In England, for the most part of the year, the weather is such that most dogs are mostly housed indoors. The gardens are often well clipped or they die back in cold weather, affording little or no shelter for wildlife. England also has an abundance of small copses or woods where the terrain is more attractive to wildlife, leaving the suburban gardens largely barren of such life. Dogs are mostly walked on lead on cement footpaths, particularly in the cold weather. These dogs have little or no chance to seek out a secondary food source.
On a recent fact finding trip to Spain, we discovered that aggression in dogs is rare. Our investigations revealed the following:
In Spain, the country is teeming with food and outdoor cafes. Again, like Australia, the weather and terrain is conducive to outdoor living and teeming wildlife. Stray dogs feed from the streets and for the most part, they look rather healthy. The locals prefer to feed their own dogs in the same way they have for centuries ie leftovers from the family meal and the off cuts of the animals slaughtered for human consumption. Commercial dog food is available but is used mainly by the expatriate population.
The reason I’m speaking about food availability in the same breath as aggression in dogs is that I firmly believe, after years of dealing with dogs at risk, that the two are inextricably linked. I believe this link goes a long way to providing an explanation for the “unprovoked attacks” or why the dog “suddenly turned” or bit a child “for no reason at all”.
There is always a reason – there can be any number of reasons why dogs become aggressive. What we try to ascertain is how a fluffy, cuddly little puppy turns into a slathering, angry mess in such a short time.
Most of the problem dogs that we deal with are between the ages of 6 months to 30 months, though of course having said that, I can think of quite a few case histories where the dog was in the five to seven year age group. There are sound reasons why this happens also:
CASE HISTORY
Angel, a Springer Spaniel owned by a gentle older couple started showing signs of aggression around the age of 5. By the time she was 7, her owners were in despair and they contacted us. They had owned Angel since she was a puppy, so the situation was heartbreaking. Angel was rather overweight and it transpired that she shared most of her owners’ food as well as eating all of her own.
She then discovered that if she guarded certain objects, she was given a treat to distract her while her owners retrieved the guarded item. Dogs aren’t silly and it wasn’t too long before Angel discovered that if she guarded her item aggressively enough, she got more treats as her owners tried all different flavours to try to bribe her to give up her booty.
This behaviour escalated to the point where Angel decided that the new cane furniture in the conservatory was hers and that her owners weren’t allowed to approach it. She aggressively tore at the cane and attacked her owners if they approached. We thought it prudent to move Angel away from her premises and bring her to our farm. With her owners’ approval, we started Angel on a rehabilitation programme, which included a change to a natural diet, lots of swimming in the ponds and running in the fields.
It wasn’t too long before Angel was able to return home, happy, healthy, much slimmer and with her personality more in keeping with her name.
It appears that the onset of Angel’s aggression had a lot to do with the fact that she became overweight. Her owner increased her exercise and reduced her food intake. This would make sense to anybody, but instead of reducing her food intake, we changed her food and in so doing were able to get her to increase the amount of time she spent eating. Dogs tend to be much more satisfied this way and rarely overeat on natural raw food.
It’s impossible to speak in general terms about aggression. Each case is different and individual peculiarities and personality types of both dog and owner have to be taken into consideration before embarking on any rehabilitation programme.
The golden rule to follow when dealing with behavioural problems (particularly aggression) is if you treat a dog like a human, it won’t be long before the dog starts treating you like a dog.
Before the howls of disapproval start, let me reassure you that most dogs, thankfully, are born with lovely, middle-of-the-pack personalities. They love life, people and dogs and are never a problem to anyone. Since 75% of dogs are like this, there is a high chance that you have just such a dog and, bearing in mind the percentages, you may continue throughout your life to have dogs like this. People who are lucky enough to have these dogs are often convinced that they know how to deal with dogs with problems, since what they’ve been doing with their own dogs all their life has worked beautifully. It also explains why we find that so many books that are written about dog behaviour are centred on the behaviour and responses of these lovely-natured dogs. What works with them however, doesn’t necessarily work with the 25% of dogs that fall out of this category. These are the dogs with which we commonly deal. I would love a penny for each time we’ve heard “I’ve had dogs all my life, but never one like this”.
