Help my dog is trying to bite me!
If you have happily read the previous chapter on biting then you will realise that your dog has come to a point where he knows he can grab and tear with his teeth. Usually around the four to six months of age I start using soft cloths to play with my dogs, I also put my garden gloves or leather work gloves on because, hey this could get rough.
City dwelling Human beings need to recognise the predisposition to attack and bite that dogs have. It is unrealistic to own a dog and pretend he is not capable of a jolly good tear to the skin of another dog, another creature or indeed a child or person. This is what is happening in our dog owning society now, people are townies, city dwellers, they want a cuddly, fluffy wind up pup that does what you ask from the minute you pick it up from the expensive, fancy Pet Shop in the Mall at $900 a pop.
As I have said before, dogs need to work whether they are small designer bred fluffbums or large spotted exotics. They need to be useful.
So get those gloves on and get down on the floor with an old towel or a new towel if you are rich and can afford to trash perfectly good towels. Have a good old towel wrestle with your four to six month old pup. Make sure you also have long sleeves on, because once you start wrapping pup up in the towel and teasing him with it and he starts grabbing the towell and tearing, this game could go anywhere.
I actually enjoy this game immensely, but I find I struggle to outlast the pup and often when I have had enough he still wants more, this is the time I call on one of my other dogs to finish off the game and by the time they have finished with the towel it is totally shredded. I also like to video or photograph this game between my dogs as it is usually very innovative and very full on and they don't come to blows at all they just wear themselves out so completely. All emotional and ,if you like violent, energy is very much spent. This is the kind of life they would have if they lived in a fully dog world, so you have to try to reconstruct it a bit and become a 'bit of a dog' to understand this whole part of your dog's psych. Throughout my writing both on my website and within this blog I talk about giving time to play with your Dog, and again it is still the most important thing and again I struggle at my classes to encourage people to be less serious with their dogs and play and muck around with their young pups and even older dogs. Great thrill at class today, Max an older rehomed farm dog looks so great absolutely going for his teddybear toy and giving it a jolly good shake, man that was great. Even better the Collie Wallie with all his troubles has at last got a soft toy on a string to go for and Michael was doing such a good job there today. Wallie is a big manic biter and really needs to be able to go for something to wear out his issues.
My Dog Bites Me: When? Ummm when I move his bone off the back door step. Had he finished with it? or did you take it out of his mouth?. Almost every pup in this four to six month bracket will start getting a bit tetchy about his food. Even if you have hand fed him when he was younger and you have removed his bowl and put it back and taken food out of his bowl and put it back - one day you will walk past him,quite close when he is chewing his bone, and he will growwlll. Now you can ignore this and it might go away, but my view is that it probably won't in fact it might get worse. In fact if you didn't recognise the first growl, the next time you walk by him with a bone he might jump out and nip you and growl as well. Next thing, if you have two dogs, the pup will start getting messy with the older dog because it walks by as well. The older dog will decide the pup should get taken down a peg or two and round on him and then, depending on how you handle this, blood and veterinary trips have been known to be the next steps, usually with the pup coming out worst off, but occasionally the older dog will get a bit torn up as well. Expensive and difficult.
So let's go back a bit here. I walked past the bone and he growled. Stop, go and get the treat pot. I mean the food he cannot resist, whatever that is for your dog. For my dogs it is fried liver and bacon with a touch of garlic salt. I bring out the pot, I stand beside the errant pup and say, 'look goodies' he looks up and I step away. He comes - he always has to sit to receive food from this chalice, so he sits, I feed him, I say 'wait' I step back to the bone. I pick up the bone. I say 'come' he comes, I hand him the bone, but he wants more treats. So I put the bone down again on the ground, I walk away, I say 'come look'. he comes I feed him treats I tell him wait, I walk back to bone, I pick up bone, I call him, he comes I give him bone and say 'good boy'.
