K9aggression.com

Helping people help dogs.

controlling dog aggression

How anxiety relates to dog aggression and why we need to treat it

While you may think your dog is aggressive because of the neighbour’s black dog or the guy wearing that crazy hat, it is now believed by the scientific community that anxiety or uncertainty underlies most dog aggression (1).  That anxiety or uncertainty in dogs underlies dog aggression is not immediately obvious. As a result it is overlooked unless you are aware of it.  In fact you might want to check that any of your dog’s odd personality quirks are not a result of anxiety.  And can your anxious dog who has not been aggressive before, become aggressive?  In a word, yes.

When anxiety is not treated, but the aggression is suppressed, the anxiety can manifest in a different problem behaviour

Dog aggression is a complex problem. Given that that is most is rooted in anxiety punishment, shock collars, electric containment systems, choke chains, etc. can actually make dog aggression worse.

One of the troubling things about using punishment to control dog aggression (if it works and it often doesn’t) or any behavior in fact, is that it only suppresses the behaviour. It hasn’t eliminated the underlying cause. If anything it’s probably only increased the problem, which result in a more dangerous dog that may only be just keeping themselves together.

anxious dog
Dog anxiety might not be obvious

This is a problem for aggressive dogs that suffer from an anxiety disorder.  When dog aggression is suppressed, but the anxiety is not treated, the anxiety can manifest in a different dog behavior.  For example, self-induced lesions from licking and biting or other obsessive-compulsive behaviors can start to occur. Sadly, you might never make the connection or you might even see this new problem behavior tolerable to live with.

Should Medicine be a Last Resort?

Ultimately, whether or not your dog needs medication should be determined by a veterinary behaviorist. Medicine is seen as a quick fix by many, and seen as a bandaid solution, a crutch or a last resort by others. Both views are incorrect.

Dogs will need behavior modification in order to make new positive associations with the conditions that have elicited the aggression. However, dogs that need medication will not progress very far without it even under the best behavior modification practices, because the anxiety takes priority over everything else.

Anxiety is not just a behavior: from your dog’s perspective it can affect everything in your dog’s life even if you don’t recognize it.  Medication might make all the difference in giving your dog a chance to breathe. Otherwise it makes it very difficult to learn.

These dogs may be incapable of relaxing. They may see or anticipate threats everywhere. It is not a choice, it is simply how they are wired. If your dog is diagnosed with anxiety, this should be a first report, not a last. But it should never be prescribed without proper behavior modification.

How Behavior Modification Practices Can Make Anxiety Worse

Systematic behavior modification is really the only way to directly change the moods and attitudes that are associated with behavior problems. On the surface, behavior modification appears to be a relatively simply concept: associate positive experiences with the target of the dog’s aggression or reactivity.

Unfortunately without taking the underlying state into account, many dog owners and even dog trainers do not get very far. They either conclude that behavior modification doesn’t work, or the dog is beyond help.

A lack of aggression is not necessarily progress

It’s not enough to persuade a dog with a fear of people to take a treat for a stranger’s hand. Unfortunately people look at this willing to snatch at the cookie and run away as a sign of success because the dog did not bark or growl. Then we wonder why our dog reacts badly the next time.  All we have done is created a situation for the dog where they are conflicted.

A key component in behavior modification is understanding that we come to be anxious about the fear or the anxiety itself. Exposure must start at the lowest levels of anxiety so they understand that at low levels, they can cope with the anxiety. This is the only way the dog can get used to both the “stimulus” (the thing that stimulates the anxiety) and the anxiety itself. This is the only way desensitization can occur.

Otherwise, if we expose them to the “stimulus” at higher levels, they don’t lose the dread of being anxious or fearful and the continue to associate those feelings with the stimulus. All we have done is created yet another highly anxious situation for the dog and further reinforced the the association between the anxiety and the stimulus making the situation worse.

What is it like for a dog to live with anxiety?

Dog anxiety might be difficult to understand.  But we are all driven by the same ancient neurochemistries.  Various disorders in dogs mimic human disorders.  In The Trouble With Testosterone and Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament (1997) Robert M. Sapolsky wites,

“People with anxiety disorders can be thought of as persistently mobilizing coping responses that are disproportionately large. For them life is filled with threats around every corner, threats that demand constant hypervigilance and an endless search for safety, a sense that the rules are constantly changing.”