This doesn’t surprises us. I’m sorry to say that a happy-natured dog will teach you nothing about behavioural problems, whereas if you’re fortunate enough to own a “difficult dog” and you’re prepared to open your mind, you’ll be amazed at what transpires. So bear in mind that the comments that I make don’t apply to the majority. I speak for the silent minority of dogs that are being relinquished or destroyed at an alarming rate on a daily basis, leaving behind broken-hearted owners who followed all sorts of well-meaning advice, which was originally gleaned from the response of the majority.
The simple fact is a dog is a dog. He will interpret your body language and voice tone in the only way he knows how and that is by his canine instinct. He can’t go to the library or to the internet to find out about human behaviour. He has no idea that he’s dealing with a different species. We all know how humans behave; some of us go to great lengths to study human psychology – this is a university degree subject and yet we are of the same species. So when we bring a different species into our lives, as humans we instinctively treat them as we do our own species. So why are we surprised when dogs treat us like dogs? We at least have the option of studying another species.
If you study dogs in multiples for any period of time, you will see that they have rules and boundaries, leaders and followers, minders and hunters, nurturers and the nurtured. Their rules are simple, effective, cruel, instinctive and fashioned by Mother Nature with their survival in mind. In their world, food = survival. From their first blind fumbling at their mother’s teats they learn that if you don’t force your way to the food source, you’ll keep getting pushed to the end of the queue.
There are parallels in our world – indeed, our expression “the higher they climb the harder they fall” describes the dilemma of most high profile people in our community. At the top, they’re vulnerable but daren’t show it because those on the next rung of the ladder are watching and waiting for the opportunity to pounce on them, pick at them and probe into their lives until they succumb.
This is the human race we’re talking about here; yet how different are we from dogs that ferociously attack, a sick, injured or vulnerable leader? This behaviour is common in the animal world. Dogs will hide an injury to avoid a physical confrontation. Much research is being done on why whales beach themselves – but I often wonder if they were sacrificed so that the pod would survive. You only need to watch chickens as they peck a fallen leader without mercy to understand the roots of our expression “the pecking order”.
We’ve also seen dogs that are frequently picked on by every dog they meet. They are not initially the aggressors but after numerous “unprovoked attacks” by other dogs, they soon learn to get in first. We view this as a warning that the victim is unwell. A visit to a vet for a thorough check-up is the first recommendation we’d make in a case like this because dogs attack that which they perceive to be vulnerable. An unwell dog will be emitting an odour, imperceptible to us but glaringly obvious to other dogs. These attacks often happen after the dogs scent each other in greeting.
For dogs, as for most animals, food is life and life is spent in search of food. Almost everything they do is related to either the search for food, or the scramble for the place in the pack that ensures they achieve the biggest possible share. They will mark their territory with their particular signature - their urine, faeces and glandular excretions and they will fight to protect those hunting grounds from trespassing predators. From tiny pups they scent their way to their mother’s mouth after she’s recently eaten and push their way forward to lick and bite her mouth, anxious to be first for the regurgitated food. They spend hours licking up the vital micronutrients they gathered in their fur and on their feet in their travels. With this in mind, it’s not surprising that some dogs aggressively object when owners try bath them or wipe their wet, muddy feet.
Let me be clear here. I’m not crying “wolf”. This is your domestic dog. This is the animal that was born with the instinct to hunt, stalk, chase, kill, rip, tear and crunch live prey. Nature fashioned them to feed mostly from ground-dwelling herbivores and the products of such life. Their teeth, speed, digestive tract, hearing, peculiarities of sight and sense of smell are testimony to this.
Now put this perfect little creature, created by Nature, into our human world, take away his natural food and his own kind from whom he learns his survival skills and what do we have? We have an animal that will follow his primal instincts to seek out and protect food, to protect himself from harm and to ensure he survives when faced with a threat.
If everything a dog does is about survival, why then would he bite when living in our world? Surely he knows that the death sentence is the penalty for this crime?
He can’t possibly know this. He’s a dog and in his world his teeth are his life - without them, he dies. He can no longer kill, rip, tear or crunch. He can’t fight to keep his position in the pack to ensure he gets in early enough to eat what he needs to nourish his body. If he has no teeth, what’s the point of lifting his lip to those that challenge or threaten him? His challengers are hardly going to rush away in fright at the sight of shrivelled, empty gums.
