, on the other hand, you shape the puppy’s experiences to be positive ones, the puppy develops trust of the world and trust in you. This is good socialization, the kind you want for your dog. mhh5WpM5W-p5WTpM5DiMb

Certain basics can make your dog more or less defensive. Keep in mind that a defensive dog is afraid. The dog may be brave through the fear, but it’s better for the dog, and a more humane life, when unnecessary fear is avoided.

If the word “defense” makes you think this is something you want in a dog, think again. Defensive behavior is not coming from a position of strength. If you want a dog to be protective, whether just calmly available for times of need or trained in protection work, what you want is a stable, confident dog; not a fearful one. Defensive behavior is not a good characteristic to see in a dog you are counting on for protection.

The following precautions help avoid problems with defensive behavior:

1. Build pack drive, the dog’s comfort level with you and with selected other dogs. Accustom the dog to perceive being touched as positive by associating touch frequently with things the dog likes. Teach the dog to retrieve. Train with your dog. Go places together. Develop a strong bond and communication system of touch, body language, commands and tone of voice.

2. Carefully direct prey drive. Don’t try to “stamp it out” with punishment; instead, channel it into safe outlets such as retrieving and playing with toys. Train your dog to look at you and move with you for treat rewards; the treats become a safe outlet for prey drive.

3. Don’t chase a dog—get the dog chasing you but with control so that you’re not getting your clothing torn. Pattern the dog to move always toward you and never away from you. Pattern the dog to come when called and to bring you things the dog has found, so that you will never have need to “corner” the dog.

4. When you need to take something from the dog, give something great in return. Do not indulge your anger in these situations. Recognize the dog’s great achievement in giving you whatever the item is, and show proper appreciation, always. Start this right from the first and never stop doing it.

5. Do not give your dog reason to guard food or toys. Separate dogs before giving them such

things so they will never even think about the need to fight for them. Don’t try to dominate your dog by taking food and toys away just to prove you can. Instead, show your dog you are the giver, not the taker. If you need to take something, give something better. If what the dog has is okay, give it back to the dog with play and praise for letting you hold it a minute without objection.

6. Supervise children under school age every second with your dog. If the dog or children are especially active or mischievous, supervise no matter what the age, especially with boys. Boys up to age 9 years or so are bitten and even killed by dogs more than any other group.

7. Do not allow anyone to inflict pain or fear on your dog.

8. Be very wary of leaving your dog for training in your absence.

9. Do not leave a dog on a tie-out or in a fence alone if there is any chance of people or other dogs being able to get to the dog.

10. Do not allow your dog to be victimized by other dogs.

11. A good dog groomer can help your dog’s temperament, and a bad one can ruin it. Choose your groomer with the greatest of care.

12. Beware of dog collars that deliver electrical stimulation. They can produce unpredictable defensive behavior. 7s n M8ihMWpM5W2 tp…iDi8p8ihM

In many cases, a dog’s ability to tolerate things without becoming defensive can be improved. It is often possible to change a dog’s threshold of reaction by rebuilding the dog’s trust.

First, the situation has to really change. If you have been doing something to make the dog afraid, you have to make up your mind that is never going to happen again. When you consistently demonstrate this to your dog, healing can begin.

Whatever the thing is that the dog fears, lower the level of stimulation and give the dog positive experiences of that thing. This may mean moving farther away from the scary thing, or restructuring the situation. The idea is to approach the situation gradually as the dog is able to do so without fear, but you must take it very slowly at first. The longer the fear has been going on, the longer it will likely take to improve it.

If you lose your temper with your dog, the best thing you can do is catch yourself immediately, stop indulging in the tantrum right this minute, and start rehabilitating your dog. Good trainers do this all the time. They monitor their own behavior and fix errors when they are small mistakes, before they become big issues. If you can’t turn off your anger and switch to a good attitude, get away from the dog until you can train with a good plan rather than a bad temper.

Food works well to rehabilitate many fears. A dog will tend to turn down food when fear is too high, so the willingness or unwillingness to accept the treats is some indication of how your training is working.

We choose to have dogs and with that comes the responsibility to give them good lives. Learning how to do this for dogs also helps us learn to do it for humans. In the process we become better parents, better spouses, better friends, and better people. It’s one of the greatest benefits of being responsible for a dog.