Why are people so adverse to putting down an aggressive dog?
Question by Rachel-PitPolice-Spay the Humans: Why are people so adverse to putting down an aggressive dog?
Sure, certain forms of aggression are manageable. I personally have seen proper obedience and discipline aid in curbing animal aggressive and possession aggressive behaviors. However, I feel that HUMAN aggression is one thing that should not be messed with, and that any human aggressive dog should be destroyed, for both the owner’s protection, and the dog’s sake.
Why is it that people suggest training for human aggressive dogs? Am I naive? Or are they?
Best answer:
Answer by Oodles of Poodles
Some people can’t afford formal training, some shelters won’t seek the proper trainer to rehabilitate the dog.
What do you think? Answer below!
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Are you talking about people here on this site suggesting to train a human aggressive dog? Uh, yeah…I think you answered your own question!
Same goes for Fear Biters…Human Aggressive Dogs as well as Fear Biters are walking lawsuits waiting to happen.
If a dog is proven Human Aggressive and I can not find a person that is qualified to keep that dog safe or the people safe, that dog is euthed. I dont mess with it. We have too many good dogs and not human aggressive dogs to home.
I have a Fear biter in my group of 6 but I take that responsibility myself and know the repercussions if she should actually get anyone. We are working on it, and she was scheduled several times for euth, but after what she went through in her life I thought I’d give her a chance.
I have no problem with putting them down. I live in the country and aggressive dogs do not last long out here. Most of our dogs are working dogs and we cannot have one dog interfering with the function of the other dogs and humans. There just isn’t the time.
People put down aggresive dogs because the owners can get in big trouble if their dog bites/injures them. Some people can’t afford the training, or they have tried it and it still hasn’t worked.
Honestly, one of the things I see, is that people don’t always realize that their dog is aggressive. They make excsuses for them. “Oh, he just did that because he was tired”. or “He only bit that person because he was protecting me”. etc., etc., etc., etc.
Just like with kids, people don’t want to see the worst in their dogs. And, many times like kids, to admit a dog is aggressive is (in their mind) to admit that they failed as a dog owner. After all, look at how many people scream “It’s not the dog, it’s how you raise it”. Which, sometimes is true, sometimes is not.
In my own mind, and for my dogs, human aggression will NOT be tolerated. There are too many good dogs out there needing homes. I don’t see risking everything, including innocent bystanders, to keep a dog that is a liability.
If I had an aggressive dog, I would put it down. No problems. I own two American Pit Bull Terriers and if one of them showed any signs of aggression, they would be gone. I love my dogs, but I’m not willing to risk someones life or health over a dog.
I think they probably are. I can work with fearful dogs (at least, I can work with MINE…they’re all different, I suppose) but I agree, human aggression is dangerous.
I think the people that suggest it either have one of those one in a million dogs whose human aggression is dealt with and taken care of (I have yet to find one personally, but you never know), or just truly want to believe that ALL dogs can be rehabilitated (thanks, Cesar!!! *snort*).
It’s sad, because yes, the dog’s personality is the fault of some human somewhere down the line…either they didn’t bring them up properly or they neglected them entirely or used them for fighting…even the ones that had that issue from puppyhood are the fault of the people (likely irresponsible) breeding their super cute doggys, regardless of temperament. But human aggression is not something I don’t feel I’d ever be willing to work with. You should be able to trust the dog.
So no, I don’t think YOU are naive…I think YOU are realistic without being callous.
EDIT: Curtis, I don’t think most people have years of training police service dogs so congratulations on your ability to handle any living dog, but most people can’t. Believe me, I ADMIRE your work greatly and love to watch police dogs being trained, but your ability is not a reality for most. At any rate, I believe Rachel is speaking of dogs that are just screwed up. The 1% out there that attack without warning. Believe me, I am definitely an advocate of “If a dog bites you, it’s your fault.” but I still believe there are dogs whose brains just aren’t wired in a way that can be fixed.
However, I would not sit and try to train a human aggressive dog to be nice to humans (myself or any other) when there are millions of perfectly nice dogs that are dying in shelters. It’s not that I’m lazy, I simply don’t have the knowledge to help them. I don’t know if that makes ME more emotional about dogs or YOU.
Like I said, I can work with nervous dogs, as long as I can predict what they are nervous about and work with that…but aggression, I am not equipped to handle. And where do you suggest those types of dogs go then? I’m not being facetious, I’m genuinely asking. But I didn’t give you a TD. 
