What do I do when my 1 year old dog tried to bite me?

[flipflopsandsunshine]

We have a much loved 1 year old papillon. I’m at my wits end and so upset.
He nips and growls at me daily, and it’s not the usual playful puppy mouthing.

He likes a lot of affection and being brushed and cuddled etc but will growl, nip and bite when being handled is not on his terms, for example when;
trying to get him off the sofa
trying to get him off the beds
trying to put his harness on when he’s not in the mood
trying to put him back in the car when he doesn’t fancy coming home
trying to stop him ripping up the rugs (we use a house training line but sometimes I can’t pick up the end of it because he will snap at me)
He steals the kids toys if they drop them then resource guards them (we swap things for treats)
Most of the time he welcomes hugs from the children other times he growls and snaps.
After an off lead play (he is very friendly with other dogs) I sometimes can’t put him back on the lead if he is too fired up, he will snap and bite me.
If he gets into anything he is not allowed at other peoples houses. It’s so embarrassing because I can’t stop him. He will bite if he’s in that particular mood.
I’m worried he is getting worse. He always used to let me untangle the lead from his legs when on a walk, but now even that gets me a growl and snap.
I am trying to use positive training methods but all we are really doing is managing a lot of the behaviour.
I literally don’t know what to do when he won’t let me handled him. I’m starting to be a little scared of him and he rules the roost! Although right now he’s sleeping on my lap like butter wouldn’t melt.
The vet has suggested it may be fear aggression and to see a behaviourist, but in the meantime what do I do in the moment when he tries to bite?

Exactly my first thought!

We have a poster with a 12 month old dog that growls, nips and bites and only now she’s realised there’s a problem! Wow! 😱

There are children in the house that OP is allowing to hug a reactive dog. I can’t believe what I’m reading 😳

He needs put down before he hurts someone

Just coming on to reinforce the point that dominance aggression is the biggest load of claptrap ever so please ignore anyone that suggests anything related to pack hierarchy. It is false and no more of a difference of opinion than if I tried to make you believe that King Charles is in fact a Lizard.

Dogs dont live in packs - they are social animals who may or may not live in groups. Not pack animals at all never have been.

There is no pack leader. There is no dominant dog

Cows and horses are not pack animals they live in herds and do not have a hieracchical order.

Loads of info in books about both if interested

Nuts off asap

Totally happy to agree and disagree. I disagree a lot with uneducated people and posts.

I am happy that my undergraduate and graduate research for many years has helped me know who to agree and disagree with. It has given me facts and research to make informed decisions and keep an open mind

To get off the sofa or bed use a treat, our pup growled at me once so I taught her 'up' tapping the sofa/bed and 'off' point at floor using treats. You could do this in a couple of short training sessions.

Its hard but I would not the children pet or handle him at all.

Keep him on a long line when out , it won't be forever im sure, if he gets tangled manoeuvre the lead so he can get his legs sorted himself, dogs quickly get good at this.

To put his harness on get one that doesn't have to go over his head, if you layout on the floor use a treat to get him to step into it, treats when you get it out and clip it on. Practise this without actually going for a walk.

It's actually good he is growling and warning you, with the right professional help im sure this can get sorted. Dogs growl and air snap it's a way of communicating, yes it needs sorting but the person who said put down is bizarre and thats not needed.

@stonedaisy if this behaviour is fear based then neutering could make it a whole load worse.

@IngGenius I absolutely know that cows and horses have dominate matriarchs and a bull/stallion will join the herd and defend it, but even they defer to the dominant matriarch when she leads the herd to new pastures.

Hens are violently concerned with pecking order. There is always a dominant hen and her henchwoman who does most of the disciplining of the flock.

I thought dogs were like wolves and hyenas which are led in packs?

Just adding to the chorus who are in agreement that there is no such thing as pack theory. It was based on one study which used zoo wolves, not even dogs. It has never been replicated in feral or domestic dogs. They simply don’t form packs in the way that wolves do; they hang around in loose groups but there is no “alpha” and none of the wolf behaviours seen in the pack (eg only the dominant male and female breeding) are found in feral dogs. Any trainer advocating for ridiculous practices such as not letting the dog go in front of the owner is about 20 years out of date and should be avoided like the plague. Dogs know that they are dogs and we are humans.

