A dog is an instinctively aggressive creature. In the wild, aggression came in very handy: dogs needed aggression to hunt, to defend themselves from other creatures, and to defend resources such as food, a place to sleep, and a mate.
Selective breeding over the centuries has minimized and refined this trait significantly, but there is just no getting around it.
Dogs are physically capable of inflicting serious harm (just look at those teeth!) because that is how they have survived and evolved. And Mother Nature is pretty wily and it is hard to counteract the power of instinct!
But that does not mean that we, as dog lovers and owners, are entirely helpless when it comes to handling our dogs. There is a lot that we can do to prevent aggression from rearing its ugly head in the first place and even if prevention has not been possible (for whatever reason), there are still steps that we can take to recognize and deal with it efficiently.
- Different aggression types -
There are several different types of canine aggression. The two most common ones are:
- Aggression towards strangers
- Aggression towards family members
You may be wondering why we are bothering categorizing this stuff: after all, aggression is aggression, and we want to turf it out NOW, not waste time with the details right?
Well not quite. These two different types of aggression stem from very different causes, and require different types of treatment.
- Aggression towards strangers -
What is it?
It is pretty easy to tell when a dog is nervy around strange people. He is jumpy and on the alert: either he can not sit still and is constantly fidgeting, leaping at the smallest sound, and pacing around barking and whining.
Or he is veerrrry still indeed, sitting rock-steady in one place, staring hard at the object of his suspicions (a visitor, the mailman, someone approaching him on the street while he is tied up outside a store.)
Why does it happen?
There is one major reason why a dog does not like strange people: he has never had the chance to get used to them.
Remember, your dog relies 100% on you to broaden his horizons for him: without being taken on lots of outings to see the world and realize for himself, through consistent and positive experiences, that the unknown does not necessarily equal bad news for him, how can he realistically be expected to relax in an unfamiliar situation?
What can I do about it?
The process of accustoming your dog to the world and all the strange people (and animals) that it contains is called socialization.
This is an incredibly important aspect of your dogs upbringing: in fact, it is pretty hard to overemphasize just how important it is. Socializing your dog means exposing him from a young age (generally speaking, as soon as he has had his vaccinations) to a wide variety of new experiences, new people, and new animals.
Author Resource:-
For more information on handling aggressive and dominant behaviors, as well as a great deal of detailed information on a host of other common dog behavior problems, check out Dennis Hampton's blog at http://sitstayfetchdog.blogspot.com
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