January 19, 2024 • 17 mins
When Dogs Roll Over for "Belly Rubs," What Does it Really Mean?
In my latest episode of Dog Aggression Answers, I delve into the complexities of canine aggression, focusing on the mixed signals dogs exhibit, like rolling over for a belly rub while simultaneously displaying aggression towards certain people. I explain that a dog's decision to roll over is often a sign of fear or submission, not an invitation for affection.
This behavior, known as 'submissive rolling' is classified as a 'calming signal' or 'appeasing behavior' and is one of the ways dogs indicate discomfort or fear, akin to a human's gesture of raising hands in surrender. This is a misunderstanding where humans interpret this as a desire for physical contact, which can actually exacerbate the dog's fear.
Further in the podcast, I explore the factors that influence a dog's reaction to strangers, including the size and gender of the person, their movements, and how they engage with the dog. Dogs often find men more intimidating due to their size and their more mechanical types of movements. Interestingly, dogs may react more positively to people who show indifference or less interest in them, as their lack of engagement with the dog can be less threatening.
My advise to dog owners on how to manage interactions between their anxious dogs and strangers: my key recommendations include instructing people not to look at, touch, or talk to the dog and to maintain a distance, especially if the dog shows signs of fear or stress. This approach can significantly improve the dog's comfort and behavior.
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About Scott Sheaffer
Scott Sheaffer, CCBC-KA, CDBC, CPDT-KA, is a certified dog behavior consultant who has worked with thousands of dog owners and their aggressive dogs. Scott specializes in the assessment and treatment of fear, anxiety, aggression, and phobias in dogs six months and older.
Disclaimer
If you have a dog who is aggressive and dangerous to humans, it is important that you immediately consult directly with an experienced and certified canine behavior consultant who specializes in dog aggression to humans. Take proper measures to ensure that your dog is never in a position to injure anyone. The information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is neither intended nor implied to replace the need for the direct involvement of an experienced and certified canine behavior consultant who specializes in dog aggression to humans. Scott Sheaffer, the Grumpy Dogs podcast and USA Dog Behavior, LLC, are not liable for any incidents or outcomes resulting from following the advice given in this podcast.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Sheaffer (00:01):
Welcome to Dog Aggression Answers with Dog
Behavior Specialist ScottSheaffer.
Scott is certified in dogbehavior by two international
animal behavior organizationsand has worked with thousands of
dogs.
His focus is primarily onaggressive dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Dog Aggression Answers, where we
show you how to address yourdog's aggression using
scientific and humane methods.
My name is Scott Sheaffer andit's my mission to help you
understand your dog's aggressionand what you can do about it.
In each episode you'll learnwhy your dog is acting
aggressively, ways to prevent itand treatment concepts you can
(00:41):
implement with your buddy.
Right now, some people havedogs that are aggressive to
people, primarily outside oftheir family, but their dog is
kind of okay with others andseems to show this by rolling
over for a belly rub when theycome into their home, for
example.
If you have an aggressive dogthat does this sometimes, what's
(01:03):
going on?
Is this behavior what itappears to be, or is it
something else?
Let me break this down for youtoday.
First, in most cases when a dogrolls over, it's called, by the
way, submissive rolling or asubmissive posture.
It's actually called a calmingsignal, also known as a calming
(01:27):
behavior.
What are calming signals andcalming behaviors?
These are things that dogs dowhen they're nervous and they
want to signal to typicallyanother dog, but also to humans
that hey, I'm kind of doneplaying here and I need to chill
out for a second.
I'm just going to just book outfor a second here, so leave me
(01:49):
alone.
Certainly, rolling over is oneof the big ones.
They're doing this becausethey're scared of that person or
a dog, but in this case we'retalking about people.
They're afraid, they're fearful, the way to think about this.
This is the same as a dog doingthe human equivalent of a hands
up like hey, I'm good, right.
(02:12):
Or when people show their palmsto someone saying I have no
arms here, I'm not.
Hey, we'll just stop for asecond.
Or hands up like this hey, juststop.
Like what you might do whenyou're being questioned by the
police, for example.
It's just a human calmingsignal or a calming behavior hey
, I mean, you know, harm, don'thurt me.
(02:34):
And some dogs might even go sofar as to urinate on their backs
when they roll over like this.
So here they are, they flipover and then they may also
urinate.