Cesar Millan promotes practices such as “alpha rolls” (pinning a dog down to show it who’s boss) which are likely to achieve the opposite of what’s desired - much more likely to make a dog aggressive and bite. There are much better trainers who do not need to use dangerous methods.

OP I would recommend the FB group “Dog Training Advice and Support”. They are all evidence-based trainers who will help you. They also have a book which has all their collected guides in it and there’s lots on resource guarding and growling.

I thought dogs were like wolves and hyenas which are led in packs?

I believe the original study about pack behaviour was based on wolves from different backgrounds who were living in a zoo environment - so a totally artificial set-up amongst wolves who weren't related or previously "known" to each other.

Even if dogs were led in packs, OP is a human and her dog is well aware of that. Dogs know we aren't the same species as them and don't treat us as though we are - they're not daft.

DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE!!!!!

Omg I can't believe what I have just read!!!

Dominance training???? Ffs dominance training and pack theory was debunked DECADES ago!!!

OP you need to find a force free qualified behaviourist. Not Caesar Fucking Millan!!!!

Had similar problems. Castrated dog at just over 12months, stopped him having access to sofas and beds, kept him on a lead in the house and pit up a few baby gates. He was only allowed in rooms when we lead him in positively, as soon as any growling, he was quietly lead out again.
We built trust sonhe stopped resource guarding items, by actually giving him 'contraband' items and saying 'wow what have you got there' in a positive voice. We played games with the contraband items whereby he started just giving ot back to us. Then we'd give gim a treat. Obviously the 'contraband' mustn't be dangerous or harmful.
It could be as innocuous as a seashell or a piece of packaging (as long as hes not a swallower!).
Now when he does get hold of something he shouldn't , when i say wow what have you got there, he gives it to me.

Two things:

One he's showing off because of his big bollocks that need to come off. He's not afraid. Scared dogs don't monopolise furniture.

Two: he's grumpy that you won't let him get his own way and have beem pulling him about too much/letting your kids maul him about.

Do all these:
Balls off, stricter boundaries with babygates, kids aren't allowed to grab/hug him, and plenty of trust games and loada of exercise as well as time to mature and he'll be alot better.

The mane wolf is a bit of a loner, sometimes they pair up.
Not all canines are pack animals.
The African wild dog will have an alpha male and female, but as others have said, it's fluid and depends on the conditions.
Yes in a heard of horses there is a hierarchy, but again it shifts from time to time. I don't know anything about bovines!
Chickens are aggressive wee fuckers until they sort out the pecking order...I swear they are plotting to overthrow the humans!

Op I think your dogo might benefit with a vet check to make sure he's not losing his sight, not in pain, his hearing is okay etc etc. (I appreciate he's young) but I had a snappy collie, by two years old she had become very unpredictable and I was considering having her pts, turned out she was totally deaf, so she couldn't hear anyone approach her, and the snapping was a direct result of being startled.
If he passes his vet MOT, then find a good behaviourist. And if that fails be prepared to pts. You can not risk a bite to your children, a bite to the face and your child could lose their sight. It's not worth the risk. A biting dog is an unhappy dog.

I would agree about not neutering yet for the reason given.

But, @Wolfiefan what do you mean when you say that 'Dominance and pack theory have been debunked'?

Work on captive wolves (who are more analogous to domestic dogs living in the home than are wild wolves) by Schenkel did indeed show them establishing strict hierarchies. David Mech, who worked on wild wolves for decades, opted to no longer use the term 'alpha' because, in the packs he observed, the lead wolves tended to attain their status by virtue of being the parents - the other pack members were their younger offspring. Mech is on the record as saying, however, ‘Dominance is among the most pervasive and important behaviors of wolves in a pack.’ (2010). He said much the same thing again on a podcast last month. Intense longterm study of the wolves in Yellowstone National Park has shown that in easier environments, wolf packs can be far more complex, with two or even three females producing cubs in a given year, and with alphas/ lead wolves sometimes being driven out or even killed by their subordinates or by a wolf moving in from another pack.

