A (0:00)

He approaches people and other dogs and then growls and does not move away

B (0:06)

and has started to snap.

A (0:09)

What should I do before we dive in?

B (0:13)

A warning. The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners. This is real life and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic. So listen on at your own peril. As a veterinarian, dog behaviorist, best selling author and trainer over the past decade, I've had an obsession with transforming the behavior of dogs, understanding their brains and creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home. I know all too well when the dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality. In fact, out of the blue, a few months ago, my little dog, Gorse was bitten by a dog 20 times her size. And suddenly our life of stress free walks, a calm and cuddly household and being teammates and was replaced with reactivity, anxiety and worrying about what's around the next corner.

A (1:06)

I'm Dr. Tom.

B (1:07)

This is the Help My Dog podcast. And this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you and having a few laughs along the way.

A (1:18)

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog podcast. Today we're doing a listener's question and I think it's an important one, an important one for many of you because many of you will be able to relate to this and this listener's know in a little bit of distress and a little bit unsure about what to do next. And so what the listener says is, hi, Dr. Tom, I'm concerned my dog is aggressive because he approaches people and other dogs and then growls and does not move away and has started to snap. What should I do now? I think this first of all is a really common, a really common concern that people have is that their dog is somehow, is somehow, you know, using language like aggressive or dangerous, which, you know, arguably you could say this is a dangerous situation or, you know, having some kind of like bad intent that they, you know, what if, what if actually they're just not a nice dog? What if actually they're, you know, they're evil in some way. And I think by the end of this podcast, you're going to feel a whole lot better and a whole lot clearer on what is actually going on here because I can tell you that your dog is as much the victim of the, this situation as the individuals that they're approaching and then, you know, growling and sometimes snapping. And so dogs will, if they are worried, sometimes still approach something that they are worried about. Okay? And the reason why that is is a variety of different reasons. The first is sometimes they might have a bit of a conflict of emotion about the thing that they're approaching. In other words, sometimes they feel fine about the thing, sometimes they feel worried about the thing. And dogs, two things happen. Dogs really hate mystery and they are inherently gamblers, which is why they're, you know, amazing animals to train. And so they will often put themselves in a situation. They're more likely to put themselves in a situation if there's potentially a good outcome or a bad outcome versus if there's always a good outcome or always a bad outcome. It almost like chucks fuel on the like emotion fire and, and makes them approach. And so conflicts of emotion can be quite dangerous because effectively dogs will put themselves in situations that they then find out they are not comfortable in. Okay, so that's the first reason. The second reason that your dog might be behaving this way, which again highlights that they're the victim of this situation, not the villain of the situation, is that they might actually be comfortable approaching the person or approaching the other dog. And yet what might happen is once during that interaction with the person or the other dog, they actually think, actually, I'm getting a little bit worried. I don't like this. But the issue is, is they don't have the skill or ability to move away from that of their own accord. And this skill is called disengagement. And they have to be really good at disengagement to actually think, you know what, I'm going to move away from this. And so what then tends to happen is that they're stuck in the situation, they're unable to communicate very clearly that they're unhappy, they're not moving away, and they effectively become like this little pressure cooker. This little pressure cooker that's. The pressure's building, the pressure's building, the pressure's building and at some point, you know, they might growl or snap or explode in some way. And you know, in a way it's good that your little dog is growling because at least then there's some signaling going on before the, you know, the potential snap. So again, this highlights that effectively because of their lack of ability to disengage from situations that they're worried about, they find themselves stuck in situations. Right? So that would be the second kind of driver of this third driver that we often see in the behaviour clinic is where actually dogs, they're not worried about people generally, they're not worried about other dogs generally, but they can get worried suddenly and seemingly without warning when the other dog or the person does something strange or ambiguous or something different that your dog is perceiving as something to worry about. Okay. And this is driven by this, effectively an underlying pessimism where when presented with something slightly strange or ambiguous or they're not sure whether it's good or bad, they assume it's bad. And so the perfect example of that would be. Would be a dog interacting with a child. Yeah. They approach the child, the child does normal things. Yeah. Like, I don't know, giving them a stroke, handing them a treat. But then the child goes, I'm going to do something slightly more novel. I'm going to lift their ear up and look inside it. Right. And in doing that, the dog might go, oh, ambiguous. Is it good or is it bad? And if they're of a more pessimistic tendency, then they're going to go, I think it's bad. And