dogs suddenly homeless with biting histories are doomed.
do you know who came in here because they were deemed actual or possible biters?
lexi...yes i said lexi...she lifted her lip when backed into a corner by her angry new week old family.
andy..andy bit shelter staff 5 tmes before he came here.
cleo...cleo acted like a dangerous dog but she was just acting.
copper..yes, copper is in fact a biter in the right circumstances
4lane, joey, les, and now jesse (jes came with a cage muzzle)
this does not include all of beloved past biting saints...like sophie, cush or duke who did almost kill me.
sophie ws one of my all time favorite dogs...an old determined golden retriever...she was a sunshine dog happy, happy, happy as long as everything was good in her world. if however she felt unsafe or if she felt she was responsible she did bite...in the 2 years i had her, i never saw it because she never felt unsafe or responsible with me.
cush just got himself all upset when people entered the house.
duke was my biggest mistake...he is dead because i didn't know what i was dealing with back then. he might still be dead anyway but his death would have happened differently.
so i know there are all kinds of bite levels, behaviors, and triggers that determine a dogs actual biting risk. it is a well documented science of human aggression predictibility.
i am no expert...i am uneducated behaviorally.. mostly because i just can't read this shit...boring mostly and sometimes just wrong. but if experience counts for anything...living 24/7 with packs of 10-30 changing members of dogs for 15 more years, ought to count for something.
not for explanations, not for training or behavioral modification....but for understanding what biting really means.
and it does not mean human aggression.
biting means a dogs tendency to try to deal with difficult (for them) circumstances in all the wrong ways.
no one gave humans a handbook on all the correct solutions to lifes big problems. and holy moly we make some doozie mistakes while trying to figure things out. and we still make the same mistakes over and over because we can't or won't learn differently.
i have met WAY more actual human aggressive humans than i have met human aggressive dogs.
you push any human far enough and you can get them to tell you to "f" off. biting for most dogs is just the "f" off words too... different language, same intent.you can erase those words from their vocabulary without a bunch of behavioral gobblety goop.
true viciousness/dangerousness in dogs is extremely rare. it is actually more prevelant in the human race in my opinion. by species we are much more violent.
anyway...what sparked this post?...a biting BC in a kennel whose owner has died. i want to go and see that dog and see if he is really understood. maybe he is, maybe he isn't.... maybe he just has had poor communication skills and alot of pushing his hot botton stress and this can happen over years.
but i won't go see him...i can't help him even if i thought we could...that is how critical the lack of space is here right now...come what may, that dog is on his own.
i just feel bad today because we have jesse here. there is no way on earth that this dog is vicious or dangerous...he just has a biting history.
i wonder if this unknown dog is like jesse?
i hope he is not.
Riva Mae was labeled a biter when I adopted her from the pound. In the 14 years that she lived with me, not once did she bite. That dog had the best bite inhibition that i've ever encountered.