Aggressive Dog vs Reactive Dog vs Dangerous Dog

We had a fun conversation discussing the differences between reactive dogs, aggressive dogs and dangerous dogs. This may sound like semantics, but the distinction matters.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Sit, stay, press, play and let'sbegin.
Welcome to the pack you are officially in.
Treats, leashes, shaping the game.
Mark your right, it's never the same.
Big dogs, small dogs, every kind.
If you love canines, tuning, rewind, laugh and learn.
Level up your game. Suburban canine remember the
name. What's up, Nelson?

(00:35):
Not much. How are you buddy?
I am a OK. A OK.
That's all. That's how the cool kids talk.
At least they used to back in the day.
When you were young, say, my kids are always telling me new
words. I I try to bring back as many of
the old sayings as as much as possible, like the bee's knees

(00:56):
or the cat's pajamas. Nobody really seems to jump on
with me though, so that's kind of sad.
Do your kids use weird words? No, I mean, I don't know, maybe
it's weird to other people and it's just so normal for me, but
nothing that comes to mind at least.
Is the word Skippity ever said in your household?
No, I think Gabe would be the one to say it, and I think I

(01:19):
would smack him in the face for for saying Skippity at me.
I don't even really know what itmeans.
So. But here's an easy way to stop
that. Just appropriate the word and
use it constantly and then they're never going to want to
use it again. So one of the kids friends said
something with skippity. Toilet apparently is a word kids
use and so I started saying it constantly.

(01:41):
My kids have not said Skippity. It's like they're like, you know
what? We're done.
We're done with that. That's pretty hilarious.
Yeah, Skippity toilet is no longer set in this household,
and I only had to say it like 200 times over the course of a
week. I mean, really that's, that's a
small investment of time, you know what I mean?
Like that's totally worth it. And it was so simple.

(02:02):
Kara would say, like, hey, can you unload the dishwasher?
I'm like, dude, that's skippity toilet.
And you get like a chuckle the first time.
And after a week, no one ever wants to hear that word again.
It's like when kids smoke a cigarette and then their parents
make them like smoke a whole pack but I smoke the pack for
them basically is what happened here.
Well, there you go. See.
So there's a lot of compassion there too.

(02:25):
Now, do you change the connotation or do you keep that
consistent? Like is is Skippity toilet
always negative for? You.
Oh yeah, Skippity toilets. Randomly.
No, it's super negative. OK, yeah, I would even change
the connotation. I I'd be like, that's Skippity
toilet right there, boy. Come on, let's go.

(02:47):
That would have ruined it even faster for the kids.
Right. He's like, you're not even
saying it right? I'll tell you what, it is like
100° in here. I'm going to turn my air
conditioner down a degree. Can you just lead us off?
Just tell everyone what's happening here.
What are we doing? You got it.
Today we are focusing on words and descriptors mainly.

(03:09):
A lot of when we get to 1st house calls and things of that
nature, we're trying to decipherwhat's actually happening with
the dogs that were there for talking with the owners and
things. And extremely often people will
use the words either dangerous, like dangerous dog, my dog is
dangerous or anything like that.My dog is aggressive or hey, I

(03:32):
don't think my dog is aggressive, even though that dog
might actually be aggressive. And the most probably at least
covey for you you you think thatreactive is now probably the the
more overused word, huh? Absolutely.
And I fought it for so long and then I finally just decided I'm

(03:52):
too weak and I gave in. And now I say reactive a lot.
And now we say reactive a lot. And so I think today it's more
about, I guess just from our standpoint as trainers, and
especially for the trainers thatare actually, you know, watching
us, this is how we try to decipher that as much as
possible in like a first house call, you know, what it means to

(04:15):
us, what we try to convey to ourclients and things like that.
And then for any future clients or people trying to train, you
know, dogs on your own, at leastyou can have an idea of what it
is that that we think these words mean as well.
So again, the most common to being aggressive dog or reactive

(04:37):
dog. I like that framework.
So that might be the the title aggressive dogs versus reactive
dogs. There you go, that works out
really well. Yeah, so why don't we try to
define reactive dog? And I don't think we want to
spend a crazy amount of time here, but I think it's worth
some time. Do you want to take a stab at
defining it, or do you want me to?

(04:59):
Yeah. So I guess the the way I would
define a reactive dog is a dog that is, I guess you can't use
the word in the definition, right?
So it's a dog that is visibly going crazy, going nuts,
barking, lunging, jumping, you know, that kind of thing.

(05:20):
And I say the three because it'snot necessarily a combination.
It could be any of those 3. For example, you could have a
dog who is ridiculously too excited about anything, a
squirrel, a rabbit, another dog,another person, anything like
that and they're jumping up and barking and going crazy, but

(05:40):
they're not actually lunging towards the thing.
But very, very commonly you willsee where dogs are very, very
still and shaking until they lunge for whatever it is.
If if if you're passing a dog for example, or a bike and they
just wait till it gets closer before they lunge, those would
all be reactive dogs again, they're reacting to stimulus in

(06:01):
the environment. Yeah.
And I think that's why I have such trouble with the word
because it also kind of rules out in some ways that highly,
highly aggressive dog that has fought before and is confident
and comfortable fighting and likes to fight.
That's not barking and maybe isn't even pulling.

(06:22):
And then it gets close enough and it grabs the other dog,
bites face or neck as quick as it can, and you're walking that
dog and like, he's not reactive.He's a super good Walker.
You just don't let him get near a dog or he'll kill it.
But he's not reactive so. I think that's kind of the point
though, right? Where?
Again, that's why the 2 words exist.

(06:43):
That would be an aggressive dog.That is a dog, not to take your
Thunder and define the word for you, but that's a dog that wants
to do harm towards other dogs and feels extremely comfortable
about doing so. It's not overreacting or, you
know, again, kind of jumping, lunging, barking.

