Busting the Aggression Myth: Why Some Dogs Act Out - a podcast by Ty Brown

In today’s post, I want to talk to you about dog aggression. Specifically, I want to address one of the questions I receive a lot. This is a topic that makes a lot of people frustrated, and come to me saying: “I’m sure I’ve done something wrong, I feel like such a bad dog owner.”

I’m describing owners who have dogs with aggression and have been hearing things from people about where that aggression comes from. There’s this weird and strange myth going around that says dogs are only aggressive if people have abused them or trained them to be aggressive.

This is crazy, because aggression comes from so many different places. At its root, the majority of the aggression that I see comes from fear, insecurity, and anxiety. When a dog is presented with something that makes it feel fear or anxiety, the dog has three available options: fight, flight, and avoidance.

A lot of people are familiar with fight or flight. Watch National Geographic for a little bit and you’ll hear the commentator talk about it. Dogs definitely use both of these strategies, but they also use something that we use a lot: avoidance. Many people get confused and say, “My dog couldn’t be afraid. He runs up to people and other dogs and attacks them. If he were afraid, he wouldn’t do that.”

Not so! In fact, fighting is many dogs’ coping mechanism for fear. They realize that if they are feeling stressed, showing aggression might help them win. A dog usually wants to be the first guy to throw a punch. If you think about it, people do this all the time. Insecure people are constantly starting emotional, physical, and mental fights because of their fears. When stress and anxiety are present, both dogs and people often chose to fight.

Flight is running away, while avoidance is looking away from something and pretending it’s not there. The fight response, however, tends to manifest itself through growling, barking, lunging, biting, and attacking.

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