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Much attention has been paid to this bit of weird science from the hallowed halls of none other than my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Out of thirty-three breeds of dogs, this...
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"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
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- Mohandas Gandhi
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Keeping my fingers crossed as I hit "post."
But as Terrierman pointed out, this "study" concluding that it's the small dogs that are really bad, is orders of magnitude more silly and unfounded than most such. It doesn't even use actual dog bite numbers, and "surveys" trivial numbers of people. Based on their memories. With no correction for the fact that people with breeds that are the target of irrational hostility will be moved to downplay any issues--while people will tiny dogs may be moved to stick up for their dogs' "toughness."
I.e., why aren't you working on training for control, socialization so that he doesn't find guests in "his" kitchen alarming, and KEEPING HIM OUT OF THE KITCHEN OR DINING ROOM WHILE EATING, until you've mastered the other bits?
Or, even more simply, if you know you have this problem with him, why are you giving him the opportunity to practice and reinforce the unwanted behavior?
(I think they inherently distrust 'delivery people') And my 'other' was the other extreme---tells all strangers, delivery persons that our foot-high yappers "might bite".
For what its worth, I read somewhere that golden retrievers are responsible for bites per capita than any other breed of dog.
I take all of this with a grain of salt though. In the end, the BREED doesn't matter. The owner does.
First off, you dress funny (in uniform), and carry that very suspicious bag.
Secondly, it's natural for dogs to bark to announce that "this is my territory." This impulse is undermined when the "intruder" is welcomed by the owner, and most dogs mostly learn not to bark at guests--those people who come to the door and aren't dressed funny.
Thirdly, after the dog barks, you go away. Well, that's part of your job. But from the dog's point of view, BARKING WORKED. The dog barked, and the funny-dressed intruder went away!
And the result is that the perception that the mail carrier is an intruder, is reinforced, and without good care, it can escalate to more aggressive "defense" against that intruder.
I've worked hard at making sure that my dog recognizes at least our regular mail carrier as Not An Intruder, but I wouldn't want to trust that too far if I had a front yard for her to be out in.
well, I have 4 of them, and yes, they do, but it usually involves removal of food from fingers....they are food obsessed.
do I tolerate more from them then I would have from my 60 lb previous and now passed from old age dog? yes, but my kids are adults and somehow I don't find myself intimidated by 15lbs sausage with legs...
does my friends dobby bite?
yes, but under the guise of licking me to death...
once again I can't help but know it is rarely "bad" dogs....but "bad" owners...me included.
do I think this study is just some idiot justifying a job/grant/paycheck....YEP....
And not wanting to stir up a storm here, but lis, why are you calling anon in Boston a coward? You have no more an idea wo anon is than you have who I am.... am I missing something? If I wanted to read a bunch of backbiting and name calling, I could go to a host of other sites....not here.
Even a nom de internet, like yours, is a NAME, expresses an identity--and I suspect is recognizable to anyone who knows you offline. And it expresses a basic respect for the norms of human interaction, while not inviting people to track you down offline.
Posting as "Anonymous" does not show that respect. And when used consistently, while condescending to everyone else as being too stupid to find their way out of a paper bag--that's cowardly.
And having a comment that I've tried to post to that thread twenty-two times now, which has failed the "are you a machine?" gatekeeper three tiems and simply vanished into the ether the other nineteen times, left my patience very, very frayed, when it joined this thread, and right after my first post in it, chimed in with its opinion that yes, small dogs really ARE nasty.
I guess I am justified in concluding from this that the really NASTY dogs are hounds in the range of 40-60 pounds. After all, I've got evidence as good as Anonymous', or yours--or this "study."
Aggression in large dogs is often taken more seriously, simply because they can do much more harm. If you're bitten by a chihuahua, chances are you're not going to have as serious an injury as if you're bitten by a lab. If a dachshund attacks another dog, you're not going to have as serious injuries to the other dog as if it were an attacking 80 pound mixed breed dog. They're simply not physical capable of the same amount of damage.
But that doesn't make their behavior okay.
As always, it's more an owner problem than anything else.
Even most rescues with issues can be helped--and helped a lot. But while management is an important part of that, management alone is not enough. It takes stepping back to recognize what the problem really is (biting is a symptom), and working on THAT.
My little dog arrived in my home terrified of everything and everyone, and fear-aggressive because of it. She's made enormous progress in a year. She loves kids even when they're doing "dumb" kid-like things (moving to quckly and too unpredictably, talking in high, excited tones, etc.). She charms nearly everyone we meet. She has doggy friends, including big dogs--something that seemd impossible when she first arrived. We still have some things to work on, but she's a different dog than she was when I first adopted her.
