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Location: Glasgow, UK
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 810
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Do Well-Balanced, Nice Dogs attack the weak, unstable or injured?
I made a comment on another thread that nice, stable, well behaved dogs will attack an unstable or weak dog. A couple of people challenged this as that they thought this wouldn't happen.
Rather than take that thread off topic I thought I'd start a new one to expand upon this. I'm not ignoring others that commented but I'll just quote one comment to respond to. The other comments were pretty much the same.
Originally Posted by annajayne
Originally Posted by
scarter
Even dogs that are NEVER told off for growling will often attack without warning. And nice, well behaved, stable dogs DO attack weak or unstable dogs - it's instinctive.
Dogs never attack without warning, they give plenty of warning.
BenMcFuzzylugs whole point on the thread where this came up was that the dog attacked Mia WITHOUT WARNING. In this case she believed it was because the owner had trained her not to give a warning growl. LOTS of owners do this - probably most dog owners I come across will tell their dogs off for growling.
I have witnessed several incidents of attacks without warning.
I have a friend who's dog was wonderful until eighteen months old or so. Then, all of a sudden she started attacking dogs without warning - almost always pups and young dogs. They'd be walking past, or playing nearby and she'd just run over and attack. She'd pin it to the ground snarling. At first it was all noise. Then occasionally the victim would have a little nick or a spot of blood somewhere. Finally she consulted a behaviourist when her dog ripped open a young dog's face narrowly missing it's eye - entirely without provocation or warning.
The behaviourists verdict was that the problem was the result of too much socialisation!! Or more accuratly, inappropriate or badly supervised socialisation. My friend always took care to make sure she did the right thing. She took the dog to the park to let it play with other dogs. She'd have friends dogs round for 'playdates'. She even took her dog to doggy daycare two afternoons a week for socialisation. A lot of the playmates were puppies - including some larger breed puppies. Puppies are renowned for being bad mannered and not backing off when told. Because these puppies were bigger than this dog and because she was recieving so much exposure to it she was feeling threatened. She learned that there was no point in warning as it didn't work. So she learned to get in first and attack without warning before they came near her.
My own dog who had never shown any signs of aggression went through a phase where she was attacking without warning. We had been working on off-lead control in a quiet corner of the park on a daily basis. Invariably a dog would come over to see what all the fun was about (invariably a lab after our treats!). These dogs were persistent - you just couldn't get rid of them and their owners had a hard time calling them away. My dog started out giving a little irritated snap (the way dogs do with pals). It didn't work. In time she stepped it up to a growl. It didn't work. Then out of the blue (although I guess in hindsight it was predictable really) she lunged at a dog that came over without warning. She didn't even bother to try telling it to get lost. This happened perhaps half a dozen times before we got to grips with it. She's fine now. She's not an agressive dog and never drew blood, but after what happened with my friends dog I took it very seriously. I suspect that if I'd allowed these incidents to occur she would have escalated to biting.
So just a couple of examples and reasons why a dog will attack without warning. Now of course, you can argue that there would have been subtle signs that we all missed. That's probably the case. But certainly not clear warnings.
I also believe that nice, well behaved, stable dogs do not attack weak or unstable dogs, it's not instinctive, if you study them they are very 'civilised', a lot better than humans in my opinion.
We used to frequently meet up with a big bunch of people and dogs in the park. We'll stand about chatting while the dogs play. They all get on great. However, here are two dogs amongst the regular gang that frequently get bullied. It's always play, but play gone too far and these two dogs will be acting very submissively and clearly feeling uncomfortable. They always come back for more and seem happy in the group but over and over we end up having to break things up. If we don't break things up quickly when one of these dogs starts showing signs of fear or submission the rest of the dogs will snap into pack-like behaviour and all gang up on the weak dog. These are lovely, well raised pet dogs acting like nasty little bullies. This is all breeds - from labs, beagles, poodles...none are above getting involved when it kicks off. It's never got beyond a very unpleasant kind of play because it's always broken up quickly. But I could see it easily getting badly out of hand without supervision. We tend to avoid hanging out with a pack now.
I've asked experts about this and I'm told it's quite normal for packs of dogs to attack the weak, injured or unstable. In fact, I'm told it's one of the reasons why people object to dog walkers taking groups of dogs out and even the situation that we have where a large group of dogs are walked and exercised together. No matter how nice, well trained and well behaved the dogs normally are there's always a risk of them reverting to pack behaviour and attacking and even killing the weak.
Of the two dogs that always seem to be receiving end of rough play and bullying I know one of the owners quite well. This dog has been viciously attacked without warning on more than one occasion. Just recently they were walking down the road with the dog on lead and two staffies came tearing out of a garden and attacked her. The owner had to drag them off and she needed vet treatment.
My observation is that weak and unstable dogs are victims of far more unprovoked attacks than confident, stable dogs.