As for dogs - which are not wolves, but which have significant overlaps in their behaviour - they are perfectly capable of forming large, stable packs with clear hierarchies (see Cafozzo et al, 2010, which looked at a large pack for over a year and found clear unidirectional displays of dominance, with higher ranking dogs having more opportunities to mate, for example). They don't always do this - it seems to depend on the level of human interference, food supply etc - but they can and they will establish packs. Other work has shown that dogs are very hierarchical (Range and Viranyi, 2014).

Now, people are not dogs and dogs know this, but we do know that dogs understand hierarchies and dominance. Even a lot of Force Free trainers understand this and call what they do 'leadership', and aim to impose it without force, but they are still aiming to be in charge.

NB I don't go with the whole pinning and scruffing pack theory stuff, it's not necessary, but to say that dogs don't do dominance is not accurate. I see my older dog dominating the younger dog at regular intervals, and also throwing her weight about elsewhere. She's not at all aggressive, but she uses clear canine dominance signals (there is a wonderful book on canine communication by the ethologist Roger Abrantes).

The constant coming back to Wolves and dominance is not helpful in looking at dogs and dominance. Dogs are not descendants of wolves but do share ancestry. Looking at Chimps does little to help with social human groups. It certainly does not help in how we educate humans.

Nearly all animals that live in groups have a degree of flexible hierarchy and that is not usually disputed.

However that is way different from how most people see dominance and interpret dominance in dogs.

Dominance in dogs is not necessary for training or for managing domestic dogs ever.

Dogs are much closer to wolves than humans are to chimps - but there is a whole field of anthropology that studies all the great apes for clues to human evolution, communication and so on.

Understanding that dogs are hierarchical animals which are a sub-species of a hierarchical animal certainly helps to understand many of their behaviours. Wolves evolved to fit into a dominance hierarchy. If leadership isn't offered, a wolf will provide it. Why we should think that dogs should be completely different after a mere 50k years of divergent evolution (peanuts in evolutionary terms, and including regular back-crossing to wolves) is a mystery to me. Understanding this about my dogs certainly helps me to understand what is going on, and improves my control of them.

Victoria Stilwell has an article on why dominance pack theory isn't applicable to dog training here https://positively.com/dog-training/article/ethology-why-pack-theory-is-wrong
however she does make the point that leadership and positive reinforcement are both important. There's quite a few episodes on youtube of her TV show.

Dominance is not a helpful term because it makes owners focus energy on practices which are at best utter nonsense (eating yourself before feeding the dog, never letting the dog go through a door first etc) or at worst dangerous (alpha rolls, picking up a dog’s food bowl halfway through its meal to show it you can remove its food whenever you want). It also allows for the classic misinterpretations of behaviour seen on this thread. Two examples: “scared dogs don’t guard furniture” (of course they do. Being scared, if anything, makes dogs more protective of the resources they perceive as being under threat) and growling/biting is the result of dogs having “big bollocks” which need to come off (removal of testosterone may make aggression worse, not better).

Being fair and assertive with a dog (in the way you would with a child) is not the same as being the “pack leader” or “showing it who’s boss”. You can show effective and gentle leadership to a dog with no reference whatsoever to pack theory. If you look at the most highly trained and obedient dogs of all - guide dogs and police dogs - they are treated like dogs, not babies, but there is zero application of pack theory. What there is are dogs in routines, with appropriate mental stimulation and positive reinforcement.

@EdithStourton we are poles apart on how we train dogs and how we see the training of dogs. We always will be

I train working dogs that work eg working sheepdogs, Gundogs for shoots and also Scent Detection Dogs. I am surrounded by trainings who "control" and "command" their dogs. Gundog trainers are miles behind in training however it is interesting to see how things are now changing quite quickly even in the gundog world. Even Security dog trainers are moving on with how they train and their relationship with dogs.

There is no need for Dominance in training dogs especially as it is understood by humans.

Back to the original thread do you really see the behaviour of the dog for growling for not getting of the sofa as dominant? really?