(07:03):
It's not reacting to the stimulus.
It's waiting for an opportunity to do harm.
That would be an aggressive dog,but not necessarily a reactive
dog. Once in, to me, that's part of
the issue is hearing a dog that is reactive tells me very
little, right? It tells me that he's doing
something excitable on leash. But there, and you started

(07:26):
saying this earlier, there's so many categories.
There's like the German shorthair pointer that loves
dogs and he loves to play and he's so frustrated by his leash
that he's barking and pulling frantically to get to another
dog. And they're like, he's a
reactive German shorthair pointer.
OK, Like, but without knowing more detail, all I know is that

(07:47):
he's you're calling him reactive, which to a lot of
people means aggressive. Some people doesn't mean that.
And like it could be a reactive dog who actually might bite
that's frustrated enough. Like you see this a lot out of
like shepherds and you know, notto pick on shepherds, but many
other breeds that when they get reactive, even if they didn't
start with any aggression, when they get close enough, when

(08:08):
they're that stimulated, they decide to bite, right, even
though it wasn't their intention.
But then you also have the dogs that are like lunging, snarling
that any fool can look at and know this dog wants to hurt
somebody. And those are all reactive dogs.
So that's where I struggle with the word leash aggression
seeming to go away. I eat and now we have to ask so

(08:30):
many more questions. And when someone get like puts
comments on our YouTube videos and it's like my dog is leash
reactive, I have to ask quite a few questions versus if they
said leash aggressive, you know,I would assume they then mean
actually aggressive, right? Versus I have no idea.
I think that's a good point in the fact that reactivity doesn't

(08:52):
actually tell us much. It tells us it describes A
symptom, it describes a behavior, but it doesn't give us
any insight into why they are behaving that way.
Because let's take the GSP, the German short hair pointer.
You know, that's a probably a really good example of, OK,
you're out on a walk and it seesa rabbit or a dog and it's just,

(09:12):
well, let's, let's stick with dog, right?
You know, super excited to play with another dog that it's
whining, it's making all the hunting dog noises, it's jumping
up, it's, you know, pulling on the leash, all that stuff.
But then you go home and the mailman comes or something like
that and he runs and hits the door barking, charging, jumping
and you know, like extremely overstimulated, but could

(09:35):
potentially actually be aggressive because, you know,
there's a decent amount of hunting dogs that kind of ride
that line of to being territorial.
And so your dog is reactive in both of those kind of
categories, but only aggressive in one.
You know, might only actually beaggressive at the door where it

(09:56):
would have played with the otherdog happily and just run.
Had a great time, came back and you'd move on.
So let me throw this at you. I just googled the definition of
the word reactive and it says showing a response to a
stimulus. I was close dude.
So. That was pretty.
That was pretty darn good. Isn't every dog reactive?

(10:19):
No. You have dogs that don't show
responses at all to any stimulusor any stimuli.
Yes. Dude, show me a dog that shows
no reaction. An alive dog.
We're not counting down an alivedog or one that's been given
like 30 Trazodone, but a dog that is not drugged out of its

(10:40):
mind, that is alive, that shows no reaction to any stimuli.
So it depends on how crazy you want to get, right?
If it's no reaction whatsoever that they don't even look in the
direction of whatever it is thatthey're reacting to, short not
not going to happen, but. OK, so.
Your first example. If I clap my hands would your
dogs look at me? For sure dude.

(11:00):
You're a dog trainer and all your dogs are reactive.
That's. Super reactive What kind of
extremely. What kind of trainer are you?
Well, for one, to be fair, I wanted her to be reactive.
So that works out great. You know, in fact, actually, so
there was this person that was walking their dog and it was
like an an older lab, like kind of a it, it looked like a sweet

(11:23):
dog. I didn't actually go out there
to meet it, but the guy just letthe dog off leash and it was in
my front yard and sniffing my front door and like, you know,
going all over the place. And my bulldog is starting to
bark and go crazy because she could hear it out there.
And I'm pretty sure the guy heard me said, Hey, there's a
good girl. Come on, let's go this way.

(11:44):
But but praising her for barkingbecause I want to know if
there's a crazy dog out there. But anyways, to the point, yes,
those dogs would be reactive because they are doing some kind
of reaction to the stimulus. I think for a lot of people it's
just it has to be obnoxious. Would you agree in order for

(12:04):
someone to bring it up to us? It's probably because it's an
obnoxious reaction. No one's bringing it up because
the dog looked sideways when it hurt a car backfire and kept
walking. So, well, sometimes I'll hear
clients where like, Oh, my dog really likes dogs and it'll lay
down and just won't move. It will not budget.
It has to stare at the dog untilthe dog leaves.

(12:25):
That's that's a type of reactive.
I don't know if they would use the word reactive, but that
would be a reactive dog. I don't think they would, but
this to me circles back to our conversation earlier this
morning about just reactivity ingeneral.
And like, does what is there Window reactivity?
Is a dog reactive at the window?Well, once again, a healthy

(12:46):
normal dog should react when it sees someone outside of its
window. So every dog, in my opinion,
should be reactive when someone's at the door.
Now, what do you consider I got?I don't want them to bite the
person. I don't want them clawing the
door. I want them to listen to when I
tell them to. But if they're not reactive at
the door, that's a dog that I mean, has no zest for life

(13:10):
right? And doesn't want to guard or see
new people. That's pretty weird.
I think for a lot of people, it's what's reasonable and they
just don't actually lead with with those words, right.
So again, I would want my dog tobe reactive when a lab is in the
yard and sniffing the front doorand, you know, going all over
the place. But I don't really want to know

(13:31):
if there's a dog across the street, you know?
And so again, where's the line? And truly the line is up to the
owner, right? It's whatever annoys them or is
acceptable to them. That's.
A tough one, Maybe let's move onto what's an aggressive dog?
Because we could nitpick reactivity all day long, but

(13:53):
we've at least established that to us it means very little.
Doesn't tell us really anything.Besides, your dog is more
excitable than you want to unleash, right?
And it could be a nightmare. It could be like a 5 minute fix.
We don't. OK, what's an aggressive dog?
An aggressive dog is a dog that actively wants to hurt something

(14:16):
else, either another dog or a person or an animal.
You know, like I guess most dogswould be aggressive towards
rabbits, right? But again, wanting to actually
go over there and hurt or kill something, that's what would put
in the in the aggression category for me.
OK, I would agree. I've no nothing to add on that

(14:40):
specific thing. How do we define aggression?
So then thinking through as trainers we often see and I I
think all the trainers listeningwill have dealt with this a lot.
Very often people misuse the word aggressive.
And I've just learned through time, I have to ask a lot more
questions because they use it inplace of the word assertive.