And, by the way, this urinationcan be both involuntary and
voluntary.
It's kind of interesting, isn'tit?
They will sometimes are soscared when they roll over that
(02:58):
urine starts coming out.
And then sometimes they do iton purpose and that's dog talk.
For hey, man, I'm reallysurrendering for you here, but
why aggression to some peopleand this rolling over behavior
to others?
Why is that?
(03:18):
When your dog runs into peopleout on the street, for example,
and starts to bark and growl,what's causing that?
And the other side is, why somepeople does she roll over?
Before I answer that, I justwant to remind everybody that
you can contact me by writtentext or voicemail.
(03:39):
Love to hear from everybody.
Just go to USADogBehaviorcomand select the podcast tab.
You can send me either awritten text or you can leave a
voicemail message for me.
Like I said, I love gettingnotes from you guys and
voicemails.
Now let's move on again to whywe see aggression to some people
(04:00):
but rolling over to others.
When your dog encountersstrangers out in public, fearful
dogs normally react by usingaggression to keep the scary
stranger away.
And for those of you who havebeen following my podcast and
articles and videos and so forth, you know that's the essence of
(04:22):
fear aggression.
Just the essence of why dogsare aggressive is they are
scared and they're trying tokeep the scary stranger away
from them and to create adistance.
But they can also react in somecases by showing deference or
submission by, as we've beentalking about, rolling over.
So it's an AB thing.
(04:43):
So in one case I'm going toshow a person aggression to keep
them away and in another caseI'm still afraid, I'm still
scared, but I'm going to rollover and give the hands up oh,
oh, you know, don't hurt me,please, thing.
So the person won't bother.
And when dogs roll over, it canlook like they're wanting a
(05:05):
belly rub.
I can't tell you how far fromthe truth that is.
The last thing that dog wantsis a belly rub, because think
about the premise here.
The premise is hey, I'm rollingover because I'm scared, I'm
trying to show you that I'm notgoing to hurt you, please leave
me alone.
My hands are raised, all that.
And now the person is comingdown getting right over them.
(05:26):
That's bad.
Hovering over a scared dog isvery bad, and then touching them
is also very bad.
So we're rubbing the dog, we'retouching them, we're hovering
over them.
Now the dog is going oh heck,what is going on here?
This is even worse.
So you can see where this isnot a.
That's not a good response fromthe human.
But what makes dogs chooserolling over as a response
(05:48):
versus aggression In many cases,if the dog is really
overwhelmed by this scary person, this fearful person, person
they're afraid of, they'llchoose rolling over Okay.
So this isn't always true, butin most cases they'll default to
aggression growl, bark or bite.
(06:10):
You know, I starts out with abark, then a growl, then a bite.
It's kind of a typical sequence, but in some cases they're so
scared and so overwhelmed theydon't even try that, and I think
part of the reason for that isthey don't think it's going to
work too well, so they just rollover, show their underbelly and
saying please do not hurt me.
But each dog is different whenit comes to this, and the
(06:33):
following things can affecttheir response, and there's
about four things I want tomention here.
One is the size of the person.
So clearly, a large person, formost dogs, is more scary versus
a small woman Okay, I saw asmall person typically like a
woman, okay, versus like a largeman.
(06:55):
The other big variable and thisis really interesting, a lot of
research has been done on thisrecently and that is men are
more scary to dogs than women.
Well, I think one of thereasons everybody knows we get
it Men are typically, as I'vejust mentioned, bigger than
(07:16):
women and they look scarier.
But there's been someinteresting research done in the
last few years that suggestsand I think it's kind of common
sense actually that there'sanother reason why dogs are
typically more scared of men andthat is how they move.
Women typically are moremechanical and kind of jerky, if
(07:40):
you will, in their movement andthat's more scary to dogs,
where women typically not allwomen of course, but women
generally tend to move morefluidly and it's less scary
looking to dogs.
So that's another thing thatcan affect how individual dogs
respond and decides whether theyuse aggression or they're going
(08:03):
to roll over.
Everyone would be the human.
Does the human overly engage?
The dog Is the human?
Does the human come in and giveit the old hi, how are you?
That voice pitches up and theyget all animated and I love dogs
so much and they start hoppingaround.
Well, their intentions are good, but the problem is, is that
(08:26):
really scares Dogs?