Most of us probably have not looked at anxiety like that before, and we certainly don’t want that for our dogs!  And if that quote is not enough to help us understand, these 12 thought provoking pictures by photographer, John William Keedy, who has struggled with his own anxiety might shed some light on just how mentaly consuming anxiety disorders are.  In some cases a picture represents a thousands words, right?  Click through to see them all.

“Photos Reveal What It’s Like to Have Anxiety Issues”

anxiety_photos
What photos can reveal about the underlying cause of a lot of dog aggression

 

A more anxious dog is a dog with a lowered threshold to behave aggressively.  If your dog is anxious or aggressive, you should consult a veterinary behaviorist.  If you want to learn more about treating dog aggression, check out The Dog Aggression System Every Dog Owner Needs.

 

References

(1) McMillan,Franklin D, Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals,(p135) Blackwell Publishing, 2005,

(2) Overall, KL, Manual of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Dogs and Cats, (p. 609), Elsevier, Mosby, 2013

The importance of getting your dog’s attention at the earliest stage of aggressive arousal.

dog-target-2We and our dogs are unable to pay full attention to more than one thing at a time. Outside of dogs that are aggressive toward their owners, it means that if you can hold your dogs attention, they will not be attention to whatever else he is becoming aggressive towards.

Dogs that are not attending to the threats in the their environments are not going to become anxious, and therefor reactive or aggressive.

“But my dog doesn’t pay any attention to me.”

Owners of dogs that show some aggression often report how difficult it is to get their dog’s attention once they become fixated on the target of their aggression. This creates a common complaint that desensitization and counter conditioning doesn’t work and misleads people into thinking that they can’t really improve aggression in their dogs.

In reality there are two components to getting and keeping your dog’s attention:

  1. Your dog has to be trained to believe there is something in it for them to pay attention to you
  2. You timing in the behavioural sequence might be off

So what does this mean? First we need to understand the nature of attention.

Attention and Your Dog’s Priorities

The attention focus has an evolutionary value to it.  This concentration helps animals focus on surviving.  Animals can’t afford to be distracted if it means being attacked, starving, or being pushed out of a territory where they were safe and food is abundant. But not of all of these concerns have the same priority weight at the same time. Decision are governed moderated by emotion and motivation, with negative, unpleasant emotions being the first that take priority. The need to resolve anxiety has a greater priority over hunger provided the animal is not close to starving, and the anxiety is moderate.

So your dog is not just being stubborn when he is not listening to you. And the unpleasantness of being punished may not be outweighed by the unpleasantness of being anxious.

So where does that leave us when we are trying to prevent our dogs from behaving aggressively? We need to provide an adequate and immediate solution to the dog’s anxiety, and we need to do it before the dog’s anxieties levels are too high and it’s too difficult to get our dog’s attention. Part of that involves understanding predicting under which circumstances it’s likely to occur.

Although fear and anxiety can happen pretty quickly, aggressive arousal can be on a sliding scale in terms of intensity as it is a secondary response to the anxiety.

TIP:Dogs that have high stress loads or have had a lot of practice being aggressive will have much shorter response times.

Predicting dog aggression

Aggressive arousal starts before you see teeth being bared, or growls. It starts with the perception of a threat (as perceived by your dog, not you).

Being able to predict your dog’s behavior as well as divert your dog’s attention early enough in the anxiety/aggression sequence is critical in making a difference.  The problem is that people don’t always predict very well, nor have they been taught (yet) how to read those clear signs that dogs give when they are not comfortable with a situation.

Predicting badly is sometimes the result of:

  • Avoiding feeling like your dog’s behavior must mean your dog is a very bad dog
  • Avoiding the feeling that you have done something very wrong for this to happen.
  • Not taking the dog’s behavior seriously.
  • Not having been taught what to look for.
  • Not paying attention to the subtle signs the dog is giving.
  • The dog has developed a habit of responding with aggression and is responding more quickly all the time

 

Predicting your dog’s aggressive behavior does not require you to understand why he is being aggressive at this point. Humans are not that good at it. We have a tendency to make up explanations as a way to predict, but ascribing motivations that may not be accurate or relevant.

