I had someone recently ask me for advice. Their dog had bitten a guest “out of nowhere”. But this same dog had been barking and growling at guests for weeks before this point. What the owner meant in this situaiton by saying “out of nowhere” is that nothing changed about the sitation and they knew the guest posed no threat to the dog, so they felt the dog’s new change of behaviour was unjustified. But if we look at it from the dog’s perspective, all the information was right there that this was coming. Clearly, the dog is uncomforrtable with guests (for whatever underlying reason) and was clearly communicating that with the barking and growling, which was the dog’s way of asking for space. But guests continue to come over and make the dog uncomfortable while the owner does nothing to actually change or improve the situation. So the dog then eventually feels the need to escalate the defensive behaviour to the next level in order to desparately ask for space and relief of pressure it is feeling from guests in the house. When looking at a situation, we cannot be thinking of only our human perspective. You have to look at it from the dog’s perspective and think about what their actions and behaviours are telling us about their underlying feelings of a situation. We have to accept that the things they find scary or threatening may not be scary of threatening to us – even if it is illogical from a human’s perspective, your dog’s feelings or fears are valid and you have to respect the signs and step in to help them.
