Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (29 page)

personality, his social experience, his
genetics, his upbringing, his health, sex, age,
diet and the situation. The only difference between
individual dogs and the larger groups of individual
breeds is the readiness with which various behaviors can be
triggered and the extent to which a dog will carry his
aggression. Dogs created to guard may be more quickly
triggered to act in aggressive ways than dogs
bred to work as bird dogs or as ladies'
companions. But this does not guarantee that guarding
or working breeds will bite or that lapdogs and
retrievers won't. A familiar parallel can be
found in our understanding that men are most likely to act
violently, though women are certainly equally
capable of the same behavior. And while adults are
more likely to be dangerous than are children, the truth
remains that children are capable of dangerous-even
deadly-behavior. To point to any individual dog
or breed or group of breeds and make assumptions
is about as helpful to your relationship with a dog as an
evaluation of violent domestic crime statistics
will be to your marriage.
Folks who've bought the whitewash job that certain
dogs or breeds are nonaggressive are
invariably shocked when their dog, who did not read the
propaganda, acts in a way that proves that
Aunt Tilly's lapdog is as capable of
snarls, snaps, growls and bites as a street
dog in the Bronx. Konrad Lorenz wrote of
looking out his window onto a grisly scene of
bloodied snow where two dogs had caught a deer and
savagely torn it apart. He turns and looks
at his four-year-old granddaughter asleep before
the fireplace, peacefully snuggled up with his large
dogs-the same two dogs who had killed the deer.
A dog is a dog is a dog.
We want to believe in the Lassie myth, to focus
only on the dog's gentle, forgiving, loving
nature. Of all the rocks on which we may stub
our emotional toes, this is a big one. We do not
want to think that the dog lying at our feet is a
predator and a powerful one at that. It may be that
we'd prefer that the people and animals we love most
dearly have no dark, ugly side; we idealize them
with this simple "Oh, he'd never do that!" or
"She's just not that kind of person." In any
relationship, such sanitized, idealized views of

another being does not lead to deeper understanding
or a more intense connection but to the inevitable
disappointment that occurs when we are unable to embrace
both the potential for both light and the dark contained in
all of us. This is not to say that all dogs will sooner
or later act in aggressive ways, no more than
all humans will eventually harm another person. The
dark potential that lurks within each of us needs to be
recognized, and our relationships shaped to encourage
the joyful lightness of being, not trigger the ugly
possibilities.

poisonous puppies
Myths and misconceptions about dogs and their
capacity for violence are widespread, and some contain
a grain of truth at best but, like most tales of
terror, are created from a lack of understanding that leads
to fear. I was once carrying a ten-week-old
German Shepherd puppy through a crowded flea
market. Very tired after a busy morning of meeting people
and taking in the sights, he was glad to lie in my
arms as we made our way back to the car. A man
approached, and in response, the puppy's tail
wagged madly against me. "Is he friendly?" he
asked, and assured that the puppy was, he reached out
to pet him. The tuckered-out puppy mustered enough strength
to lean toward the man and cover his face with
kisses while the man told me about his own dogs and
how much he loved them. "What kind of dog is this,
anyhow?" he inquired between sweet coos directed
at the pup. Informed it was a baby German
Shepherd, he reared back as if the puppy had
become a cobra. "Whoa! They're venomous when
they grow up, aren't they?"
Though admittedly I'd never heard anyone label
a dog venomous before or since my flea market
encounter, I've heard many other variations on the
theme. As
everyone
knows, some dogs eventually grow up and turn on their
owners. According to popular wisdom, some breeds are
inherently vicious; others are baby killers. These
and other falsehoods do not serve dogs or us
well; when they lurk in the back of our thoughts, it
takes only a spark of misunderstanding for our fears
to catch fire. While nearly everyone you meet can
tell you tales of biting dogs and deadly
attacks, the truth is that as a species, dogs do
amazingly well in trying to live with humans. In
fact, they do a better job of peacefully living with
humans than humans do.