(15:00):
And at least in, in my opinion, And then you could say it's
semantics, But when someone says, hey, my dog's, you know,
aggressive around his food, especially if there's other dogs
around, well, I picture intent to harm, right?
Like actually like, I'll bite you if you touch my food.
And then we ask more questions and it's like, oh, no, he just
eats really, really fast. Or he'll jump to get it out of
my hand. Like, OK, we want to fix that.

(15:22):
That's not ideal. That's not great, but that's
certainly not aggressive in my book.
So I and, but and I've been burned by that.
What burned is the word, but youknow, it's through.
In the past, I didn't ask enoughquestions sometimes because I
heard aggressive. I'm like, OK, they define
aggressive like I do. And then as we get into it, I'm
like, wait, this is what the dogdoes.
Like this is not aggressive. And then like, yeah, he just

(15:44):
does whatever. So it is important as trainers
that we're asking those questions and then for owners,
it's not really your job, but the better you can explain
things to your trainer, you know, and the better you can try
to prevent those mix UPS, you know, the better training you're
going to get, of course. And I think really that's the

(16:04):
kind of the the best point of this podcast, right, is if we
can get most people to have a general understanding of what
these words are, we can eliminate a lot of confusion and
actually handle your problems, you know, a lot faster, at least
on the owner side. But I've, I've had that happen a
lot actually, you know, where they tell me that the dog is
food aggressive. And what they mean is that when

(16:28):
they're sitting on the couch eating snacks and stuff like
that, the the dog is actively trying to snatch food out of
their hand, not actually trying to hurt them over their own
food. Where the, and now I'm trying to
set up like, great, let's grab his bowl.
Let's get some some dog food, maybe some peanut butter.
And they're like, well, it doesn't really happen there.

(16:48):
It happens on the couch. And I'm like, oh, OK, well
that's kind of weird, I guess. Let's throw food all over the
couch and see what happens. Let me ask you this is a fear
aggressive I got. We use the word fear aggressive,
right? Fear aggression fairly often is.
Let's say there's a border collie that's terrified of new

(17:08):
people and someone walks into the house.
The dog runs off, doesn't want anything to do with them spark
and it's growling. But it it leaves and it's
sitting down like up by its dog bed.
And the person walks over and puts his hand like to pet the
dog for, you know, the person's being friendly but tries to pet
him and the dog nails him in thehand, draws blood.
Is that dog aggressive? I wouldn't say that that dog is

(17:32):
aggressive. That would be in an that it
would be kind of hard. Again, I, I did throw out there
in the beginning of the podcast dangerous Dog or, you know, like
things like that. That would be in a category
similar to that. One of the reasons is, is that
it'll bite if it feels the need to, it's willing to bite.

(17:53):
But that's also a dog where a lot of people will say I never
saw it coming or that showed no signs or anything like that,
right, But that dog had no intentions of hurting you until
you pursued it, right? It tried to get away, found a a
corner to kind of hang out in and try and protect yourself.
And as you continue to apply pressure, it then bit.

(18:16):
So to me not an aggressive dog it at least based on that
scenario. Well, I tricked you.
The dog also will attack people in other scenarios.
You're wrong. You know, I, I would agree with
you on that. And I don't know how useful this

(18:37):
is for people to think about. But to me, a dog is aggressive,
like we said, when it has the intention to do harm, where it
will bite, you know, and you could see it as either an
unprovoked bite or, you know, it's, it's choosing to go do
that, right, Versus a fearful dog.
You know, that's truly staying away from someone and is showing

(18:59):
all these warning signs of please leave me alone, Please
leave me alone. And then you keep touching them
until that bites you. It's hard to see that as
aggression, right? And hard to see that as
certainly not an intention to doharm.
Had an intention to get away from you and then you kept
going. It's kind of like a person who's
uncomfortable with you and you keep trying to hug them and they

(19:20):
say, dude, get away from me. And you keep trying to hug and
they say, please get away from me.
You keep trying to hug and then they do whatever, right?
Kick you in the shin. Right.
Kick in the shin, Kick in the balls, head butt you.
Who knows? Right throat strike.
That would be an assertive, fearful person to help.
Somebody and you know, obviouslyI say that in kind of a joking

(19:41):
way, but you would never look atthat person and say, oh, they're
aggressive. No, of course, right.
They wanted left alone. Then they gave you a lot of
warning signs. Please leave me alone.
You'd either just ignored them completely or didn't understand
them. And that is one of the problems,
the lack of understanding, right?
That's a good point. For sure.
With humans, obviously they keepsaying it.
Well, you get that they want left alone and you're choosing

(20:03):
purposely to ignore it. With dogs, a lot of humans
don't. And you obviously you can find
all those videos of dog bites online where someone like the
news reporter goes to hug them, Alan Wah.
And the dogs like, why, you know, whale, why staring at them
and they're like, who's a good boy and hug them and it nails
them in the face. There were a lot of warning
signs, but the person just had no idea what those signs were.

(20:24):
Right. For sure now that leads me into
also the whole food aggression category.
It's a it's a funny one. It's one that there's weird
lines kind of drawn all into thecategory because for some dogs,
let's say it's AI don't know I'mI'm making this upright, but

(20:47):
like a, a schnauzer who's got food and if you were to grab the
food, it would give you a quick bite and then continue eating.
Is that an aggressive dog to you?
It's a good, good question. Now, I mean, most of the time
what I would say is the dog doeshave an intention to do harm

(21:10):
there. To do harm or to correct?
Well, OK, I mean if it like if it gave like a little half snap
and didn't break skin and went back to eating, then you can say
like clearly didn't try to do harm right it.
Didn't do any. Harm, and I mean maybe mentally,
maybe you're scared now, but physically you're fine.