There is a segment of the animal welfare community that thinks every dog can and should be saved. We had a big problem with the shelter I work with when I first started with that kind of mentality. The thought process was they should take the most challenging dogs because they were ones that needed the help most. You know what? We weren’t adopting any dogs and in the meantime, friendly dogs were getting euth’d every day in the County shelter in the next town. What was the sense in that?
We had three dogs in particular that the staff fought us over on the topic of euthanasia. One went to a trainer in LA who was to retrain the dog and then adopt it out. If the dog could not be adopted, he would put the dog is his personal pack. This dog had attempted to bite a 90 year old woman and another person who tried to adopt it. The staff raised $ 5,000 to send the dog to the trainer. Guess what? the dog was untrainable and is now part of the “personal pack.” Is that the ideal life for a dog? How many other, friendly dogs, could we have saved with $ 5,000?
The second dog was adopted by a staff member. It had health problems and was both human and dog aggressive. It ended up shredding her toy poodle (resource aggression) and cost her $ 5,000 in vet fees to put the poor poodle back together.
The third dog was adopted by a mentally challenged man. The dog gets walked three hours or more every day. This supresses her aggression since she is tired out a lot of the time. But she growls at the man’s father every time he enters the room where dog is. It’s an accident waiting to happen.
Training works sometimes. But it often fails too. Some things are fixable, some are not, no matter how much you may wish them to be. And training to address severe aggression takes a lot of time and money for uncertain outcomes. And if you have children in your home, other people or animals that may be hurt or other circumstances where it is not safe to have the dog there, it is simply not safe to attempt. And you cannot in good conscience rehome a dog like that.
Many animals can benefit from training that the owner must stay on top of all of the time.It is also their duty to safely contain at all times.
Some breeders(fighting dogs) sadly go out of their way to breed aggressive lines.Perhaps if you happen to be the Dog Whisperer it is safe to own this kind of animal.
Some breeds actually have a job to protect herds etc.They are not meant to be pets or exposed to the human population.
Not even good breeders wish to have a highly aggressive bloodline continued.
Unless there is a totally responsible owner that has bonded and can manage a specific aggressive animal-it does not belong in the population & should be euthanized in my opinion.
Some are so damaged that they may not respond to any form of rehabilitation.
One thing that we cannot take back is a serious injury or death to an innocent human being.Far too many children have died due to ignorant owners and animals through no fault of their own present a clear danger and risk of harm.
It can occur with any breed & I am not ragging on any specific breed.
I think some people just have a really hard time realizing that a dog is not savable. Myself included, Even if I encountered a human aggressive dog- I would think there has to be some way to save it- Even if there wasn’t, Just because I have such a guilty conchense about how dogs are treated and how many get put unnecessarily down every year. It’s like 5 billion a year get put down, because there just isn’t a home for them.. So I try to save every dog I can.. Mean or not- I just want to help them.. Ya know..
I think it’s mostly guilt
I think it is mostly emotional- it is easier to blame the person than a dog, because if its the dogs fault it could happen to them.
I think dogs can go beyond a point of no return- some dogs may be born with a temperament that very few people would be able to turn into a nice dog. Ideally you could just train, but if the dog is dangerous I don’t think that it is worth risking it during the training unless you can guarantee it will never see other people and you are very well experienced with aggressive dogs and even then the owner is putting themselves at risk.
I agree, if a dog has bitten a human out of something very hard to control, then it is just too much of a risk to keep it alive trying to figure out if anything can change it while in the meantime it may attack again. It can be a tough call exactly where that line of “dangerous to humans” is sometimes though. There are way too many people here that have watched the Dog Whisperer a bit too much and forget that that line exisits.
There are friendly dogs being killed everyday- I would rather see the miserable agressive ones put down to open up a home for another needy dog than dwelling on the lost dog.
ADD: It is NOT an issue of it being a good dog or a bad dog. Whether or not it is a humans fault is irrelevant when a dog is aggressive. It is all a matter of how much of a threat it is. Even if it isn’t the dogs fault, you just can’t allow it to risk hurting a human, possibly maiming or killing someone. It is sad, but it is wrong to allow an agresssive dog into a dangerous situation. Sometimes the only way to prevent that is euthanasia.