If you already have a fearfuldog and then you have someone
come in your home that isjumping all around and Making
noises and reaching toward thedog, that's going to make the
dog more scared for sure.
And the last thing would beJust kind of building on the
(08:46):
last point, people that are loudand have lots of movement tend
to scare dogs more.
Now, before we move on, I wantto make one last comment about
the different things that scaredogs.
And here's a real interestingone, and it took me a few years
in my practice to figure thisout.
I would have clients come infrom time to time when they
(09:09):
would say things like but Beckydoesn't even like dogs, yet my
dog's kind of okay with her.
Then another client might saywow, john could care less about
my dog.
I don't, he's just not a veryfriendly guy.
I didn't even care about my dog.
But the irony is my dogs kindof okay with him and it's not
okay with anyone else.
(09:30):
What's going on here?
It seems paradoxical, doesn'tit?
It's someone who doesn't likedogs.
The dog, a fearful dog, appearsto be okay with what.
It's actually quite explainablebased on what we're just
talking about.
If, if the person doesn't likedogs or is not interested in
dogs, it's very likely thatthey'll ignore your dog or
(09:52):
ignore the dog.
And what does the dog think?
Oh, this is great, I'm not soscared of this person.
He's not showing interest in me, he's not doing scary movements
and making loud so and soundsthat scare me, and and so the
dog does better and that'spretty cool and it's not obvious
, but I've come to see it overand over.
(10:12):
And so what we want to do, kindof ironically, we want our
visitors to emulate what thosepeople do with our dog.
I know this sounds kind of funny, but it takes more confidence
for a dog to use aggression Thanit does submission.
So we're talking about why dosome dogs roll over and some use
aggression?
(10:32):
And, by the way, dogs will flipflop too.
By the way, I call theseambivalent dogs, meaning
sometimes they'll showaggression and sometimes they'll
flip over, and One of the otherreasons that they choose this
is through confidence.
Dogs actually transition fromRolling over onto aggression to
being okay.
(10:52):
Let's break that down a littlebit more.
A dog that is really low onconfidence it's gonna easily be
overwhelmed by people,especially ones like we were
just talking about is prettylikely to roll over and say
Please don't hurt me.
Once they gain a littleconfidence and this is the irony
once we start behaviormodification a lot of times they
will begin to improve and theyactually Start to get a little
(11:15):
aggressive.
So it actually takes a littlemore confidence for a dog to be
aggressive to a scary thingversus just rolling over and
they might start to bark orgrowl and certainly would.
We don't want them biting, ofcourse Then they transition to
if you continue behaviormodification to being okay
around strangers Okay, and thatbehavior modification I've
(11:36):
talked a lot about.
It has to do withDesensitization and counter
conditioning of the dog to theseUnfamiliar or scary strangers.
So now that you know all that,what do you do in these
situations to make your dog morecomfortable?
Well, let's give you a couplerules here and, by the way,
these are rules for the people,not for the dog.
(11:58):
We're helping the dog out bymanaging the people.
Think about that way.
First of all, they don't wantthe strangers attention.
It scares them, even thoughthese people are
well-intentioned.
I love dogs, all dogs love me,etc.
It scares them when people moveup to him and start giving him
attention.
(12:18):
And if you have a cute dog, thatis even more of a problem.
One of my dogs actually both mydogs, I think, are pretty cute
Luke and Charlie.
However, charlie is kind of asmaller cute dog, but I have a
pure white great Pyrenees.
He's huge, his name is Luke andhe's a people magnet and kids
and adults just come over andstart hugging on him and stuff,
(12:39):
which is really not a cool thingto do, and people don't even
ask me if it's okay to do that,which is really nuts.
You got to.
Really.
You want to get the permissionof the owner and make sure the
dog is safe and certainly don'thug dogs.
The thing is, luke's great withpeople.
We've really worked with him.
He's dynamite proof.
He can handle all this.
But the point is he's a magnet.
(13:00):
People want to go see him andif you have a dog like this that
people just can't stay awayfrom and they are afraid of
strangers, you've got a bigproblem here.
You need a lot more managementand you need to do really be
careful to do the things aboutwhat you do.
Here they are.
Here's how you manage peoplearound a dog that is afraid of
(13:20):
people and may even do bellyrubs A rollover for the belly
rub.
Quote, unquote.
Of course that's not reallywhat they're doing.
