Recently I had a client make an appointment for their dog because they just don’t trust him around kids. What this usually means is that the dog has shown a reaction to children that they find unsettling. She asked me if I would be bringing a child with me. This seems like a funny question but its not. I mean how else can you have confidence that the dog will not bite a child. After all I bring Odin to meet dogs that are reportedly dogs right? Lets break this down.
The #1 reason why dogs are fearful of kids is due to lack of exposure especially at a young age. The unpredictable movements and sound/speech patterns of young children that excites some dogs to want to play can terrify others. Think of it like letting a 5 year old running through a nursing home at top speed using their arms as wings as they scream and yell. This would no doubt make the residents anxious. Their focus will be on the actions, not staff telling them to relax. If the staff had control of the kid the residents would not be anxious. I hope I am making sense here. In most cases the dog will warn that they are scared with a look that we miss because we are on a different eye level, a bark, a growl, if unheeded may end up with a nip or bite.
Whether the dog is old or young we begin exposure at a distance to things that cause them to react. As soon as they respond with tension on the lead or vocalization we correct them to bring the focus on us until when confronted with that thing they automatically look to us instead of reacting. That is the goal of Focus Based Canine Training. When the lead is loose it is a mental connection that will stay in place even off lead. This is why walking a dog on a tight lead is the worst possible thing you can do.
So, back to bringing a kid to test the dog. Ethically the only person I can put in danger is me, well and sometimes Frank. If I did use a real kid for this consider how mentally devastating it would be even if the dog never bit them. The first question even a kid asks about a dog is “does it bite”. Imagine my liability of introducing a child to a dog to see if they dog would bite them. As the child walks up the dogs starts barking, growling or lunging. The dog is communicating that they are uncomfortable and not to come any closer. The child would be instinctively hesitant. Both the dog and the child are expressing the same fears. Doing this would be egregious and my insurance would not cover me and rightly so.
During every appointment I pressure test the dog to see if I can provoke them to bite be by doing things that will cause unstable dogs to respond with a bite. Many of these are things yu would never think of. It is my professional responsibility to ensure that if someone is going to get bit it is me and not a kid. These things are subtle and never noticed by the client until the dog passes or fails. This is especially important with rescues whose history are unknown. You want to know now rather than later.
The reason for bites is typically attributed what the dog perceive as an encroachment of their space. When a dog is trained to understand that all space is owned by the handler they can be directed when and when not to posture and protect. Protection of the following spaces is what usually precedes a bite, the front door, the yard, the vehicle, the crate, and the area around the handler or other pack members. It is only logical that dogs will define the perimeter of their space and protect it with their mouth using bark/growl/nip/bite. Either you take control or the dog will.
There is no bigger liability area when it comes to working with dogs than aggression. That is the reason why we are one of the few trainers that work with it. If you have questions or concerns about your dog please feel free to contact us.