To be quite fair, when we look at the
subject of aggressive behavior in our dogs,
we ought to consider our own behavior. In his seminars,
veterinarian and dog behavior expert Dr. Ian
Dunbar leads the audience through a simple exercise
designed to increase their appreciation for the degree of
"aggression" that is present in our human
society. He first asks how many audience members
have ever been angry or had an argument with someone;
naturally, all hands are raised. He asks how
many have ever been angry enough to raise their voice or
even yell at another human (the equivalent of a
dog growling or barking)-again, all hands go up. How
many have ever gotten so angry that they have physically
contacted another person in anger? A few less
hands go up. Finally, Dunbar asks who has ever
seriously hurt another person, sending them to the
hospital. No hands go up. His point, of
course, is that obviously humans are
argumentative, and there's a fair degree of
"aggressive" behavior among the average group of
human beings. And yet, only rarely does that
"aggression" escalate beyond clear expression of
anger, fear, irritation or the defense of property
or self. Damaging attacks on others and murder
are, fortunately, quite rare-even among
humans. The same is true of dogs. Just as
human society has rules and taboos that
prevent us from seriously injuring or killing each
other, thus enabling us to live in relative peace,
our dogs also have normal inhibitions of aggression.
With the exception of rare individuals and the breeds
specifically bred for fighting, the average dog
doesn't enjoy arguments or altercations or
fisticuffs any more than the average human being
does. Being angry, defensive or afraid are not
pleasant states of being for dog or man; dogs

are wise enough to try to avoid or quickly resolve
encounters and situations that create these uncomfortable
feelings as much as possible, though the same cannot always
be said of humans. While capable of "murder,"
dogs rarely fully employ their considerable
aggressive potential and, like us, restrain and
inhibit their actions so that communication is clear with a
minimum of damage (if any).
To put the matter into the proper perspective, Dr.
Dunbar points out in his 1998 video, Dog
Aggression: Biting,
that more children are killed each year by their parents than

by dogs. Dunbar offers these upsetting
statistics: In the United States, roughly two
thousand children die every year at the hands of their own
parents, but less than a dozen are killed by dogs.
And yet people don't look at children and whisper, "Be
careful. Parents can turn on you." (perhaps they
should.) Thousands of children are severely injured or
killed in automobile crashes each year, and
yet, as Dr. Dunbar notes, we don't ban
Fords or Hondas or any other vehicle.
While dog bites and attacks are a serious
problem that should not be ignored, our sometimes knee-jerk
reactions to any behavior that we think even smacks
faintly of aggression reveals a terrible lack of knowledge
about dogs and aggressive behavior. History
teaches us that what we fear and do not understand does not
fare well at the hands of man. Dogs are no
exception.
what Is aggression?
What constitutes aggression? Operating strictly from
the viewpoint of the dogsthuman relationship, the
easiest definition of aggression is probably this:
Behavior that threatens, alarms or actually harms
us. While the academics and behaviorists who just
fainted are being revived, let's think about this. I'm
perfectly well aware that my definition of
what constitutes aggression may be highly
unsatisfactory to behaviorists and trainers. But
it seems to me that working from within the only context in which
behavior will be interpreted-that of a relationship-defining
aggression as any behavior that threatens, alarms or
harms another is fair. Feeling threatened or
scared is hardly conducive to intimacy. We need
to allow for the possibility (on both sides) that an
innocent
behavior could be misinterpreted and though not meant
to, still have the result of being threatening or frightening.
Some of this has to do with the differences between dogs and
people-direct eye contact is considered a challenge
dog to dog, but a sign of interest and attentiveness
in the Western world. (in other human cultures,
however, direct eye contact is considered rude.)
On an individual basis, any gesture may be
misinterpreted depending on the individual's
experience (or lack of). For example, a person
leaning over to greet a dog may seem a kind,
nonaggressive behavior to us, though from a fearful
dog's point of view this well-intentioned gesture

could be interpreted as a terrifying threat.
Equally so, dogs find themselves bewildered by our
frightened or angry responses to their behaviors that
were not meant to threaten or scare us, such as dogs
growling in play or rumbling with nearly
inexpressible pleasure or even the delightful
"smile" which to the naive eye may appear as a
fearsome snarl. One of our friends has taken literally
years to understand that if one of our dogs lying near her
offers a warning growl to another dog, the growl is not
meant for her, though never once in all these years have
any of our animals threatened her in any way.
Lumped under the general umbrella term
of aggression
is a very wide range of behaviors, from confident
threats of bodily harm to fearful reactions meant
to create an opening for escape and/or to scare off
whatever is scaring the dog. But among the general
dog-owning public, "aggression" usually consists of
these basic elements: barking, growling, snarling,
snapping, lunging toward a person or other
animal, biting and any combination or variation of the
above. Unfortunately for dogs, these same
behaviors can also be used in nonaggressive
behavior, though our poor grasp of canine
language often leaves us unable to make the
necessary distinctions.
Social animals ourselves, we know that disagreements,
dislikes and even noisy but relative harmless
fighting are part of life, though not necessarily
enjoyable, productive or desirable. With
sufficient experience and knowledge, we are able to place the
behavior of other people in its proper context and
perspective. A person who raises her voice
in anger or slams a door in pure frustration
during an argument is not assumed to be on a
nonstop course to committing murder. And yet, a
dog who growls at his owners may be considered just a
step away from "turning
on them." A dog who engages in a noisy
squabble with other dogs is often described as
"trying to kill them." Somehow, we've gotten it
into our minds that there is an inexorable progression from
a low growl to full-blown canine murder.
Because we may fearfully assume that a growl
inevitably progresses to a bite, and bites
may progress to a fatal attack (an
especially common fear when the aggressive behavior
is directed at another dog], we are quick