But I didn't do "everything" for her; I figured out what she _needed_, and did that. And that's the difference.
If she'd landed in a shelter that, like so many of them, did temperament testing to select the victims for execution, she'd be dead. Instead, I have a sweet, loving pet. My friend's Mlatese, with a similar background and four additional years in his forever home, has made even more progress.
Too often, little dogs don't get trained.
Just as often, little dogs get teased and harassed in a way that no one would be stupid enough to do to a big dog--and people think it's funny, not cruel, to do that.
In my home, and my sister's home, and in my mother's home when were kids, the expectation is and alway has been that all members of the household will behave apprpriately. (Biting guests' ankles is not appropriate, regardless of the number of feet possesed by the family member doing the biting.)
All household members also need to be TAUGHT what appropriate behavior is. Neither young children nor dogs can be counted on to figure that out for themselves, and it's _not_ _fair_ to expect them to. Give them the help they need!
And some situations are just too much for young children, or dogs, to handle without getting over-stressed, over-tired, over-excited. It's not fair to thrust them into those situations, and then blame them for the result--be it a temper tantrum or ankle-biting.
My current dog is now fine with people eating dinner here, even though at first any "stranger" coming into the house was a cause for alarm. She's more likely to try to beg than when it's just family, but that just means she needs more practice.
My first dog, many years ago, just couldn't handle the stress of a dinner party's worth of people in the house without taking an hour or two in her crate to adjust to the sounds and smells of them being there. So she'd be in her crate when they arrived, be brought out to say hello when everyone was settled, usually back to the crate with special tidbits from our dinner while we ate, and then join us again when it was dessert and conversation.
As time passed and she had more experience of these "invasions" with nothing bad happening, she got calmer and calmer, and able to handle more and more people in the house at one time. We just made sure that she was not subjected to more than she could handle.
Your little guy is afraid of being stepped on? Yes, get him out from under the table! Protect him from that situation! Give him a spot to be during dinner, a spot that's his, and make sure he gets special stuff when he's there when you have guests over.
My dogs have never bitten anyone, except me! Breaking up a rare fight & Pearl (pre-pain relief)---I always thought that Pearl could never do damage with her smaller teeth----not so! A week out of work, and I know why the Sealy description is "powerful, bone-crushing jaws", and the scars years later!
All well, and good.. Sock's biting people is not acceptable, and needs correction... You managed to make that clear.. but that wasn't my question.. Basically what I need is information, or ideas on how to correct this behavior.. I don't have the time for a trainer.. Yes, my guy does have a problem, but to be honest.. he plays an important part in my (elderly) parents lives.. as I 've been dropping him off on the way to work... The guy has never destroyed anything in either house, and has really been a model citizen.. I guess you have to see the good, and bad in all of G-ds creatures.. and pick, and choose your priorities..
Barri, you are really, truly, not getting my point.
If you love Socks and value the role he plays in your, and your elderly parents' lives, you need to give him the help he needs to behave in a way that won't put him at risk.
Because if he is biting people, HE IS AT RISK.
If the sole cause and trigger of his biiting is that he's afraid of getting stepped on when he's under the dining table when there are too many, or unfamiliar, guests, then that help might be as simple as making sure being under the table when people are dining is not an option for him.
You can do that by confining him to another room, or you can do it by teaching him to iay on his own mat or bed in the same room while you're dining. You can do this training with a bed he finds comfy, a clicker, and some treats--totally positive, and fun for both of you. A couple of sessions with a trainer would be good for both of you, but it's not necessary. There are quite a few good books on clicker training, and "go to your mat" is one of the standard commands in most of those books.
If Socks is a priority for you, you will find the time to do this. Because if you don't, and Socks keeps biting--whatever the circumstances, eventually he will do some real injury or bite the wrong person, and there will be a complaint. And since the law is a donkey, it will be your dog that pays the price for that.
We did eventually get him to be less snarfy about toys and treats by doing the trade up game. Offer him something better than he has while taking what he has. But still, for 12 pounds, he's pretty scary.
"...for 12 pounds, he's pretty scary."
Of course he is.
"But this little guy- he'd been pampered and spoiled and encouraged to bark and teased until he is what he is."
Do you realize that your assertion that he was "pampered and spoiled" is contradicted by the "encouraged to bark and teased" ?