then they're going to growl. And yet they put themselves in that situation. The interaction was happening. It was a specific, specific event that happened during that interaction that they perceived that as something to worry about. And so these three underlying drivers, and often there's multiple of these three involved in this kind of picture, create a dog that puts themselves in situations that either they're not comfortable in at all, or they're initially comfortable in it, but then they become uncomfortable and they can't. They can't leave. And so I guess what I'm saying here is that your dog doesn't have bad intent. They are not a bad dog. Right. They are not aggressive in the sense of. They are. That they have bad intention. Right. However, this is dangerous because what we have a situation of is a dog putting themselves in situations where then they may growl and snap and bite and the dog is the victim. The person or the other dog is the victim. Everybody's the victim until we get your dog skilled up. Okay. And so this would be one instance where I would actually say, the sooner we can create a tailored, targeted plan for you and your dog where we identify what are the underlying drivers, and we then teach your dog the skills needed to not put them, you know, so that they can navigate these situations, and so they never feel the need to growl and snap and bite, the sooner you can give your dog the freedom that they've previously had. But right now, realistically, your dog is going to need to be on lead and you are going to need to be managing their, you know, making sure that they're not, you know, approaching People that then or other dogs that then they may become worried about during that interaction because that's only going to make your dog more worried in the future and also potentially might put your dog in a situation where they are unintentionally dangerous. Right now I would definitely recommend getting in touch with the team here at BehaveVet so that we can get you a behaviour consultation, a quick whistle stop tour of how that works. We do video consultations all over the world. We do 180 consultations a week. This is how many dogs that we help and how it gives an insight into how experienced this team is to get you the results that we know are possible for you. If your pet is insured in the UK with Pet Plan, Kennel Club, Agria, Napo, lv, Sainsbury's, probably others that I'm forgetting as well, then we actually do direct claims with those, with those insurers which means that there's no out of pocket expense to you and your insurer takes care of, takes care of the behavior plan and behavior treatment and so it's very, very accessible for you guys. And if you know, if you're not insured of one of those, it's not a problem because we also offer a variety of packages and interest free payment plans and things like that because we want to help basically and I can see that you need our help. Right? So the way that you can inquire and find out more about that and obviously find out how it would work for you and your specific situation is by going to www.beh.vet. that's B E H A V E T B E H A dot V E T. You'll find the website and then you'll find a place where you can inquire about booking a consult on there. Somewhere on there just fill out a very, very short 10 second form and we'll get in touch and we'll get you scheduled in and we'll get you the results that we know are possible. In the meantime, what I want you to be thinking about are those three underlying drivers. Okay. And I want you to be thinking about how we are there other situations where your dog also is showing those three underlying drivers kind of influencing their behavior? Do they struggle to disengage from other things? Do they struggle to disengage things that they want to chase? Do they, Are they sometimes worried when environments change or when people are behaving a certain way or look a certain way or dogs look a certain way? All of these are little clues as to what are the main underlying drivers of your dog's struggle. And in the meantime, it's really, really important that we don't give your dog the opportunity to make the mistake of approaching something and then getting worried, because that's. Your dog doesn't want to behave that way. They are the victim of that situation as well. But the thing is, that's not how. That's not how the narrative is going to play out. If they, you know, unintentionally bite a person or another dog. Yeah. Because that's not how the world works. Then they become the villain of that situation, which, you know, actually they were the victim. And it's down to us to safeguard them and make sure that we're not giving them opportunity to put themselves in situations that they can't cope with. And that means very clear management of being on lead. And that might include being on lead when visitors come to the house, even, or maybe just in a separate part of the house, so that they're not engaging with your visitors. And then we can put together a plan. We can skill your dog up. We can get you back to living the life that you and your dog want to live. And as I say, your dog is not a bad dog. They do not have bad intentions. Instead, they are the victim as well. And it's down to us to one, safeguard them in the moment and then to lead them to where we want them to go in the form of a transformation, skilling them up. That was this episode of the Help My Dog podcast. I hope you got value from this and hopefully it put many of your minds at ease and gave you a really clear way forward of there is hope. This is why the behavior is happening and these are your next steps. Definitely. If any of this has resonated with you or if this is a struggle that your dog shows, then please, please, please do get in touch with Behave Vet and we can come up with a plan and we can get you the results know are possible for you. And then you can go back to being the heroes of your life and, you know, going forth and living that dream that made you get a dog in the first place. We will see you next week.