Worth The Risk?: Dealing With Child Aggression - a podcast by Ty Brown

With today’s post, I want to talk about child aggression in dogs. This is a very tough topic. Dog aggression is one of my favorite things to work on, and I’ve developed some processes and techniques that are really world-class. I enjoy it, because there’s a lot of predictability in how you can solve aggression in dogs—whether it’s toward other dogs, or animals, or people.


But dog aggression toward children is probably my least favorite to work on because it’s so much more difficult and the stakes are so much higher. I wanted to talk about that today, give some examples of things I’ve seen and when you shouldn’t even risk it.


The first thing we need to look at is teaching our kids to treat dogs with respect. This is a big deal. I remember a client who had a service dog growling at their kids. We tried to look at the situations from the dog and the kids’ perspective, talking about how the kids treated the dog. “Well, they smack him and they’re rough with him. They lull his tail.” No wonder he was showing some aggression! The owner was under the impression that a service dog should be able to sit down and take anything. But a dog is a living creature. You can’t beat it up and threaten it constantly and expect it to be cool with everything and never defend itself.


Even though this is the most important element in address ion child aggression, it’s also usually second in the parent’s mind. When someone calls us to deal with this problem, we always ask what they’ve done with the kids “Well, I’ve tried,” they say, “but they don't really listen.” How do you think you’ll be able to get a dog to listen, then? Sometimes dogs are easier than kids, but too often people put the onus on the dog. That’s not fair. We need to help our dogs handle pressure and stress, but it’s not fair to assume that our kids will behave badly towards the dog.


First things first: teach your children to leave the dog alone. If your kids want to play with the dog, then that’s too bad—the dog doesn't want to play with them! Maybe you’ll get the dog back to that point someday through counter-conditioning, but you can’t force play to happen, especially if the dog is uncomfortable. Training doesn’t give a dog a whole new personality. We need to respect the dog enough to understand that this is a living creature with its own needs, wants, and fears. It’s so important to respect the dog as an individual and not place all of the responsibility on their shoulders.

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