(21:31):
But you know most food aggressive dogs will bite right?
For sure, you can make the case stay away from their food.
I think that's a stupid argumentto make, right?
Like it's, you know, we need to solve for that.
But when the dog is guarding their food, you know, assuming
that they're like they're not fearful, they're not like a
truly fearful dog and would backaway, right?

(21:54):
So if you say, how is this any different?
If the dog's terrified beyond belief and you walk up to a
while it's eating, it's going tobe like and run off right to get
away from you. But this dog is not in this
food. Aggressive dog right there.
Like do not, do not touch my food or I will hurt you.
Yeah. And I think that that's a
fairpoint, right? They they don't necessarily have

(22:15):
to bite down as hard as I possibly can, but there's always
differences, right? I then think about, let's say
there's Rottweiler and and I'm not trying to pick on anybody,
but let's say that there's a Rottweiler who's got his bowl of
food and you walk into the room,right?
And they charge after you and grab your arm and start, you

(22:38):
know, really laying into you. Like that to me would be the
clearest sign of food aggressionever.
That that seems reasonable, right?
That someone could actually encounter because it left the
food. It's specifically charged after
you and then wanted to do harm as opposed to just trying to
growl and get tents and give allthese warning signs as you're

(23:01):
slowly kind of approaching the food bowl and then kind of
correcting you afterwards. Now, how much of this is
relevant, I don't know. But since we're getting into the
weeds about what words mean whatyou know there, there is a
difference to me between the two.
Sure, and there is the scenario like this is an outlier, but the
dog that was just rescued that hasn't had access to enough food

(23:26):
and it's really hungry. It's used to fighting other dogs
for his food and doesn't have tobe fighting like mauling, but
you know, it's jostling and fighting and scuffling to get
food. It's really hungry.
It's scared of you in the household.
You walk up and the dog doesn't want to leave the food because
it's so hungry and it's not surewhen it's next meal will come
from and it bites. Could that be a dog is not

(23:48):
actually aggressive. He's just truly fearful.
And after a few days in the home, not only would he chill
out with his food, you know, with his feeding, but if he's
less excited by the food, he might still be willing to guard
it. But he, you know, his fear might
overtake his hunger at that point.
Or you walk up and he runs away,you know, but when he's so and
that's an outlier, that's an uncommon scenario, but that does

(24:08):
happen. So the opposite of of your
Rottweiler in that scenario, right?
The one that'll attack, Well, why don't we define, let's try
to define what's a dangerous dog.
And I think we can define this like the same way we're defining
the others. And then there's a couple ways
we could take this conversation.But what?
What's a dangerous dog to you? You know a dangerous dog to me

(24:33):
this, so this is going to sound strange.
A dangerous dog to me is a dog that will bite and is
significant enough to do damage.Why they will bite is the
difference right? Was it a fearful dog that you
pursued or was it truly an aggressive dog just wanted to to

(24:55):
to hurt you? You know, in both of those kind
of scenarios, this is where thatfearful dog actually joins the
pack of of a category, right? It it can be a dangerous dog
because there are some people that will not read signs.
I'm a dog person is perfectly fine.
I've never met a dog that doesn't like me.
And then they get bit in the face, right?
Like these are these are things that actually do happen and that

(25:18):
can be considered. I would consider that a
dangerous dog. This is where it always gets
kind of goofy to me. You know a dangerous dog is only
half the equation, right? It's the it's the situation or
environment that they got themselves into and usually
that's to the fault of the owner.

(25:41):
So there's going to be a lot of holes in our logic here if
someone wanted to point, and feel free to point it out in the
comments if you see big exceptions to all of this.
But to me, a dangerous dog, it'scomes down to how likely are
they to do a significant amount of harm?
And we can try to define likely or harm, but I think we all know

(26:03):
what I'm talking about, right? Is it like every dog could be
dangerous? I guess it would be one point,
right? But you wouldn't call it a
dangerous dog. Every dog, including a tiny
little dog like a Chihuahua, could bite you in the face and
that'd be very dangerous if it grabs onto the tip of your nose.
So every including a friendly dog who's never done that
before. So any dog in theory could be

(26:24):
dangerous. But when I use the word
dangerous dog, I'm thinking hidelike a decent likelihood of it
hurting somebody and that hurt being substantial.
And the, the, the, the more substantial the injury, then the
more dangerous it is, even if the chance of it hurting them,
even if the odds are going down.Meaning a dog that's really

(26:48):
like, I don't know, reasonably likely in the wrong scenario to
snap at someone and draw blood is to me way less dangerous than
a dog who has like a 5% chance of having an issue.
But if it does, it's proven it'll grab hold and shake.
That dog is way more dangerous, even though it's less likely to
happen. At least you know, in my book.
And these are important conversations to have with

(27:09):
clients is let's talk through how dangerous is your dog,
right? What are the scenarios where it
could hurt somebody and for themto understand?
And this, I think you said this a second ago, Nelson, that
fearful dogs can be dangerous for sure.
And the less warning signs they have, the more dangerous they
are because then almost no one can, you know, can read them

(27:32):
except for a dog expert or someone who got lucky.
You know, they have very few warning signs or next to no
warning signs and they're willing to lash out when you pet
them. That becomes a big problem.
And you know, a dog expert couldlisten and say, well, I would
never pet a new dog. I'd call him to me.
And if he's fearful you're not going to get it, you're not
going to have an issue. Like that's true for a dog
expert, but the vast majority ofthe world is not.

(27:54):
So a fearful dog, in my opinion,can absolutely be a dangerous
dog. Even though it's not an
aggressive dog, even though it doesn't want to do harm, it
could still mess someone up pretty bad.
And there's a may be a reasonable likelihood of it
happening. Definitely, I can agree with
that definition for sure. So.

(28:15):
Because it doesn't really go forintent, right?
Because the intent can change. You know, it's just are you
capable of danger of and then how likely is it to actually
happen, right? So kind of like you were saying
is likelihood and the amount of danger that you actually pose.