Instruct the person not to look, touch or talk to your dog.
They need to pretend that yourdog is invisible.
Don't look, touch or talk tothe dog.
Pretend they are invisible anddon't approach or move toward
(13:42):
the dog.
Stay your distance.
Let the dog, control thedistance and they should never,
ever, if the dog rolls over, rubthe dog's belly.
That dog is screaming to leaveme alone.
I don't want anything to dowith you.
When they do, it makes theperson even scarier and
perpetuates the fear.
In short, it's as simple asscary person to your dog should
(14:05):
never interact with your dog,period.
You will see an immediateimprovement.
When I go over to clients'houses when I'm doing a session
and I walk in and they have adog like this which is like 90%
of my practice I walk in andthey, almost without fails, say
this, something like this.
(14:26):
They go wow, you're a miracleworker.
I can't believe it.
All those good things thatpeople say about you are true,
et cetera.
Well, the truth is I'm not amiracle worker and, of course,
all the things people say aboutme are true the good things, of
course but I'm not a miracleworker because what am I doing?
I'm just not looking, touching,talking or approaching their
(14:47):
dog.
That's all I'm doing.
It's not rocket science.
You will see an immediateimprovement.
I've seen some people just notdo this and say, hey, I really
appreciate it.
If you not look, touch, talk orapproach my dog, he's afraid of
people or she's afraid ofpeople, and we're working on
this.
So you got to be a little bitfirm with some people because
people think, well, I'm sowonderful, your dog is going to
(15:10):
love me.
And, by the way, just a littlequick reminder here who makes
that call?
100% of the time your dog does,your dog makes the call as to
who's scary or not.
So this is something I want youto do right now and you do it
24, seven everywhere.
And one of my last episodes onmy podcast.
It's called If your Dog isAggressive to People, never Stop
(15:31):
Doing these Two Things.
Listen to that podcast episodebecause it really goes into
detail about that.
Don't look, touch, talk orapproach protocol for people
that your dog interacts with.
It just drills down on thatlittle bit.
If you like to learn more, alink to that episode is going to
be in the show notes.
So what is your to do?
Your to do right now is to getwith your family and coach them
(15:53):
on what we just talked about.
If you have one of these dogsthat's rolling over and people
are giving your dog belly rubs,you're going to get with them
and say, hey, when people comein to our home or when our dog
sees people out in public and hedoes that roll over for a belly
rub thing or what people thinkthat's what they're doing.
They are not to look, touch,talk or approach the dog period
in the story all the time.
(16:15):
That is your call to action.
Do that right now, and thatwraps up another episode of the
dog aggression answers video.
Thank you so much for joining metoday as we continue to explore
and understand the world of dogbehavior together.
If you've enjoyed today'scontent and want to delve deeper
into the world of dog behavior,make sure to follow and
(16:37):
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(17:00):
dog lovers like you and make abigger impact.
Scott Sheaffer (17:04):
Thank, you for watching this episode of dog
aggression answers with ScottSheaffer, and don't forget to
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We invite you to follow andsubscribe to our YouTube channel
and make sure to hit thenotifications button.
You can also go to our website,usabehaviorcom, for free
(17:25):
articles, free and premiumvideos and more.
Welcome to Dog Aggression Answers with Dog
Behavior Specialist ScottSheaffer.
Scott is certified in dogbehavior by two international
animal behavior organizationsand has worked with thousands of
dogs.
His focus is primarily onaggressive dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Dog Aggression Answers, where we
show you how to address yourdog's aggression using
scientific and humane methods.
My name is Scott Sheaffer andit's my mission to help you
understand your dog's aggressionand what you can do about it.
In each episode you'll learnwhy your dog is acting
aggressively, ways to prevent itand treatment concepts you can
(00:41):
implement with your buddy.
Right now, some people havedogs that are aggressive to
people, primarily outside oftheir family, but their dog is
kind of okay with others andseems to show this by rolling
over for a belly rub when theycome into their home, for
example.
If you have an aggressive dogthat does this sometimes, what's
(01:03):
going on?
Is this behavior what itappears to be, or is it
something else?
Let me break this down for youtoday.
First, in most cases when a dogrolls over, it's called, by the
way, submissive rolling or asubmissive posture.
It's actually called a calmingsignal, also known as a calming
(01:27):
behavior.
What are calming signals andcalming behaviors?
