Myths About Aggression | Nonlinear Dogs

Myth 29: The domestic dog is a naturally aggressive species.

One reason people believe this myth is because of the romantic idea that the domestic dog descended from the great grey wolf (see Myth 1), which he didn’t. We now also know that the domestic dog isn’t a hunter, but that he became what he is precisely because he gave up hunting to scavenge our leftovers (see Myth 4). But all these romantic ideas don’t die easily. It is now fashionable among biologists to talk about the domestic dog as a ‘predator’. What they forget to say when they tell us this is that sheep, tapeworms and mistletoe are also predators. A predator is anything that has to eat from another living being, maybe or maybe not killing it in the process. A predator is not necessarily a hunter. Dogs have to have a certain amount of animal protein, but so does a tapeworm. The dog gets his protein by eating our leftovers, while the tapeworm actually steals stuff we still need right from under our nose. This biological wordgame has brought us right back to the old, false picture of the dog as a killer whose desire to kill is always right there under the surface just dying to get out. This need to feel we have a barely contained killer walking obediently next to us tells us something about ourselves, but it remains a false perception of the dog.

Then there is a second thing that contributes to this myth, namely confusion about what we mean by the word ‘aggressive’. Strictly speaking, aggression is some act that is intended to cause harm or pain. In everyday speech, we also use the word for acts that are intended to dominate or intimidate another. We use the word not only for acts that cause physical pain or damage, but we also include behaviour that is intended to cause psychological pain or damage. When we’re talking about humans, this broad definition isn’t entirely wrong. We are such an aggressive species that when we so much as raise our voices, this is often a real indication that danger is at hand — that we may attack the person we’re shouting at. We often fight to the death about things. Our social intercourse is strongly based on competition and domination, so we are often on the offensive and a lot of what we do is indeed aimed at dominating someone. We have complex minds, and are able to damage each other psychologically and emotionally. In the end, we may rightly call much human behaviour aggressive. However, dogs are not human, and it’s not fair to project human qualities onto them.

So what is going on with dogs? Dogs are non-human animals. Biologists know and acknowledge that fights to the death between members of the same species are very rare in Nature (as long as you leave us out of the equation). This is because a non-human animal recognises others of his species as a kind of social partners. Dogs are special, because they are able to include us and many other kinds of animals on this list. When they are dealing with social partners, non-human animals usually use only what biologists call ‘ritual aggression’. This is a kind of social discourse. The animals simulate a fight, but they aren’t actually trying to damage each other. The thing is, if it’s social discourse (which it is), it can’t simultaneously be aggression. It’s one or the other — either an animal is trying to damage his opponent, or he’s not, and if he’s not, well, it’s not aggression. Among dogs, aggression means delivering an uninhibited bite to the other in question, using the full and uninhibited strength of the jaws. Normal dogs rarely do this. In fact, the basic rule of dogs’ social interaction is that they will not revert to uninhibited biting, even in a very heated argument (see Myth 11). A dog who does use aggression is frightening to other dogs. They think he’s insane, and will do their best to avoid him. A dog who reverts to aggression can’t be part of any canine social system. Aside from the fact that other dogs avoid him, he will destroy any social system he joins by destroying the other participants.

Let’s take a look at what normal dogs really do. If you observe without projecting, and if you understand their language, you see that dogs generally do everything in their power to avoid aggressive encounters. Dogs have an extended warning system they use to tell the other that they are feeling worried and to ask the other to please keep a little distance. We’ve seen (in Myth 12) that it’s not aggression but anxiety that makes a dog use his warning signals (threat signals). We know that the use of anxiety inhibiting medicines greatly decreases threat behaviour in most dogs. Knowing this, we know that biologists make a mistake when they call threat behaviour ‘aggressive’. They miss the point that these signals express worry about what the other is going to do. They miss the point that these signals function specifically to give the other lots of time and opportunity to avoid a confrontation. We know that even when the other ignores the signals, and it does come to a confrontation, both dogs use their teeth with great reserve. In fact, they don’t use them at all except symbolically. They wave their teeth around, maybe pinch the other dog a little — even a toothless dog is not the least bit at a disadvantage in one of these symbolic ‘fights’. It remains easy during the whole affair for one of the dogs to stop the symbolic show of teeth by giving off a subtle signal that he’s seen enough and is satisfied that the other dog will follow the non-aggression rule. This signal can be so subtle that we don’t see it. To us, it looks like the ‘fight’ — which wasn’t a fight but an exchange of signals in a social discourse — suddenly ended, for no visible reason. We examine our dogs and find not a wound anywhere, or at the worst a small puncture caused by a fang — which is a kind of wound dogs get just as often in rough play, analogous to the child who comes home with a skinned knee after an afternoon of roller skating. We have to conclude the dogs were not being aggressive to each other, no matter how scared the whole thing made us feel.

Before a normal dog ‘bites’ a human, he also, very reliably, uses his entire warning system to give us the time and plenty of chance to avoid a confrontation. Just because we didn’t see it, doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.

Mistakes start with the fact that we often have no idea how a situation looks or feels to the dog. A dog might be lying in an armchair with a high back and arm rests. It looks comfy to us, and we forget that the dog is — in his own perceptions — lying in a corner without a quick exit. He might be lying on the rug in the middle of the room, and we want to get a book from the shelves behind him. We head for the bookcase, not even thinking about the dog as we focus on the spot we expect the book to be. We don’t realise that we are — in the dog’s perceptions — suddenly walking straight at him with quite a decisive step, starting to enter his personal zone while he’s in a supine position and can’ t shoot out of our way very quickly. His language isn’t our native language, so we often don’t see the signals he’s sending us (that he’s worried about why we’re approaching, and to please give him time to stand up and move away). We don’t see how long and how hard the dog has tried to avoid a confrontation. It seems to us like he suddenly lashed out. We think he ‘bit’ without a reason, and that this means he’s aggressive ‘by nature’. We’re so shocked by his lashing out that we don’t notice we aren’t damaged, and that his ‘bite’ was only symbolic. Again we fail to understand his native language. All we have is some spit on our sleeve, perhaps the imprint of a tooth on our unbroken skin, or (if the dog was very scared) a small puncture with a bruise developing around it. Our bones and tendons and muscles are all intact. Among dogs, this is all a very clear sign that no damage was intended, and that the bite wasn’t in any way meant to be real. To another dog, this inhibited bite is a clear sign that the ‘biting’ dog is, despite his anxiety, trying hard to preserve the peaceful social relationship. We humans totally miss this message. We forget what a dog can do with his teeth if he wants to, we ignore the role our own behaviour plays, and we foolishly call this symbolic, highly controlled gesture ‘aggression’.

Strong selection against aggression is woven throughout the domestic dog’s origin and entire evolution as a species. If you look at things fairly, you’ll see that normal dogs do everything in their power to avoid the use of aggression. Real aggression among domestic dogs is an anomaly. When it does occur, it is not because the dog is a naturally aggressive species. Aggression in dogs is usually a result of human tampering with a breed’s genes, or of traumatic experiences a dog has had in his life up to that moment. Many of these traumatic experiences are due to the Nazi myth that we have to be dominating our dogs all the time. This myth leads us to behave in ways that are confusing and frightening to dogs, often leaving them no alternative but to lash out. Bad science has burdened us with a self-fulfilling prophecy that has nothing to do with what dogs actually are.

Fact: The domestic dog is, by nature, anything but an aggressive species.

Please also read: Myth 30, however, because we don’t want you drawing the wrong conclusions from the facts about natural, normal dogs.

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