I was asked recently if I worked with aggressive dogs and I realized that the answer to this question is significant. And may in fact, take me a few blogs to answer entirely, so here is part one.

I have worked with Lions, Leopards, and Grizzly Bears. Large Carnivores all have something very important in common, something you can’t ever forget. They are dangerous. Of the Big Cats I worked with, many were friendly towards humans, some you could walk into their enclosure and they would lay down and get ready for a good scratch. Others… well if you walked into their enclosure you wouldn’t be walking out again. These animals are predators and they have never been domesticated. So even the friendliest of Pumas must be watched, in case her instincts kick in and she suddenly sees you as pray instead of a caregiver.

Aggressive dogs are like this as well. They can be dangerous and are at their most basic level, a predator. This sounds dire but in fact dogs are amazingly self controlled predators. They have been evolving alongside humans for thousands of years. During that time they have become one of the only species in the world that can coexist in our homes with us. They are unique in their ability to see us as pack members, members of their family. To them we are extremely strange dogs; we are dogs that are at many times unpredictable and hard to understand.

My point is that it is not common for dogs to just “snap” and become aggressive. Even the most frightening looking pit bull is still a dog, and dogs have evolved to live around and love humans. So if we understand that dogs don’t just snap, then what is the deal with dog aggression? Why do they do it? Well first of all let me point out that I rarely see truly aggressive dogs. Many behaviours people call “aggression” are simply the dog over reacting to a stressful situation.

Aggression is a term used very loosely in the dog community but has a severely negative connotation, a connotation which can result in the euthanasia of a perfectly normal and trainable dog. So in the future when I talk about aggression I will be referring to the issues that are classified as such by the professional behaviour consultant community.