Dog

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Dangers

As evidenced by their attacks on other creatures, both wild and domestic, dogs are superpredators. Their sharp teeth and powerful jaws can inflict serious injuries; their sharp claws have powerful muscles behind them. Scratches from dogs are easily infected. Even without aggressive intent, by just acting boisterously, a dog of adequate size can knock down a person, possibly causing serious injury. All that protects man from an animal with such abilities to kill large prey is its temperament, without which large dogs singly or medium-sized dogs in groups would be nearly as dangerous as the big cats, animals with obvious similarities in behavior. Dogs are near-equals of Man in the food chain, and where the usual respect that two similarly-predatory animals have for each other breaks down, tragedy ensues for one or the other, as is true for wolves.

Related Topics:
Superpredator - Big cat

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Formal and informal training, selective breeding, and society's response to dogs that prove dangerous combine to reduce the overall physical threat from dogs to a very low level with most confrontations between man and dog ending without injury. However, improperly managed confrontations can lead to severe injury from the most well-tempered dog, much as almost any human can be incited to violence given sufficiently serious provocation.

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Contrary to myth, barking dogs can bite a person failing to recognize the warning. Likewise, a wagging tail indicates an attempt to communicate, which is not always a result of "happy" excitation. A highly disturbed dog may sometimes emit confusing or misleading signals, much as the development of anger or an aggressive mood in a human being may not always be externally obvious.

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Human behavior as provocations

Some human behavior (especially people unfamiliar with dogs) can potentially evoke a predatory or aggressive response from a dog. These include:

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• Attacking a dog or its companions, or acting in a manner that the dog perceives as an attack (for example, a sudden enthusiastic hug or inadvertently stepping on any portion of the dog's anatomy, such as a paw or tail).
• Attempting to take food away from a dog, or moving towards a dog's food or between a dog and its food, even inadvertently; most dog adoption agencies test dogs for food aggression and will destroy any dog which shows this behavioral trait rather than risk the adopted dog biting its new owners.
• Threatening a puppy in the presence of an adult dog, especially its mother
• Looking a dog directly in the eyes. This is more dangerous when on the same visual level as the dog (such as small children), or when the human is unfamiliar to the dog.
• Approaching a sick or injured dog. Note that older dogs, like people, often seem to become "cranky" as they accumulate aches and pains, and develop a tendency to become "snappish"
• Related to the previous point, failure to recognize a dog showing signs of insecurity or fear and continuing whatever behavior is causing the dog's anxiety to increase, until "fear biting" occurs. Again, an older or chronically infirm dog is liable to develop feelings of vulnerability and anxiety, and therefore become less tolerant and more aggressive
• Running away from a dog: the chase-and-catch instinct inherited from wolves is not fully lost, and most dogs can outrun and overtake the average human. Similarly, the natural instinct to jerk one's hands upwards away from an inquisitive dog often elicits in the dog a strong impulse to grab and hold, or at least to investigate, resulting in the dog jumping on the person and thrusting its head towards the raised hands
• Ignoring "Beware of Dog" signs: trained attack dogs, unlike most dogs, may attack an intruder without warning
• Startling a resting or sleeping dog
• Entering a dog's 'territory' and behaving in an unfamiliar pattern or being unfamiliar to the dog. The dog's territorialism, superb senses, and latent ferocity makes almost any dog, irrespective of size, a powerful deterrent to burglars.

"Sudden" aggressiveness

Rarely, some dogs with no prior signs of aggressiveness or any exposure to stimuli that might generate aggression seem to suddenly develop a physically aggressive streak. The first such attack is often dismissed as a fluke (triggered by one of the factors above, for instance) in view of the dog's benign history, but when a few unprovoked attacks occur within a relatively short span of time, the dog is generally recognized as dangerous. Similarly, some dogs seem, for no apparent reason, to become unreasoningly aggressive when triggered by a particular stimulus, for instance a touch on a specific region of the body which does not seem to be painful (distinct from the more understandable reaction when a painful area is stimulated), even though nothing in the dog's history would have trained it to react in such a fashion. While we cannot understand what is happening from the dog's point of view, the existence of such behaviors in a few dogs is sometimes considered in reference to the question of whether criminal, antisocial, violent, or other pathological behavior in human beings can sometimes be innate.

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Background for aggression

Although most dogs are not inherently aggressive (unless they are feral, trained to attack intruders, threatened, or provoked), it is important to remember that they are predatory by nature and instinct is something that never disappears. This is not to say that all of the above behaviors will always result in injury. In fact, dog experts advocate acclimating a puppy to provocative situations such as removal of its food or sudden movements by a stranger when its behavior can be controlled to train it to restrain its aggressive impulses even more thoroughly, so that later in life, similar situations can be dealt with without danger; for instance if the dog is found eating something dangerous, or is wounded and needs to be transported for medical attention.

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Small children are especially prone to provoking dogs, in part because their size and movements suggest similarities to prey that dogs instinctively attack, rather than adult humans to whom the dog has learned to submit. Also, young children may well unintentionally provoke the dog (pulling on ears or tails is common, as is surprising a sleeping dog) because they do not know any better. Because of a dog's pack instincts, more dominant dogs may view children or even adults as rivals rather than as superiors, and attempt to establish dominance by physical means; any examples of such behavior, no matter how tentative, should be extremely firmly discouraged as early as possible, to deliver to the dog the message that all humans are to be regarded as superiors. To avoid potential conflicts, even reliably well-behaved children and dogs should not be allowed to interact in the absence of adult supervision until both have absolutely demonstrated their ability to always behave appropriately towards each other, no matter what the situation.

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Dogs with strong chase instincts may also fixate on specific stimuli, such as a fast-moving, brightly colored running or cycling shoe, as a prey object, and not recognize the whole picture as a human being; this is probably operative in the majority of cases of otherwise nonaggressive dogs chasing cyclists and runners. In these cases, if the individual stops, to the dog it is as if its prey suddenly disappears and is replaced by a human, and it immediately loses interest. Of course, this should not be confused with cases of actual aggressive dogs who might take the opportunity to attack. Similarly, while most dogs who bark aggressively at strangers, particularly when not on "their" territory, will flee if the stranger "calls its bluff" and replies with a mock aggressive move, there is always the danger of the occasional dog who will stand its ground and further escalate the situation.

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