(28:35):
Yeah. So, you know, I, I talk through
this with clients all the time, like basically when we're seeing
aggression cases or fear cases, like how, how dangerous is your
dog? And we, I play out the scenarios
that seem relevant for that dog and I tell them this might be
kind of like a, a reasonable worst case scenario of what I
could see your dog doing. You need to be aware of that and

(28:58):
when it rises to the point of killing somebody, like they need
to be aware of that, right. If you're like, I don't think
this is like certainly 100% chance, but it's a big dog, it's
a corso. It has messed up someone's hand
and arm. If the person's small, like
there's to say this dog would never kill someone is would be a
lie. Like there's definitely a chance
of that. Like to me, clients need to hear

(29:21):
that and we need to walk through, you know, all the
scenarios of how dangerous they are and including the opposite
end of the spectrum where you'relike this dog, it would never
kill somebody. But he doesn't give many warning
signs. He's got all these triggers.
You have enough friends over, he's going to bite someone in
the face, right? You know, like, unless you're
managing it really carefully andthen we talk about all of that.

(29:41):
And so that's, that's kind of a really good point to what I was
saying where it is half on the owner, right?
So to put the dog in a situationwhere it's going to be more or
less dangerous. And so often times, you know,
dangerous dogs are dogs of absent minded people, right?
It's it's not the the personality of the dog

(30:04):
necessarily, it's the fact that they were put into other
situations that they were not going to thrive in.
Well, how about a couple examples?
I I've got one just from yesterday that's kind of fresh
in my mind. So I worked with it was there
were two dogs and mainly worked with one Australian shepherds

(30:25):
and the the one dog has major issues around us crate.
So has had crate problems, you know, for years.
And so I had never met the dog. So I was working on someone
being able, like another person being able to get the dog out of
the crate. And so I got near the crate and
the dog went bananas, right? Put my hand out.

(30:47):
Dog is snapping and snarling. This will be a video actually.
So I've got like 30 minutes of footage.
So anyone who's interested, that'll be posted at some point.
That dog, like, was he dangerousin that moment?
Yeah. I mean, if I'd put my finger in
the cage, he would have bit the shit out of it.
No question. Like like 100%.
Now it's easy to avoid. Just I could just not put my

(31:09):
finger in the cage and like, youknow, I walk by, he lunges and
growls and I could leave. So very easy to avoid.
But the follow up question wouldbe, what is that dog aggressive?
I would say absolutely not. And if you watch the video,
you'll see the dog has, you know, I don't know how we
learned, but he has crate issues.
But a lot of them are motivated by a lack of trust.

(31:29):
And you'll see you when I go to slip lead them through the like
the top of the crate. He never once bites.
The lation shakes it. He doesn't go insane on it.
And then when I open the door, every time I reach for the
handle, the dog would just smashinto it snarling.
Then it was just a cheap wire crate.
And then I would, you know, pullthe, you know, the top bar, the
top pin. And I'd go to open it and he

(31:51):
would back up and sit down with his ears back.
And I've never once, I've never told the dog no.
I've never corrected him. I've never met him before.
And as soon as I would do that, he would back up and like ears
back. Then I would shut it and then I
would reach again to open it andhe would freak out and smash
into it. And then when I got, and then I
would open the door all the way and he went all the way in the
back. He's like, I don't know, 6080 LB

(32:14):
dog, hard to tell, sure, but youknow, all the way in the back
and looked nervous. And so I slip leaded him, got
him out of there and then took him off leash like 30 seconds
later in the backyard and he waschill and no issues.
And I say that because it'd be very easy, especially for a
newer trainer to tell the clientlike this dog is aggressive.
And to me, there is a big distinction there.

(32:35):
And what I explained to them waslike, there's no place with this
for this dog right now. There's no place for correction
in this scenario. He's not an aggressive dog.
He's not even really guarding his space.
I, I don't know exactly where this, you know, how this
developed over a period of years, but it was very clear
from the dog he did not want trouble.
So dangerous dog that a kid reaches in, they're going to get

(32:58):
bit big problem until we fix it.But certainly not an aggressive
dog and not a dog who wants to hurt anybody.
And I do think that's important for, you know, owners to
recognize and especially newer trainers to be able to have that
conversation because sometimes you also have someone saying,
oh, my dog's just fearful. He's not aggressive.
And you're like, true, he's still dangerous.

(33:18):
Here's why. And but it doesn't mean I don't
like him. Doesn't mean I think he's a bad
dog, but he's a dog that could hurt somebody.
And that is that's a really, really hard conversation for me
sometimes where the owners take the fact that I said that their
dog is dangerous as I hate your dog.

(33:39):
I don't necessarily hate your dog, but I can, you know, read
the writing on the wall, right It if you're going to choose to
manage your dog with food aggression, it automatically
goes into the category of dangerous dog.
Because if you're never testing it and working through it, we
never know where your dog actually is.

(33:59):
And then, you know, it buries a bone behind a pillow and your
kid goes to jump on the couch and gets mauled over it, right.
And like, oh, well, you I didn'tknow there was a bone there.
Well, your your dog probably shouldn't be hiding bones
either, you know, So again, that's not me hating the dog.
That's just understanding that it will probably develop

(34:21):
behaviors that will be dangerousin the future, right?
Or or depending on who's actually in the house, if it's
just you and your dog and no oneever comes over, less dangerous.
Never 0 but but less dangerous because there's less people to
make mistakes, you know? I agree.