These are things that dogs dowhen they're nervous and they
want to signal to typicallyanother dog, but also to humans
that hey, I'm kind of doneplaying here and I need to chill
out for a second.
I'm just going to just book outfor a second here, so leave me
(01:49):
alone.
Certainly, rolling over is oneof the big ones.
They're doing this becausethey're scared of that person or
a dog, but in this case we'retalking about people.
They're afraid, they're fearful, the way to think about this.
This is the same as a dog doingthe human equivalent of a hands
up like hey, I'm good, right.
(02:12):
Or when people show their palmsto someone saying I have no
arms here, I'm not.
Hey, we'll just stop for asecond.
Or hands up like this hey, juststop.
Like what you might do whenyou're being questioned by the
police, for example.
It's just a human calmingsignal or a calming behavior hey
, I mean, you know, harm, don'thurt me.
(02:34):
And some dogs might even go sofar as to urinate on their backs
when they roll over like this.
So here they are, they flipover and then they may also
urinate.
And, by the way, this urinationcan be both involuntary and
voluntary.
It's kind of interesting, isn'tit?
They will sometimes are soscared when they roll over that
(02:58):
urine starts coming out.
And then sometimes they do iton purpose and that's dog talk.
For hey, man, I'm reallysurrendering for you here, but
why aggression to some peopleand this rolling over behavior
to others?
Why is that?
(03:18):
When your dog runs into peopleout on the street, for example,
and starts to bark and growl,what's causing that?
And the other side is, why somepeople does she roll over?
Before I answer that, I justwant to remind everybody that
you can contact me by writtentext or voicemail.
(03:39):
Love to hear from everybody.
Just go to USADogBehaviorcomand select the podcast tab.
You can send me either awritten text or you can leave a
voicemail message for me.
Like I said, I love gettingnotes from you guys and
voicemails.
Now let's move on again to whywe see aggression to some people
(04:00):
but rolling over to others.
When your dog encountersstrangers out in public, fearful
dogs normally react by usingaggression to keep the scary
stranger away.
And for those of you who havebeen following my podcast and
articles and videos and so forth, you know that's the essence of
(04:22):
fear aggression.
Just the essence of why dogsare aggressive is they are
scared and they're trying tokeep the scary stranger away
from them and to create adistance.
But they can also react in somecases by showing deference or
submission by, as we've beentalking about, rolling over.
So it's an AB thing.
(04:43):
So in one case I'm going toshow a person aggression to keep
them away and in another caseI'm still afraid, I'm still
scared, but I'm going to rollover and give the hands up oh,
oh, you know, don't hurt me,please, thing.
So the person won't bother.
And when dogs roll over, it canlook like they're wanting a
(05:05):
belly rub.
I can't tell you how far fromthe truth that is.
The last thing that dog wantsis a belly rub, because think
about the premise here.
The premise is hey, I'm rollingover because I'm scared, I'm
trying to show you that I'm notgoing to hurt you, please leave
me alone.
My hands are raised, all that.
And now the person is comingdown getting right over them.
(05:26):
That's bad.
Hovering over a scared dog isvery bad, and then touching them
is also very bad.
So we're rubbing the dog, we'retouching them, we're hovering
over them.
Now the dog is going oh heck,what is going on here?
This is even worse.
So you can see where this isnot a.
That's not a good response fromthe human.
But what makes dogs chooserolling over as a response
(05:48):
versus aggression In many cases,if the dog is really
overwhelmed by this scary person, this fearful person, person
they're afraid of, they'llchoose rolling over Okay.
So this isn't always true, butin most cases they'll default to
aggression growl, bark or bite.
(06:10):
You know, I starts out with abark, then a growl, then a bite.
It's kind of a typical sequence, but in some cases they're so
scared and so overwhelmed theydon't even try that, and I think
part of the reason for that isthey don't think it's going to
work too well, so they just rollover, show their underbelly and
saying please do not hurt me.
But each dog is different whenit comes to this, and the
(06:33):
following things can affecttheir response, and there's
about four things I want tomention here.
One is the size of the person.
So clearly, a large person, formost dogs, is more scary versus
a small woman Okay, I saw asmall person typically like a
woman, okay, versus like a largeman.
(06:55):
The other big variable and thisis really interesting, a lot of
research has been done on thisrecently and that is men are
more scary to dogs than women.
