Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson

Author:Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson [Grandin, Temple & Johnson, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Nature, General, Animals, Psychology, Psychopathology, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Psychology & Psychiatry, Science, Life Sciences, Zoology
ISBN: 9781439130841
Google: aMVmhqpILOAC
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

HANDLING FEAR AGGRESSION

Not all dogs who bite are dominant. Shy biters bite people because they’re afraid, not because they are dominant. German shepherds who bite are usually shy biters. They are nervous animals.

Shy biters are somewhat less dangerous than dominant biters. They are dangerous mainly when the owner is around to give them courage. If a shy biter sees a stranger or a neighbor he’s afraid of when he’s alone, he’ll usually just try to get away. If he can’t get away, he will bite the stranger from behind because that’s less frightening than having to meet the person’s eyes. Shy dogs will avoid eye contact with everyone but their owners at all costs. That’s just as well, since if you’re going to get bitten by a dog it’s better to get bitten on the ankle or the thigh than in the face. All in all, shy dogs are probably not as dangerous as they seem.

A dominant scared dog is different. Dogs who are both dominant and fearful can bite any time and place. They will bite with their owners present, or with their owners long gone. And when they bite, they can go straight for the face. Because they are dominant by nature, running away isn’t an option. They have to attack. I don’t think anyone knows exactly why a shy dominant dog is as potentially dangerous as he is. Is it just because he has two different reasons, fear and dominance, to bite people, which raises the odds that he will? Is it because when you mix fear and dominance together the dog’s emotions are heightened and his ability to control himself is impaired?

I do know one neutered male dog who’s highly dominant and fearful. He’s not a shy biter, because his owners realized how dominant he was early on and did everything right, so he knows he’s not the alpha.

But he’s a big problem with other dogs. He’ll try to attack any dog he sees on walks with his owners, and he can never be let off a leash in public or taken to a dog park. This is a dog who was well socialized to other dogs as a puppy, and yet was so dominant by nature that he still managed to get into two fights with the neighbor’s dog. He won the first fight but lost the second one, and has been acting more and more terrified of other dogs ever since.

If he were a submissive dog by nature, that might not matter, because he would just avoid looking at the dog who was scaring him. But since he’s dominant by nature, the instant he feels threatened by another dog he attacks—and he feels threatened all the time. Just the sight of another dog minding its own business seems to threaten him. This dog’s behavior reminds me of a well-known study of anxious children versus oppositional children. (Children with oppositional defiant disorder, or ODD, are kids who are so angry and disobedient that their behavior disrupts their school or home life.

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