(34:43):
Any examples you want to walk through?
I've got another one burning a hole in my brain, but if you've
got some you want to go go through, go for it.
Yeah, actually mine was just yesterday too.
I've been working with these. Whoa, we picked us a good time
for this. It actually.
Really was, yeah. And it's a terrier type of dog,

(35:04):
you know, definitely has some pit in it, but is much, much
taller. So could be like a pit hound
kind of thing in there and the dog is very fearful.
It is typically going to run away every single time.
So a lot of it inside the house is a ton of reactivity of the

(35:25):
dog is barking and and jumping and all that stuff and not
jumping on me. It will get to a certain point,
hold the line and then run off. If I continue to walk forward,
it runs off to find a a new safepoint to kind of start barking
at. Hi everyone.
This is Jason Ferguson and I'm the president of the
International Association of Canine Professionals.
Our organization is focused on three pillars, education,

(35:47):
certification and legislation. What that means is we help
educate our members to ensure that they're the best dog
trainers they can be. We also offer certifications so
that clients know that the trainers are true professional.
Our legislative efforts are focused on ensuring that
trainers have the freedom to choose the tools and techniques
that work best for the dogs and clients that they work with.

(36:09):
Join the ICP today for yourself and to protect the industry.
Our friends on the Balanced Dog Training Podcast support the ICP
and we hope you will as well. All right.
We had some technical difficulties back back to you.
You were starting to say something about a dog.
I remember it was pity something.

(36:31):
That's about all I got. Like a Pitbull, hound dog kind
of mix. Yeah.
And this is a dog that's fearful.
And typically, I wouldn't say that this is an aggressive dog,
but this is a kind of a really good example of what a dangerous
dog might actually be. Because when I go into the

(36:52):
house, the dog is very, very nervous, barks and shouts and
jumps, is really, really mild, wild and manic, looks very, very
intimidating, of course. But the dog never actually comes
up to the person. And even even the owners have
said no. The dog is way more likely to
just turn around and run away ifyou were to continue to approach

(37:15):
it rather than actually going upto you and trying to bite or
anything. But the reason I was there is
because it had bitten somebody and it was just kind of a
perfect storm of different stimulus that that all happened.
So the dog was super excited to go for a walk.
It pulled through the door. It was the first one to see a

(37:38):
delivery person as opposed to the owner.
And so then it started to go crazy, pulled the leash out of
the lady's hand, if I'm not mistaken.
And then ran right up to the person and bit.
Now again, the reason that this is dangerous is because the the
dog was able to actually bite somebody and actually did bite

(38:01):
somebody where typically it wouldn't.
But with all the extra stimulus,it being super, super excited,
not calm enough to think throughany type of situation, reacting
to the very first thing that it saw, just ran up without
thinking, got too close, startedbiting and then ran away.
You know, it's that kind of thing where it's it's a very,

(38:22):
very weird conversation to have with with the owners of no, I
don't think your dog is aggressive, but that doesn't
mean we don't have a lot of things that we need to work on
because it is potentially dangerous, right?
That situation could happen all over again.
And so we need, you know, her tospecifically be much calmer and

(38:42):
better around new strangers, newdogs, anything that it might be
scared of or nervous of, it needs to build up some
confidence so that it has the capabilities of actually
thinking through those situations.
I think it's a good way to frameit that basically the the number
of stimuli that need to be present to set the dog off.

(39:05):
The more of them it takes, you can make the argument, the less
dangerous it is. You know, when your dog can be
set off by two pretty common stimuli, It's, you know,
whatever it's sees its leash that already gets it excited and
then it sees a person and now it'll bite.
Well, that's going to happen a lot.
So that sounds pretty dangerous.But if you need something like

(39:28):
the dog is on a walk, he's already excited.
And he's only ever done this when like a bird flew right over
his head. He's jumped for the bird, then
the collar got tight, now he's frustrated and you tried to stop
him and he turned around and redirected on you.
And he's never ever, ever done anything like that.
Then obviously a lot less dangerous.

(39:49):
So how many stimuli is it takingand how reasonable is it to be
aggressive and in that scenario?And doesn't have to ever be like
reasonable like it. It makes perfect sense and it's
good. But can you see where the dog's
coming from? Where you're like, that was a
lot of wild stuff that happened at once and it is an animal?
Versus yeah, I put his leash on and he saw a person and he bit

(40:11):
him. Who would have thought that bird
was flying so low? But we've all been there right?
Where like you have a client tell you dogs got into a really
bad fight. And as you hear what happened
like that, I mean, there's a lotof dogs that would fight in that
scenario. They were already amped up.
They're chasing a squirrel. Squirrel falls out of the tree

(40:32):
right between them. You know, they go for it.
Squirrel start squealing as 1 kills it like that's you're in a
tough scenario at that point if you have some tough dogs and
they're in killing mode with a squirrel.
For sure. You know to get into a fight
between the two of them is a lotmore likely then than on your
daily walk. Yeah, and and in everyday life,

(40:53):
and I think that's again, the absent minded owner to their
credit to, you know, at least a little bit is the point is that
it doesn't happen every day. You know, again, the the point
is, is that you might not see this unless this these three
stimulus come together and then you're like, oh, wow, OK, my dog

(41:14):
can bite or can do something dangerous.
And therefore they're, they're put into a very trusting place
for the owner when they they might not, you know, deserve it
yet. All right, well, where do we go
from here? Do we?
Do you feel like we need to givean example of actually

(41:38):
aggressive dogs? Because we've both given
examples of ones that are not. I don't know.
I mean, like, I don't care one way or another, right?
We certainly can. I can pick a few out, but I
think most people probably know what an aggressive dog looks
like. Well, sort of, right, Because

(41:59):
they will also consider a lot offearful dogs to be aggressive
because they're barking, lungingand snapping.
That's fair. So, you know, if we just talk
through dangerous and aggressivedogs again for a minute, some
things we haven't really talked about is the warning signs.
And what are things you look at that make you more worried?

(42:21):
So for me, things that make me really worried are when a dog
seems confident in its aggression.
So like if a dog seems like it'sin like it's prey, Dr. is being
exercised and it's aggressive. And I don't mean like just a
German shepherd. That's like barking when it sees
something. But a dog that seems like it
really wants to like hunt and kill something, that dog is

(42:45):
going to be really, really dangerous, of course.
And it might not present as barking and growling.
The GSP we talked about earlier might look a lot worse.
It might be twisting because it's going to be on a harness
and the owners are going to be trying to give it treats to make
it stop. And it's going to be loud and
crazy. That's going to be more
noticeable than some dogs that have a really strong prey Dr.