Your sister "loved" her little darling so much, that she allowed him to be teased and taunted and bullied in a way that's a bad idea with any dog, and really scary for a very small one. He's surrounded by giants who do threatening or scary things, and laugh at his reaction! And they offer him great things and then snatch them away! Or snatch away what he already has!
That makes for an insecure, defensive dog who lives with constant anxiety.
People don't do this to big dogs as often, because they understand that the big dogs can hurt them when they get fed up with that kind of treatment--just as it's rarely the school's star jock who is the target of schoolyard bullying, regardless of whether he's actually liked.
And then the little dogs are blamed for being barkers and biters, and "meaner" than those big dogs that are rarely treated that way unless the _intention_ is to make them vicious.
Your sister should have been working on basic obedience training, INCLUDING "leave it," "drop it," and "trade," from the time she first brought him home.
Now, though, she is what she has _trained_ him to be.
I'm curious if your trained dog trainer?
A lot of your replies here seem really defensive and hostile instead of just informative and helpful. And I take it that you have a fair bit of knowledge on the subject, which I respect, but perhaps we all need to recognize that there are different ways and a million different methods to train dogs and its all somone's opinon. Which one is the best method.
No, I'm not a professional trainer.
I and my family have had well-behaved dogs of various breeds and sizes for forty years.
The experience of walking my Chinese Crested is quite different from walking a Lab or a border collie, because people react quite differently--and not always nicely.
Little dogs are living in a world of giants, many of whom think it's FUNNY to scare and provoke them, and if their owners don't both protect them, and teach them the skills they need to cope, they are left to try to defend themselves in this scary world, and then used as "proof" that "little dogs" are somehow inherently nastier.
Makes me think of the years going to obedience school, when respect of "personal space" was number #1, but not always heeded by the trainer/owners/handlers.
The owner of the exhuberant puppy lets it invade the grown little dog space, jump all over it; when the little dog growls or snaps---the puppy owner thinks the little dog is "nasty"!
I attempted to explain that he was too big and too bouncy for my dog, and she was scared and could be hurt. But I don' think they got anything out of it except that both the little dog and her owner were "not friendly." They didn't see the _problem_ in their or their dog's behavior.
# Posted By Lis | 7/11/08 7:10 PM
I can’t believe you said that, that is so UNBELIEVABLY RUDE !!!
"But I don' think they got anything out of it except that both the little dog and her owner were "not friendly." They didn't see the _problem_ in their or their dog's behavior."
# Posted By Lis | 7/13/08 4:38 PM
Can’t see how that would have happened.
We don't go to dog parks, not because of pitbull bans, but because it would be setting my guys up for failure. Dog parks can be great, but my experience is that there are usually too many dogs without proper socialization, and too many owners not paying attention the their dogs.
OK now back to my sister's dog. We are not just snatching things from him willy nilly. Through Cesear's books, through The Bark magazine, through Dog Fancy magazine, through a book by the Monks of New Skete.....all of them address the toy guarding issue and offer a training solution. Which is what we do when we trade up..we're teaching the dog that it isn't bad to give it up to us. It took about three sessions, but now Floyd doesn't attack if you get too close to his toy.
My sister and I have very different views on many things, including how to raise a dog. She's always amazed at how mellow and laid back my guys are--nothing bothers them. She's just now starting to understand that I didn't get "lucky" and happened to come across two such great dogs, that I have put a LOT of time and training and socialization onto them. Hopefully her next dog will have that benefit also.
# Posted By Lis | 7/13/08 4:38 PM
Can’t see how that would have happened.
# Posted By Circe | 7/13/08 10:09 PM "
Cuz, of course, it was perfectly civil and polite behavior for them to let theirfifty-pound puppy rush up to and bounce on top of my then-12-pound adult dog. And then ignore my attempts to separate them.
Adagoresmama, I'm glad you've been able to introduce sanity into your sister's handling of her poor dog.
Does my dog bite? He wasn't dog aggressive until that awful day. After spending lots of time socializing him and letting him play with friends' kids and dogs, all that training went down the tube.
Whether it is a little or big dog, I absolutely hate the idea of irresponsible owners letting their dogs off leash and terrorizing/charging at dogs on leash. It is now to the point where my dog sends off dominant/alert signals, hackles up, stiff posture etc and I have to try and keep him away from these dogs. What is infuriating is that these same dog owners claim, "oh my dog is being friendly." My dog is no longer friendly to strange dogs and he left some scars on that AmStaff just like he received some.
BTW, people around the neighbourhood have commented on how well behaved my golden retriever is and he is very well behaved around little kids and people. At home, I have a very calm and mellow dog.