Well, I think one of thereasons everybody knows we get
it Men are typically, as I'vejust mentioned, bigger than
(07:16):
women and they look scarier.
But there's been someinteresting research done in the
last few years that suggestsand I think it's kind of common
sense actually that there'sanother reason why dogs are
typically more scared of men andthat is how they move.
Women typically are moremechanical and kind of jerky, if
(07:40):
you will, in their movement andthat's more scary to dogs,
where women typically not allwomen of course, but women
generally tend to move morefluidly and it's less scary
looking to dogs.
So that's another thing thatcan affect how individual dogs
respond and decides whether theyuse aggression or they're going
(08:03):
to roll over.
Everyone would be the human.
Does the human overly engage?
The dog Is the human?
Does the human come in and giveit the old hi, how are you?
That voice pitches up and theyget all animated and I love dogs
so much and they start hoppingaround.
Well, their intentions are good, but the problem is, is that
(08:26):
really scares Dogs?
If you already have a fearfuldog and then you have someone
come in your home that isjumping all around and Making
noises and reaching toward thedog, that's going to make the
dog more scared for sure.
And the last thing would beJust kind of building on the
(08:46):
last point, people that are loudand have lots of movement tend
to scare dogs more.
Now, before we move on, I wantto make one last comment about
the different things that scaredogs.
And here's a real interestingone, and it took me a few years
in my practice to figure thisout.
I would have clients come infrom time to time when they
(09:09):
would say things like but Beckydoesn't even like dogs, yet my
dog's kind of okay with her.
Then another client might saywow, john could care less about
my dog.
I don't, he's just not a veryfriendly guy.
I didn't even care about my dog.
But the irony is my dogs kindof okay with him and it's not
okay with anyone else.
(09:30):
What's going on here?
It seems paradoxical, doesn'tit?
It's someone who doesn't likedogs.
The dog, a fearful dog, appearsto be okay with what.
It's actually quite explainablebased on what we're just
talking about.
If, if the person doesn't likedogs or is not interested in
dogs, it's very likely thatthey'll ignore your dog or
(09:52):
ignore the dog.
And what does the dog think?
Oh, this is great, I'm not soscared of this person.
He's not showing interest in me, he's not doing scary movements
and making loud so and soundsthat scare me, and and so the
dog does better and that'spretty cool and it's not obvious
, but I've come to see it overand over.
(10:12):
And so what we want to do, kindof ironically, we want our
visitors to emulate what thosepeople do with our dog.
I know this sounds kind of funny, but it takes more confidence
for a dog to use aggression Thanit does submission.
So we're talking about why dosome dogs roll over and some use
aggression?
(10:32):
And, by the way, dogs will flipflop too.
By the way, I call theseambivalent dogs, meaning
sometimes they'll showaggression and sometimes they'll
flip over, and One of the otherreasons that they choose this
is through confidence.
Dogs actually transition fromRolling over onto aggression to
being okay.
(10:52):
Let's break that down a littlebit more.
A dog that is really low onconfidence it's gonna easily be
overwhelmed by people,especially ones like we were
just talking about is prettylikely to roll over and say
Please don't hurt me.
Once they gain a littleconfidence and this is the irony
once we start behaviormodification a lot of times they
will begin to improve and theyactually Start to get a little
(11:15):
aggressive.
So it actually takes a littlemore confidence for a dog to be
aggressive to a scary thingversus just rolling over and
they might start to bark orgrowl and certainly would.
We don't want them biting, ofcourse Then they transition to
if you continue behaviormodification to being okay
around strangers Okay, and thatbehavior modification I've
(11:36):
talked a lot about.
It has to do withDesensitization and counter
conditioning of the dog to theseUnfamiliar or scary strangers.
So now that you know all that,what do you do in these
situations to make your dog morecomfortable?
Well, let's give you a couplerules here and, by the way,
these are rules for the people,not for the dog.
(11:58):
We're helping the dog out bymanaging the people.
Think about that way.
First of all, they don't wantthe strangers attention.
It scares them, even thoughthese people are
well-intentioned.
I love dogs, all dogs love me,etc.
It scares them when people moveup to him and start giving him
attention.
(12:18):
And if you have a cute dog, thatis even more of a problem.
One of my dogs actually both mydogs, I think, are pretty cute
Luke and Charlie.