A quick alpha roll or shock will stop the dog from feeling dominant?

I see your points @EdithStourton but you are describing dominance in very different terms to what Cesar Milan does. Having a lead wolf or a more confident dog in a pack does not mean that anyone's dog is showing dominance over a human.
The behaviours that the OP describes is also not down to dominance. It's simply unhelpful when dealing with undesirable behaviours in dogs.

@IngGenius I suspect we train in more similar ways than you suspect. I always lay down new behaviours with lashings of positive reinforcement, have watched about 2 episodes of Cesar Millan in my life, and play games with my dogs both for fun and to build our relationship. I accept that I have a lot to learn, which is why I read serious science and follow highly successful trainers who have the sort of rapport with their dogs that I try to foster with mine. I've actually got Steven Lindsay's Volume 3 on the table in front of me right now. I'm not at all a fan of heavy handed training and Lindsay's approach really clicks with me.

As for a dog growling on a sofa.. I can't speak for OP's dog (which sounds out of control and in need of some boundaries and some species-appropriate handling and outlets), but for my own... One of mine tried this on me as very young dog, not quite a growl, a low grumble. She was shifted along with a jolly commentary about we don't play those games, thanks, this is where you can go, there you are (not that she understood the words, but she would have got the tone). She wanted that spot, I needed it because it was under the light, I'm in charge, she was moved. We had a few more rounds of this over the next month or so. She never came anywhere close to escalating (she'd have been off the sofa in a twinkling had she done that), and now she knows the drill and will move when asked.

She was definitely trying her luck. She wasn't scared, just a bit annoyed at being woken up and shifted off the warm spot. If she'd succeeded over a period of weeks, I'd have had a dog who ruled the sofa. All she needed was to have a few clear lines drawn.

I train with a gundog club, and have done for 5 or 6 years. I watch successful field triallers handling their dogs and have learned so much from them.

Enjoy Lindsay!

I have studied animal behaviour (mainly canine) up to MSc level. Referenced Lindsay many times!

My background was rural and country/farming life and I have seen the harsher sides of dog training. I have also seen the magnificent training of some of the quieter gentler older handlers who got the best out of their dogs by working as a team and not attempting to "control" the dog.

I didn't need academic training to tell me at a young age that there were better ways to train dogs than some of "traditional" methods being used and all animal.

At the age of 7 I had the lambs walking in a line nose to tail to move them around the fields using positive reinforcement, Chickens would recall to their own names and the cows could do chin rests and nose touches. My father a traditional farmer would say "dont go ruining those cows" but was seen using the hand touch method to move the cows around

I didn't need academic training or an understanding of dominance in dogs to know that pinching their ear to make them drop the dummy was a mad way to train dogs. Or a jerk on the lead high on the most sensitive part of the dogs neck was the best way to get them to heel.

This is where we differ

She was definitely trying her luck. She wasn't scared, just a bit annoyed at being woken up and shifted off the warm spot. If she'd succeeded over a period of weeks, I'd have had a dog who ruled the sofa. All she needed was to have a few clear lines drawn.

I would see a dog that was comfortable and wanted to stay in the comfortable spot - no trying her luck or needing clearer lines draw and not ruling the sofa!

Create a more or just as comfortable spot reward the dog for going to the new spot - sorted Dog never goes back to space on the sofa as happy in new location.

@IngGenius I bucket trained sheep in my mid-teens, and they'd come running. It made them tons easier to handle, and they trusted me. It saved a lot of shouting and running around (a few sheep, no dog) and was much less stressful for the sheep. I used get down to the pasture before anyone else and get them in the crush for drenching or whatever.

As for the sofa, it's not very big and the bit where I sit is their favourite end - maybe because I've often conveniently warmed it, maybe because its nearer the window, maybe because its out of the draught. Whatever, the issue is resolved, the dog is happy, and we still share the sofa.

Lindsay is dense writing, but I like his approach.

Very glad that your dog has not taken control of the sofa and you have a happy compromise

Animals tend to bucket train themselves! My point entirely get the correct reinforcement no need for dominance