A good set of teeth is the only tool a dog needs to survive. It’s their version of the Swiss Army Knife. The canines are the killing teeth and dogs instinctively protect them at all costs – they don’t risk them in a bite situation unless, as they see it, their very survival is at stake. They use their teeth for all aspects of their life. If they don’t, they can’t protect their food source (or hunting territory), which means that if they can’t hunt they can’t kill; if they can’t protect their kill, they don’t eat and if they don’t eat, they die.
Every dog attack on a human can be linked in some way to the above paragraph. However, to clarify things a little further, let’s add in the human element.
Owners are instructed carefully by breeders to feed their puppy four or five times a day, mostly with a large variety of food. At around 6 months of age, the frequency is reduced to once or twice a day, just at the time that the puppy is, not only in a growth period, but also being exercised more often. At this stage too, owners commonly switch the puppy’s food to a more convenient, commercially produced type. The puppy now has most of its adult teeth and the instinct to rip, tear and crunch items isn’t satisfied by the physicality of pellet or tinned food. This is when the dog becomes destructive and starts to soil the house again after being toilet trained as a puppy. As the puppy grows older more feeds are dropped and exercise is increased. The result is a dog suffering greatly from food frustration. Large breeds by their very size, suffer more than the little breeds. It’s not that owners aren’t feeding their dogs; it’s just that the food given is inappropriate for the species and is usually either gulped down within seconds or unenthusiastically picked at over the course of the day.
The dog will follow its primal instincts to search for and protect that which its body craves. Its hunting territory isn’t of its choosing – a human’s house and garden, as a general rule, holds very little interest for the opportunistic hunter/scavenger/omnivore that is the domestic dog. Hunger for their natural food sets in and this primal hunger not only consumes their every waking thought, but it governs a lot of their behaviour as well.
This now is an explosive situation:
ATTACK
The photograph of the little girl in the newspaper clearly showed the bite of a large dog completely encircling her mouth and nose. The article stated it was an unprovoked attack by the family dog, yet I’m sure if this case were investigated further it would reveal that the little girl had recently eaten something pungent, like sausage, chicken or fish. Dogs know that the mouth is the food source to be licked or bitten to provoke regurgitation.
ATTACK
A dog broke out of its territory and attacked a little girl playing in the front of the house. A child’s squeal sounds very like an animal in distress to a dog with the primal instincts to strike at the vulnerable.
ATTACK
This family’s 10 month old German Shepherd bitch attacked the pizza delivery man. He was severely bitten and the dog ran behind the armchair with the pizza. The dog aggressively repelled all attempts by the family to retrieve their dinner until she ate both the pizza and the box. Once the food was gone, she reverted to her normal behaviour. She had been stealing food since she was a puppy, despite being fed more than her recommended daily allowance of dry dog food.
ATTACK
There was yet another “unprovoked attack” on a small child which happened when the child was kissing and hugging the family dog. This body language is very dangerous because it mimics the body language of a challenge from an underling. You can see this time and again between dogs. It starts in play and often ends in tears. Pups continually try to roll each other over. The victor then stands over the fallen and bites their necks. This play is preparation for the challenges they will face in their adult world to defend their position they’ve worked hard to achieve. In their mind, this position dictates the quality and amount of food available to them.
ATTACK
A young woman laden with bags of groceries was returning to her high-rise apartment when she was “inexplicably” attacked and killed by two large dogs that escaped from a neighbouring apartment. These dogs definitely would have had no secondary natural food source, since they were living in a high-rise apartment and would have been restrained on leashes for their walk. They used the small window of opportunity to steal the product of the young woman’s “hunt”.
Tragically there are thousands of such case histories. In most cases the dogs are destroyed without a thorough investigation and as a result, important information is lost. Our social sensibilities demand that this action is taken. Unlike dogs, we have legislation in place to protect the vulnerable but unless we try to understand the oddities of the canine species with which we share our lives, and change the way we interpret their behaviour, then all that will happen is more tragedy for the vulnerable, including the dogs.
This Article Was First Published in K9 Magazine Issue no 3 >>
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