I deliberately give him a bone the next night and have the treat play game again, I never have an issue with the bone again, but I watch the pup with bones and I watch all my dogs with bones. I give all four dogs their bones at the same time, they play musical bones all night, one has one for a while and gives it up and someone else pounces on it, and so on for many happy hours and no problems, I am not sure whether it is because I play the bone game with all my dogs, but I would like feedback on this as it works wonderfully for me. I also leave old bones on the lawn and when new dogs come for a visit they go and pick up the old bones and share bones with my dogs and I never have an issue. For over twenty years I have not had a row over bones between my dogs or an attack from my dogs protecting their food or bones. If you don't believe me ask a woman called Christine Hutchings who brought her dogs to my home. Her big boy Boston could not believe his luck that he could carry a good half chewed bone around and nobody hassled him. Chris was tickled pink, so she brought little Bootz and he had a good time on old bones as well and my four dogs couldn't have given a tit.
That is what I want by way of reliability with my dogs around food sources, pig buckets, chook food, bones, or whatever. I practice putting a bunch of leftovers and a bit of gravy in a flat bowl and putting it out for everyone to share, the goats have a look, the chooks pig out, the ducks squabble and chase each other and the dogs pick up the bits the birds drop and lick the bowl when everyone else has finished. There are no problems about sharing food within my menagerie. I simply won't put up with it.
Maybe I am naive but I can't figure out many reasons why my dogs would bite me. I have however witnessed people who kicked their dog for growling or whacked their dog with a stick or their hand for some sort of perceived aggression and the dog has turned and attacked them. So maybe that response to the dog being a bit barky at the gate got a wrong response from the dog. If your dog is sucked into a protection game, minding the door or the gate and you try to drag him away from there so that people can actually access the property and he turns and grabs your arm or bites your leg, then you are getting the response of a dog who has taken over ownership of doorway and gateway and will defend it to the death including attacking his owner for trying to stop him.,
Yes we do have a few problems don't we. Who was it who gave him ownership of the doorway or gateway in the first place. But how do I stop him doing this? Well the game is called 'Who is the boss'. I know who is the boss at my house and it isn't any of the dogs., do they still defend the boundaries, - Yes of course, but I need to call the shots. Get the training to be the boss of your dog. Find good trainers who can help you get some handles on your dog and will stay with the training until the result is achieved.
The last biting incident that happens to handlers is when they put the dog in a position where it is nervous and unsure and is surrounded by new things, new people or new places generally. Some dogs are so terrified they turn and sink their teeth into their owners leg. I have actually seen this twice. Or they will deliberately pull away from their handler even when on leash, with all their might, and attack whatever it is that is perceived by them as 'the enemy'. This is very fleeting and following the incident the dog returns to a totally normal demeanour. However, there may well be a dog or human being who needs medical attention at the end of this little display and your dog has now bitten someone or something and you are very unsure how to proceed from here. This is a very frightening reality for many dog owners.
Don't pretend it hasn't happened. Try to understand your part in leaving the dog open to an aggressive behavior. Learn how to keep your dog safe and use the practice of Avoidance to prevent further aggressive behavior while you understand how you can best stop your dog from repeating this misdemeanour. A lot of the last two incidents are about the handler being incapable of creating a safe reality for the dog, the handler not being in proper control of the dog, and the handler not actually understanding that he was leading his dog into a situation and space that his dog could not emotionally cope with.
Handlers have to be alert and awake to their dog's changing body language, watch for stress signs, get a lot of good dog handling practice at your local dog school where you can watch your dog and others interacting and learn to keep your dog safe and get your body language in a place that helps your dog adjust quickly to new places, people and other creatures. It will not be solved by you closeting you and your dog behind large walls, and it will not be solved by you throwing your dog at more and more difficult situations that he already doesn't cope with. He needs lessons on trusting his boss and you need lessons to be a better boss with stuff in place to cope with the weird and whacky things that being a Dog owner throws at you. The more experience the two of you have the better, in a controlled environment, preferably.
Dog Ownership and handling is not for whimps, it is always challenging and it is achievable if you put in the time and effort and have a genuine deep love for your fellow creatures. Dog knows a fraud when he sniffs one.
Raewyn Saville 20-9-12