How to predict better

  • Learn to read the signs of stress and anxiety
  • Watch and paying attention.
  • Note patterns of the conditions anxiety, reactivity and aggression occur in. you are in a better position to predict when it will happen. At this point you may be closer to understanding why it happens.

For example, if your dog growls at you when you put his collar on or growls when you push him off the bed will allow you to see that situations where there is an attempt to force your dog to do something is setting alarm bells off for them.  This knowledge puts you in a position to do something about it before the aggression starts.

What Our Dogs Are Trying to Tell Us That We Ignore

Aggression is usually a response to an inability to cope with a situation. The underlying emotions usually pain, fear or frustration, or a combination.  Your dog is not a “bad” dog. It is not evil. Dogs are far simpler than people. Your dog doing the only thing he or she can do to cope with the situation that causes them to feel anxious, frustrated or fearful. Most dog aggression is fear based. Dog aggression is risky to the dog, it is not a first choice (unless it has occurred several times, in which case, it is less a choice, or more a habit).

That means we need to look at the signs that indicate our dog is uncomfortable before things get to this point.

What is essential in this process is knowing how to read the clear signs.  Most people who have not been taught how to read signs of anxiety in dogs simply have no idea their dog is uncomfortable.  Your dog might feel trapped in a room room or a leash;, or, the target of their aggression might keep approaching or is behaving unpredictably. Then as your dog’s anxiety grows, his or her options to cope the anxiety become limited to a few responses which is to back the person or dog off, or stop the person or dog from causing harm.

Common Signs of Stress or Social Unease in Dogs

  • Licking lips
  • Turning their head away
  • Showing the whites of their eyes
  • Putting their ears back
  • Stiffening up
  • Moving slowly

We miss the signs and then we are surprised when our dog suddenly acts aggressively.  When you know when your dog is starting to stress out, you can change what is going on, what you are doing, move your dog or the target away from each other, or at this point distract your dog.

There are many resources online that can help teach you these signals.  They are also outlined in The Dog Aggression System Every Dog Owner Needs e-book which also teaches you about behavior modification as well as a number of other strategies you can put into place that will improve your dog’s behavior.

Timing and treatment of dog aggression

Timing is important for clicker training but it is even more important in both controlling a dog’s aggressive behavior and treating it.

The moment before or just when we start seeing a sequence of behaviors that tells us the dog is starting to become worried is the key moment. At that starting point in the behavioral sequence we can desensitize and counter condition (benefited by the dog learning some foundation exercises).  If your dog cannot be calmed (and he or she should be taught to know how to do this when you ask), then you need to move away or back to where he or she can be calm.

The dog is not able to pay full attention to us if it’s too late in the behavioral sequence.

His or her nervous system has kicked the “fight or flight” response into gear, and it is very hard to change a dog’s mood and attitude once this happens.  When your dog is this aggressively aroused is when your dog are most likely to cause harm, putting him or her at risk for euthanasia and you for a lawsuit.

Male dogs that have not been neutered yet will be even more difficult to distract because testosterone helps to enhance selective attention, and at the same reduces the distraction towards other things.  So while neutering your male dog may not treat aggression directly it may help with control and management by making the dog little more easily distracted and there for making it more possible to redirect him towards an incompatible behavior.

 

SEE ALSO: 6 Other Ways to Keep Others Away From Your Dog

 

Taking Dog Aggression, Anxiety and Reactivity More Seriously

Not all dog behavior can be truly defined as aggressive. But situations that cause anxiety and reactivity can develop into aggression.

It is common that people who love their dogs are often blinded from seeing just how much of a risk aggressive behavior is and how it gets worse.  A reactive dog who is continually subjected to more anxiety provoking situations can develop into a aggressive dog. No one is ever prepared for the first time their dog’s problem escalates.

Not only can your dog’s aggression cause irreparable damage, but it can leave you vulnerable to a lawsuit years after.  If your dog is showing any signs of aggression, make sure you treat it immediately. To start you could check out our The Dog Aggression System Every Dog Owner Needs e-book. It will give you immediate advice on how to manage it as well as give you an idea of what is involved in a treatment plan.  It is the perfect addition to consulting a qualified expert or depending on your experience and the nature of your situation, can be used on it’s own in many cases. Serious cases of aggression should be seen by a veterinary behaviorist. The right trainer might be able to help you with less serious cases.