(43:07):
and are willing to fight and kill.
Sometimes they're quiet and they're not showing a lot of
intensity. And there's a few breeds that
are more likely to do this. And when they do, they're way,
way, way more dangerous, not only because it's unpredictable
to the owner, but to me that says they have a confidence in
fighting and they're not going to bite once and then let go.

(43:29):
You know a lot of dogs, I know you know this, Nelson, But for
listeners, a lot of dogs bite once and stop, even if it's in
the face, which is really bad. A lot of dogs will snap once
when someone hugs them or whatever happens and they let go
right away and they're done and they're just trying to get out
of there. A truly dangerous dog is
probably not a danger. I should say it.
A dangerous, aggressive dog is not going to do that.

(43:52):
You know it's going to bite and hold on or bite multiple times.
It's. Going to be a real.
Fight. And sometimes you can only tell
that by just saying. When you know, you know, and as
a trainer, sometimes it's hard to explain that to people, but
where you just say like, I mean,don't you ever get the feeling
about a person in a certain scenario?

(44:13):
You can get the same about a dogif you know dogs well.
And sometimes you meet a dog andyou know that dog is actually
aggressive and actually dangerous and you haven't even
seen anything yet to, you know, to actually show you that, but
you just know. Yeah.
And the, the hard part is, you know, like what are you actually
looking for it? It's kind of like body language

(44:35):
where it's, it's a combination of different things that I see
that will tell me one way or another as opposed to I see one,
you know, 1 indicator. And that means, for sure, that
the dog is dangerously aggressive.
Yeah, and you know, we can expand, I guess a little bit in
some of those indicators. Body language goes a long way.

(44:57):
And it's probably not helpful topeople to say when you know, you
know, and if you, if you have experience, you'll know like
that's obviously not very helpful.
You know, things that'd be looking at would be all of their
body language. So one is which way are they
leaning? And it sounds silly, but look at
a dog that's posturing and barking and growling or just
making you uncomfortable. What are are they leaning

(45:18):
towards you or away from you that that's a thing, right.
So I would for that I would lookat their eyes do they are their
eyes? And people say they don't know
how to read dog body language but many people do.
But look at the dogs face does it look scared or angry?
And you're looking at like, where are his eyebrows?
Are they up? Are they scrunched down?
Is he staring at you with like with narrowed eyes?

(45:40):
Are his eyes wide and look nervous?
What about his mouth? Is it kind of clenched?
And are the commisores, the backof it jutting forward?
All of those things, the same thing in like an angry human
scowl. It is amazing the similarities
in a dog. And you see the eyes, the mouth,
the eyebrows down, all of that leaning towards you.

(46:01):
Tail is relevant. It doesn't tell the whole story.
But tail up, especially if it's up and twitching, I see that
stuff. And I don't see a fearful dog.
I see a dog who's ready to rock'n'roll.
That's enough for me, right? Like when I say that's enough,
it doesn't mean I'll label that dog aggressive and that's the
end of it. But right now I look at him like
everything I know about dogs tells me this dog is actually

(46:24):
aggressive and wants to do some harm here.
And you can make some arguments like, but it's his life
experience. It's motivated by fear maybe.
But at this point in time, he's aggressive.
He has the intention to do harm regardless of where it came
from. If he was just fearful, we'd see
that in his body language. For sure, yeah.
If they're walking high, stepping like a horse, you know,

(46:46):
very, very stiff walks would be a decent indicator with with all
of the other stuff, the tail up the eyes, you know, narrowed and
come sewers forward, probably gearing up for a for a brawl.
He's cruising for a bruising. Why would you be cruising for a
bruising? Yeah, in that situation.

(47:07):
Cruising for it and you know, they're all explained to a
client that we don't I haven't even asked enough questions yet
to know where it has come from and maybe we'll never know,
right Maybe they rescued the dogor who knows what but regardless
of what got it to this point at this point, this is an
aggressive, dangerous dog. It just is and it sucks if it
was caused by someone being meanto it or whatever, but you

(47:30):
would, we're not going to call it a fearful dog just because
you think someone treated it meanly in the past.
It's not presenting like fear atthis point.
Some dogs are mistreated and they become, they shut down,
they become very timid and fearful then.
And I'd say that's a fearful dog.
And if this one is showing all those signs, we have to be able
to recognize and be comfortable as trainers telling people that
because way too many trainers tell people what they want to

(47:54):
hear and kind of want to hide the like sugarcoat everything.
And there's a time and a place to like, I don't want to say
sugarcoat. Like we're never going to say
like he's not dangerous when he is.
Like there's a time in a place where you're trying to build
rapport with the person. You don't see the dog right away
and be like, yeah, dude, it's your dog super aggressive and

(48:14):
dangerous. Like you're not there's you can
be tactful, but you need to be honest for sure.
Definitely because it's important for the for the owners
to, you know, make all their decisions accordingly of OK, you
know, this is a more dangerous dog and therefore I need to be
more guarded with him or, you know, make better security

(48:37):
choices and that kind of stuff because consequences can be
pretty dire. And I would encourage everybody,
you know, if you're not a dog trainer, you just listen to the
show because you like dogs and dog training in general, do as
much studying of dog body language as you can.
It comes up with your own dog. But also when you see an off

(48:59):
leash dog approaching or a relative's dog, the more you
know about dog body language thebetter.
And you know, we've got a full episode on dog body language.
So I would encourage listening to that, but listen to that in
conjunction of this one. We've got an episode on dog tax
that I think is really useful for a lot of people.
But put all that stuff together and then go watch some videos of

(49:20):
dogs barking at or biting peopleand start seeing it.
And when you have listened to the episodes, you have the
knowledge, but you haven't really seen it in practice.
And then you see it, you can't Unsee it.
You're like, oh, wow, that's what you were talking about.
That's so obvious in hindsight. And then when you'll see you see
dogs, you'll start very quickly.When we walk and I see dogs, I'm

(49:41):
looking at every dog to see how dangerous I think they might be.
You know, what are the odds of this dog getting off its leash?
If it does, what are the odds ofit hurting us?
And if it trying to hurt us and it does, what's the likelihood
of severe injury or death? And that's a calculus I'm doing
basically every, I'm sorry, every dog I see on leisure off

(50:01):
it's and to me, everybody shouldbe doing that.
Definitely and. We got into our car once years
ago. Have I ever told you that story?
Nelson of we're in a small town in rural Iowa.
Karen and I were walking Keenan Small, so an American bulldog
and a mastiff mix, and we walkedby yard and it was like, I don't

(50:22):
just white trash, like chain link fence that had like, boards
and shit. And they'll do it to like, fix
holes. Like it was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, absolutely
ludicrous. And there's these dogs.
One was a rot, I can't remember what else.
They were like slamming into thefence.
And you could see all the body language is bad, bad body
language. And to me, that was enough.