They are naive. You are right. A human aggressive dog will resist help at all costs. They don’t realize you are trying to help. They just know you are interfering with their activities and daily terrorism (lol). Something was wrong with their parents most likely in the temperanment area. Either that or their previous owners.
Yes…you are naive. A dog is not bad for being human aggressive. A dog is NEVER bad. Dogs have no concept of right and wrong therefore are always right in their minds. My dogs are human aggressive, police dogs are human aggressive, and some point in their life nearly all dominant dogs bred for work will start to become human/dog aggressive. It’s the owner/handler/trainer’s job to nip it in the bud. If somebody was trying to hurt you and your dog growled at him, that’s human aggression, but you wouldn’t put him down, you’d call the newspaper and try to get him on the front page as a K9 Hero! There’s no aspect to a dog’s behavior that can’t be corrected. You can even make a dog deny his natural instinct. The reason for this is simple. There are 2 kinds of rules in a dog pack, #1 listen to your instincts because they’ll keep you alive and #2 Obey the pack leader even if it means suppressing your instinct of self preservation. A wolf pack can make a kill, the alpha can chase everybody back, eat, then take off walking not letting the other’s eat….they might not have eaten for 3 or 4 days but they still follow, rules are rules. If you can be a strong, dominant pack leader to a dog you can change any behavior it has. Besides, let’s say your dog is an exception and will bite anybody but you and your family. KEEP HIM INSIDE. Muzzle him on your walks. Just because you can’t have him out around your friends isn’t a reason to kill him. Build a good fence so he can’t get out and endanger the public, when friends and outside relatives come over, crate the dog. It’s not hard to keep a dog safely contained…even friendly dogs should be contained 100% of the time.
Thumbs down already huh? Let me make it simple: If your dog bites ANYBODY on EARTH except YOU it’s YOUR FAULT. Your dog should be on a leash, in a secure fence, and if you know the dog is aggressive it should be muzzled when outside of your house including vet visits, walks whatever. That’s Common Sense Dog Ownership 101. My dogs never have the opportunity to bite anybody because I’m a rare type of person called: A Responsible Dog Owner. now secondly…if you have a dog that will bite you it’s not a human aggressive dog, it’s a Handler Hard or Handler Aggressive dog. They can also be fixed and managed, but hey, keep giving me the thumbs down, I only breed and train Police Service Dogs, what do I know about aggression in dogs? Anyway, that out of the way, my dogs are all great with people. They’ll still bite you, no hesitation if told to. If you can train a dog to bite you can train a dog not to bite. The only type of dog I can understand the common person feeling the need to put their dog down is if they have a Handler Hard dog, if the dog is trying to bite everybody else it’s easy to keep them contained and secured. If the dog is coming after YOU, the owner/handler, then I of course wouldn’t recommend you trying to keep that dog if you’re not well versed in training Handler Hard dogs…but honestly it’s a fairly easy fix. My main stud dog Itor is handler hard. He’d bite me for trying telling him to lay down because he felt he was the boss and laying down is a submissive posture. A dominant dog collar and a few days of training and he’s as good as gold. Any Police K9 handler would feel comfortable storming a crackhouse with this dog…there’s no question to whether or not he’ll do his job. He’s also great with kids…aggressive dogs can always be fixed, most people are too lazy or plain not knowledgeable. I don’t blame them, opinions pass for dog training, nothing but opinions in here, but none of you have the experience to back it up. Everybody has opinions on dog training, from Bill Gates to your local village idiot, but 90% of the people saying “A human aggressive dog can’t be saved!!!” are the ones who can’t control their dogs on a leash in the neighborhood.
Bozema: Training works every time, you just haven’t met a good trainer yet or those dogs would be fine and homed. Why don’t you guys find a Schutzhund club and learn about real dog training? The crappiest Schutzhund club trainer is better than these quacks people keep taking their dogs to! Now there’s an idea!
Kate C? Finally somebody who knows what they’re talking about, the site you gave a link to was pretty good as well. Try Googling Leerburg Kennels. The owner of Leerburg, Ed Frawley, has a great understanding of pack behavior and dog training. Some of his older articles were a tad too close to William Koehler’s but as he’s aged his methods are about as close to mine as I’ve seen posted on the internet anyway. Good luck and good dog training!