to react to anything we perceive as aggression.
Unable to distinguish a grumble
of annoyance from a serious threat, we simply
attempt to quash all behaviors we find upsetting, regardless of the
cause, regardless of the value these communications have for
us and for other animals. In doing this, we not only
block ourselves from understanding and from improving our
relationships with our dogs, but we also set
unreasonable expectations for our dogs' behavior.
I've known people who truly expected that their dogs
never growl, that their dogs never have arguments, that their
dogs like and happily get along with every other dog and
person they meet-in other words, somehow get through
life in ways a saint would be hard-pressed
to match. Who among us could even begin to meet such
expectations? I'd fail within an hour flat some
days.
Under the broad category of aggression are many
behaviors. The key word here is behavior,
which is communication. Whether a dog is wagging his
tail or biting your arm, he's communicating.
We're just not always thrilled to be on the
receiving end of the less-pleasant communications dogs
might send our way. Appreciating growls,
snaps or even bites as meaningful communication
requires a willingness to recognize and deal with the
fear that quite naturally arises within us. Our fear in the
face of a dog's aggressive behavior may be
disguised as anger-"How dare you!" or "You're not
going to get away with that!" Left unrecognized and
unresolved, our fear can provoke us to react to the
dog's behavior in ways that may not be best for the
dog, ourselves and the relationship. If we interpret a
dog's aggressive communication as a challenge to our
authority and we don't understand that our own fear is
what drives that response, we may feel quite
justified in responding with what amounts to aggression
of our own. If you're interested in proving to your dog
that you're bigger and tougher than he is, an
aggressive response of your own may be the way
to go. If you're interested in a
trusting relationship, you need to understand aggression in
any form for what it is: a meaningful and very
important communication.

read my lips
Recently, a trainer was demonstrating for me just how
"aggressive" a small dog was. While the dog
was looking away, she stepped up and, hovering over
him like his personal weather front, tapped him
lightly on the butt. With great slow deliberation, the
dog turned his head to look up at her, his head still,
eyes hard and fixed on her face. She tapped
again, and the dog laid one ear back, slitted his
eyes a bit and slightly wrinkled the lip nearest
the trainer. She tapped again, and this time the dog
growled softly and more dramatically lifted his lip so
that the bottom tip of his teeth could be seen. "See
what I mean?" she asked. When I asked her why
she had ignored the first two warnings that the dog had
kindly given her before actually escalating to a growl
and a show of teeth, she looked at me blankly.
She had quite literally seen nothing from the dog in the way
of warning until his teeth were visible; through her own
lack of awareness, she forced the dog to make his meaning
very clear.
To the best of their ability, normal dogs actually
try to minimize aggression in their lives, using
eloquent, subtle communications that escalate
only as necessary to make their point. Just like humans,
dogs communicate their feelings in a
progressive way, starting with subtle signs of
fear, anger, pain or irritation and slowly
escalating the communication to the point where it is heeded
or a confrontation is inevitable.
Beyond these obvious gestures, there is an entire world
of more subtle gestures that dogs use to indicate
their state of mind. In a normal, healthy dog, the
first sign that something's gone awry is not a
full-blown attack. Instead the dog uses other
ways to communicate-body posture, speed and
direction of head and eye movements, the position of
ears and tail and even the whiskers. Tiny alterations
in breathing, the expression of the eyes, or even the
angle of the dog's head can communicate volumes
to another dog or to a human who is paying attention
and understands what it is being said.
"Ah, how mysterious this all is," we may think,
and despair of ever
being able to understand what our dogs are telling us. But
if we do that, we are forgetting that we've learned
to read precisely such subtleties in the people around
us: A mere glance from an annoyed mother is sometimes
sufficient to silence a child; a look held just a