
I went to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving to have dinner with her family and the family of a friend of her daughter’s. I’m an introvert and while I still hate many social situations still, I don’t hate them all. Fortunately, the family friends owned a Wheaton Terrier, which gave us something to talk about. I can talk about dogs for hours. I learned things about the Wheaton Terrier I did not know. They asked how my whippets were faring in the 25-degree weather. All was great.
Somehow as dessert was being passed around, the subject of growling came up. The husband proudly stated that he had trained their dog not to growl. Ever.
Admittedly, I know more than the average pet owner. I hover in the area between pet dog owner and sports dog owner/trainer. I suffer a great deal from imposter syndrome while I assist with at the reactive dog classes at the training center where I work. I don’t have any formal training credentials. I’ve only been actively working with my dogs for six years. Am I helpful to those owners who bring in their reactive dogs to our class? Yes. I am. Is my own reactive dog fixed? Hell, no. Not even close. He never will be.
Having the two dogs I do - the same sire but opposite in many respects - gave me an obsession with dog behavior. I have always been intrigued by the whole nature vs. nurture debate. Now I have two dogs whose genes are 50% the same, born into the same conditions, came to the same house, albeit during very different stages of my life, and have developed very different approaches to life. I ended up with several shelves full of dog and animal training and behavior books. I’ve spent more money than I care to add up on training classes and dog-related courses. My entire Facebook feed consists of dog-related groups. I’ve picked up a few things along the way.
Back to dinner. Knowing what I know now, I have an extremely hard time when dogs are blamed for a bite, and in some cases, lose their lives because of it. Any dog owner, I would argue, should take it upon herself to learn a little bit about dog communication. They use their ears. They use their tails. They use their entire bodies. They use their lips and tongue. They use vocalizations, which include growls. If you train a dog not to growl, you may end up putting an obedient dog in the position of choosing between effectively communicating his discomfort or obeying his human. If a dog growls, he is uncomfortable about something. If that something moves away, the growl was an effective communication tool. Take that growl away and the dog may go from discomfort to biting because he was taught growling was bad. The dog gets blamed for biting when all the dog did was exactly what he was trained to do.
Despite my usual reticence about pretending to be the expert about anything, I explained to the husband who was so proud of his training success that perhaps he ought to rethink that idea since his terrier may now go directly for the bite since he was taught not to growl. To his credit, the guy admitted that I had made a good point, but he kind of avoided conversation with me after that.
Though I felt bad for making someone else feel uncomfortable, I was glad I spoke up. I swore that after the incident with B’s owner. I would be an advocate for dogs, especially dogs like Zephyr who are so often labeled incorrectly and deeply misunderstood.
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