Sassy: I agree with you 100%! I think that some easily saveable dogs are victim to lazy owners. I think the rest are victim to owners who aren’t knowledgeable enough to handle the dog…that’s not their fault. Also it’s the phony trainers out here who flood out books and have a million websites that have crappy training ideals. I can tell you exactly what to do to “fix” your dog, but at the end of the day if you aren’t comfortable with working with an aggressive dog, DON’T! Don’t get hurt because I want to save your dog! If you’re going to get hurt using my help, do it because you want to, because you care to try. I’ve been bitten more than once, I know it’s not pleasant, but I’ll get bit again to save a dog if I have to. I guess I am emotional when it comes to dogs. Yeah I’m a big guy, I like my dogs made of steel but all the same I got into this business because I love dogs. That’s why I chose to make them my life.
I think a lot of the resistance on here comes from incomplete stories and people not knowing squat about how to train a dog. They get it and expect it to behave without any effort on their part and then get frustrated when it doesn’t. At least that’s why I hesitate to recommend euthanasia. I think that most dogs should get one free pass, unless the bite was unprovoked, they bit without warning or the bite was disproportionate to the provocation (ie a severe bite when other dogs would have at most, nipped). Dogs are a reflection of their environment and their breeding and a bad combination of the two can put some beyond help. If a dog is truly human aggressive and beyond training and safe handling then it should be euthanized.
It isnt right to lump all aggressive dogs into one group. There are reasons for each dog to be aggressive and it really should be taken on a case by case basis.
My dog is “aggressive”. That aggression was not out of spite, but out of misunderstanding. She was telling me every way she knew how, but I never listened. Although my deaf ears were not intentional, she did not know that.
I am a firm believer a dog can be fixed in most cases. It is a matter of dedication to the dog the owner has. Now after learning what entails a pack leader in most circumstances, I understand why my dogs acted the way they did.
A common mistake is train the dog to do things, tricks. That is not the way a relationship works. It takes two to tango is the popular saying and it could not be more true in a relationship with a dog(other living being). It takes understanding the dog and pack behavior and is a learning process that does not happen over night. As a dog owner, your dog expects the same of you as the leader of his pack, you as a human have to prove you are a Dog by speaking dog and worthy of leadership. He does not care if you have a full time job and other things to do, if you are going to be his leader, you better be there when he needs you to understand. (A good way to understand the relationship between a human and dog is to watch them walk together. If this baffles you, read Suzanne Clothiers book “Bones Would Rain From the Sky: Deepening Our Relationship with Dogs”)
Human aggressive is not typically without warning. Sadly, humans rely heavily on verbal language and not the tone/pitch of a dogs voice or the bodys stiffness when it feels threatened. Majority of the time a dog warns and when a bite does occur, A bite does not mean aggressive, it means warning to prevent further conflict. Humans do not see the warnings, especially children and feel the dog bites out of nowhere. It is that mistake that will get a dog put down.
Majority of dogs that bite, do so because it is the resort that gives them what they want. Their feeling have been ignored(it would be the equivalent of you screaming at someone every day for your life and they never hear you, eventually you would go to drastic measures to get your point across).
I sure don’t understand it.
I don’t understand emotional reaction taking precedence over thought;wishes over reality.
I can’t understand putting $ 5,000 into “training” a NASTY-azz dog when there are humans dying from lack of meds or FOOD! When a lead pill will solve everybody’s trouble,including the poor berserk animal!
I don’t get spending thousands on a knee surgery for a dog,when there are crippled children who need help.
I don’t get chemo & wheel-chairs & swimming-pool therapy & cataract removal…..but,that’s me. I don’t force animals to linger & suffer just for my selfish fears. Keep them as comfortable as long as is possible & then LET THEM GO.
A side note:did you realize that there are actually people who’d stop in traffic, scoop & rush to the vet & pay THOUSANDS to keep a smucked-by-car,brain-damaged POSSUM alive??? That they have a network??
shudder-very scewed priorities.
Eh…. I used to be able to comment on this. Not so much now… because i’m stuck in that situation.
Max is great with people, but any child under 4 years old he growls at. That prey drive in him kicks in and I don’t think he’s sees them as human at all since they are so small.
I don’t know if we can manage this… If he ever bit a child that would be the end of it for him, but I would be a foolish owner to allow it to even go that far.
So I cannot answer this questions because I don’t know… Im stuck on it.