However, charlie is kind of asmaller cute dog, but I have a
pure white great Pyrenees.
He's huge, his name is Luke andhe's a people magnet and kids
and adults just come over andstart hugging on him and stuff,
(12:39):
which is really not a cool thingto do, and people don't even
ask me if it's okay to do that,which is really nuts.
You got to.
Really.
You want to get the permissionof the owner and make sure the
dog is safe and certainly don'thug dogs.
The thing is, luke's great withpeople.
We've really worked with him.
He's dynamite proof.
He can handle all this.
But the point is he's a magnet.
(13:00):
People want to go see him andif you have a dog like this that
people just can't stay awayfrom and they are afraid of
strangers, you've got a bigproblem here.
You need a lot more managementand you need to do really be
careful to do the things aboutwhat you do.
Here they are.
Here's how you manage peoplearound a dog that is afraid of
(13:20):
people and may even do bellyrubs A rollover for the belly
rub.
Quote, unquote.
Of course that's not reallywhat they're doing.
Instruct the person not to look, touch or talk to your dog.
They need to pretend that yourdog is invisible.
Don't look, touch or talk tothe dog.
Pretend they are invisible anddon't approach or move toward
(13:42):
the dog.
Stay your distance.
Let the dog, control thedistance and they should never,
ever, if the dog rolls over, rubthe dog's belly.
That dog is screaming to leaveme alone.
I don't want anything to dowith you.
When they do, it makes theperson even scarier and
perpetuates the fear.
In short, it's as simple asscary person to your dog should
(14:05):
never interact with your dog,period.
You will see an immediateimprovement.
When I go over to clients'houses when I'm doing a session
and I walk in and they have adog like this which is like 90%
of my practice I walk in andthey, almost without fails, say
this, something like this.
(14:26):
They go wow, you're a miracleworker.
I can't believe it.
All those good things thatpeople say about you are true,
et cetera.
Well, the truth is I'm not amiracle worker and, of course,
all the things people say aboutme are true the good things, of
course but I'm not a miracleworker because what am I doing?
I'm just not looking, touching,talking or approaching their
(14:47):
dog.
That's all I'm doing.
It's not rocket science.
You will see an immediateimprovement.
I've seen some people just notdo this and say, hey, I really
appreciate it.
If you not look, touch, talk orapproach my dog, he's afraid of
people or she's afraid ofpeople, and we're working on
this.
So you got to be a little bitfirm with some people because
people think, well, I'm sowonderful, your dog is going to
(15:10):
love me.
And, by the way, just a littlequick reminder here who makes
that call?
100% of the time your dog does,your dog makes the call as to
who's scary or not.
So this is something I want youto do right now and you do it
24, seven everywhere.
And one of my last episodes onmy podcast.
It's called If your Dog isAggressive to People, never Stop
(15:31):
Doing these Two Things.
Listen to that podcast episodebecause it really goes into
detail about that.
Don't look, touch, talk orapproach protocol for people
that your dog interacts with.
It just drills down on thatlittle bit.
If you like to learn more, alink to that episode is going to
be in the show notes.
So what is your to do?
Your to do right now is to getwith your family and coach them
(15:53):
on what we just talked about.
If you have one of these dogsthat's rolling over and people
are giving your dog belly rubs,you're going to get with them
and say, hey, when people comein to our home or when our dog
sees people out in public and hedoes that roll over for a belly
rub thing or what people thinkthat's what they're doing.
They are not to look, touch,talk or approach the dog period
in the story all the time.
(16:15):
That is your call to action.
Do that right now, and thatwraps up another episode of the
dog aggression answers video.
Thank you so much for joining metoday as we continue to explore
and understand the world of dogbehavior together.
If you've enjoyed today'scontent and want to delve deeper
into the world of dog behavior,make sure to follow and
(16:37):
subscribe to our channel onYouTube and turn on those
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Also, don't forget to followdog aggression answers on your
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Hit that follow button to stayupdated with our latest episodes
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Your subscriptions and reviews,as you know, help us reach more
(17:00):
dog lovers like you and make abigger impact.
Scott Sheaffer (17:04):
Thank, you for watching this episode of dog
aggression answers with ScottSheaffer, and don't forget to
follow us on any of yourpreferred podcast platforms.
We invite you to follow andsubscribe to our YouTube channel
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(17:25):
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