How to Handle Fear Biting

Someone I know recently had an incident with there dog. It is a little dog, and the person was holding it. A neighbor came up to speak with them, and the dog growled. They assured the neighbor the dog wouldn't bite, and continued talking with them. The dog bit the neighbor, badly.

People tend to have two different ways they handle this type of thing:

1.) The dog growls and they scold it.

2.) The dog growls or demonstrates discomfort with the situation and they pet it and reassure it.

Both of these ways of dealing with it just make the fear biting worse. In the first method, the dog is fearful and attempts to alleviate the threatening situation by growling to warn the person away. Then the dog is scolded by its owner, making the dog even more fearful and apprehensive of the situation. The next time the dog finds itself in a similar apprehensive state, that apprehension is maginified by anticipating getting chastised by the owner, so the dog is even in a more potentially cornered and aggressive state, and it may have been scolded out of the one non-biting method it had of trying to save itself. Scolding does not make the dog unafraid. It just makes it stop growling. It is better to have a growling dog than a biting dog. It is better to have a dog that growls a warning before it bites than a dog that immediately bites.

In the second situation, the problem is that you are rewarding and reinforcing the fear. If you are holding the dog, the dog growls, and you pet it and tell it it's a good dog and everything is okay, you are telling the dog that growling at people and being fearful of them is a behaviour that gets rewarded by all this attention. The next time the dog is in a similar situation, it will be even quicker to resort to that rewardable aggressive behaviour.

Another option people resort to is to force the dog to remain in the situation but restrain it just enough to prevent it from hurting someone. They believe that the dog will eventually give up and surrender to the situation. Again this DOES NOT WORK! It's actually a pretty standard technique to increase aggression in dogs that are being deliberately trained to attack.

So, what does work?

If your fear-aggressive dog is communicating to you by posture or growling that he is uncomfortable in a situation, REMOVE HIM FROM THAT SITUATION. Immediately. If you are holding him and a neighbor comes over to talk with you and he starts growling, set him down. No scolding. No petting. Continue speaking with the neighbor, but ignore him. If you don't feel that is safe, then take the dog over to your house or car, shut him in and leave him to continue your conversation with the neighbor. Don't make a big deal about it. Don't take a lot of time about it. Don't spend time with the dog or attempt to make the dog understand what he did wrong. He'll figure it out.

If you are in public, such as a PetSmart, and you realize from you dog's posture that he is becoming fearfully focused on something, step between the dog and the object of his attention. You want the dog to regard you as the protector, rather than him feeling he's going it alone and having to rely on his own teeth to protect himself.

Pay attention to your dog. Learn his signals that he is uncomfortable in a situation and respond to them. Give him ways to ask for more space or alone time other than biting. Respond to "tells" that he needs to be protected from the scary child or the strange dog or the scary plastic bag (whatever).

As the dog progresses and becomes more comfortable, gradually introduce him to new situations and people. When he meets new people, encourage them to play something sort of safe that doesn't involve physical contact, like fetch. It gives all that agitation an outlet and gives the dog happy feelings from interacting with the new person. No staring at the dog. No petting until the dog indicates by his demeaner that he would welcome it. You want him to think of new people as new potential playmates, but it takes time and patience.

Remember: Punishment won't fix fear. Rewarding it won't fix fear. The only thing that will help fear is giving the dog a way out of the fearful situation.

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