(50:42):
I looked at him like that fence has a high likelihood of
failing. No question.
Those dogs, if they get out, arecertainly coming towards us.
They're large, powerful breeds, and every part of their body
language tells me that they're actually aggressive.
So we immediately went back to the car as quickly as we could
without running, trying to like not get them more excited and

(51:03):
got our dogs in the car and left.
And we just went far, far away. All right, what's what's the
point? I'm not walking within five
blocks of that house. There's no sense.
I never walked by there again. There's just absolutely no sense
in it. And that calculus would change
if they didn't look like they were as intense.
They were just yelping and barking and carrying on.
But long winded way of saying everyone should have an

(51:25):
understanding of dog body language so they could look at
it and say that breed coupled with that fence, coupled with
the scary body language, this isa very, very big risk.
We need to be out of here. And I think that's the biggest
reason why, right, Why you should care is risk management.
You know, there's plenty of house calls that I've been on
where we'd be walking in the neighborhood, and then I can see

(51:48):
a huge dog with half of its chest over the fence already.
And I'm like, hey, you know what, actually, it'd be better
if we went this way instead of that way.
There's just absolutely no benefit to walking past that dog
if it could potentially get overthe fence.
Yeah, I've told so many clients over the years like I would
never walk by that that fence oryard again under any

(52:09):
circumstances. It's just not worth the risk.
And if you don't know, and then one problem is there's so many
barking, wild, crazy dogs out there.
I think a lot of people just get, I don't know, conditioned
to that or desensitized maybe isa better word to just the idea
of like, like a kid when they hear a dog barking behind a

(52:30):
fence, they're like, oh, whoa, what's happening, right?
But through time, they start to realize, like, that's no big
deal. That happens a lot.
There's always dogs barking behind fences.
But if you don't know your barksand you can't start to decipher,
like that's a really threateningbark right there.
And then you and you look at thefence and see some worries with
the structure of the fence itself.
You know, that's a recipe for disaster.

(52:51):
And so many people just ignore every barking dogs.
Like that's what dogs do. And my neighbors let their dogs
bark. So what's the worry?
I think you're absolutely right.That's a really, really good
point of you become so complacent because you see the
bad behavior all the time that you stop taking it seriously.
And that's funny enough. That's, that's one of my biggest
reasons of fixing the window. You know, barrier frustration or

(53:15):
barrier reactivity, if you want to call it that.
You know, a lot of that stuff, you stop being able to trust
your dog and what they're barking at if they're always
freaking barking, right? And so you lose one of the
biggest capabilities that most dogs have over us, which is the
fact that they pick up on strangers or people or things,

(53:37):
you know, much faster than we do.
But yeah, then it's like, oh, well, every dog barks and every
dog growls. And you see some of those videos
with, like, rats where they're growling because they're being
hugged and everything like that.And like, oh, he's just talking.
It's no big deal. And like, yeah, yours might be
just talking someone else's. Guaranteed going to get bit in

(53:59):
the face for trying to do the same thing because they're
conditioned that it's just talking.
It's no big deal. Yeah, and without getting too
deep on that, that's one of the challenges of social media.
Maybe the challenge isn't the right word.
The downsides of it, especially when it comes to complicated
topics like dog training. You can see a 42nd video and you

(54:20):
don't get nearly enough detail no matter how good the person
producing it is. There's only so much you can get
in less than a minute and and ifit has the right level of
detail, no one's going to watch it because it's going to be
boring. If you have like 9 things saying
so, then that's the problem, right?
They see that video of the rot grumble and they then you see
three more in your feed and you're like oh that's really
cute. And then you pet a rot and it

(54:41):
starts growling. You're like, that's just a
Rottweiler grumble. That's just what they do.
Yeah, and then you're meeting with your plastic surgeon to
figure out if you can reattach your fingers or not, which I.
Don't think that's got a high level of of success there.
Man, no. And not laughing about, you

(55:03):
know, the the real life scenarios When I was still in
the Chicago area used to get a lot of referrals from a hand
surgeon whose dog I trained And man, the dogs that we would get
then were, oh, you probably saw some of them just bonkers crazy
because that you know, so many bites or I'm sorry, so many
surgeries in her on hands are because of dog bites.

(55:25):
And the worst one I ever saw wasthe lady had picked up a tissue
that the napkin or whatever likeunder the table that the dog was
resource guarding paper paper products and just just demolish
the hand do. You see that all the time.
Well, in that positive note, should we wrap up?
Let's do it. Well, thank you for listening

(55:47):
everybody. I hope this episode is helpful.
If there's anything you want us to dive deeper on or just other
episode topics, let us know. But if there's a point of this,
like for us, it might, it's easyto maybe talk about something in
passing and maybe you think it'smore important and would like us
to dive in deeper. Let us know.
Also, if you think that we're stupid and don't know what we're

(56:07):
talking about, I'd like to read those as well.
So go ahead and and comment those.
Done. All right.
Thanks for listening everybody. See ya.
Sit, stay. Press playing.

(56:27):
Let's begin. Welcome to the pack.
You are officially in. Treats, leashes, shaping the
game. Mark, you're right.
It's never the same. Big dogs, small dogs, every
kind. If you love canines, TuneIn
rewind laugh alone.