This blog is about ITR – ‘investigating the reason’ behind a dog bite, the cause and effect, and the external factors which can cause a dog to react in a situation in a way that does not show their true character, or define them. It also covers my passion for thorough detective work into every single dog bite, simply because a dog’s life is always worth the effort.
I saw a clip several years ago now, of a dog temperament assessment to determine a particular dog’s suitability for rehoming. As is often the case on TV, it was a pretty brief clip, but one part of it remains firmly in my mind to this day. There was a dog, a little red staffie, being assessed with other dogs. The assessment involved watching the staffie, who had just entered the room and who was on a collar, being held on a tight lead, as another dog entered the room. The dog that entered was fairly “starey“ at the staffie and was quite excitable which triggered the staffie to pull on the lead further and stare at the other dog, but without a still body, without anything conclusive. Yet the conclusion from this assessment was that the dog was not suitable for rehoming, due to its ‘aggressive interest’ in the other dog. This baffled me then and still baffles me today. Of course TV shows are not going to be completely true to life in terms of time restrictions and therefore the things are edited and cut, but to use that clip to support the decision? I’ve watched the clip multiple times since and am no more at peace with it.
I’ve heard of various rescue centres determining a dog’s fate after entering a dog’s space while they are eating high value food, and ignoring any ‘go away ‘signals the dog is attempting to clearly display – a fake assessor hand is put into the dog’s food bowl and moved around in there until the dog shows aggression. The dog is then labelled as aggressive and un-rehomeable as a result. Labelled, just from that, and just like that, in a matter of a 1-minute test, and consequentially, the dog’s continued life, or euthanasia is determined. “But what if a child put their hand in the dog’s food bowl” I’ve heard people say – well firstly a dog that does show resource guarding behaviour is highly unlikely to be rehomed with young children if the centre is at all sensible, and secondly, a careful management and rehabilitation plan should be in place with the new owners, which would be explained thoroughly. There’d also most likely be the offer of post home support – from any decent shelter anyway.
But it’s this idea we can label a dog from a simple test that bothers me the most – that we can fit them into little boxes and that we can put that dog’s entire temperament into that box. The dog is deemed as being unable to offer an alternative behaviour in a different environment, despite not being tested for this, and the dog is summed up as aggressive, even though the aggressive display is in actual fact a response to an identifiable predictable trigger or situation. Should we conclude that the dog doesn’t deserve the chance of a rehabilitation programme to attempt to help them with this behaviour before we dismiss their life as irrelevant?
There are of course exceptions to this – I am not talking about the dogs that have put in serious bites, or have a history of aggression that would be near impossible to safely rehome. I am not speaking of these dogs, but of the dogs that have been set up to fail, labelled as a biter and therefore cast aside without further appropriate examination.
Take the following scenario – a phone call comes in to a rescue centre about a dog they have rehomed. ‘The dog bit a visiting child in the face’ they say – and now for me comes the moment that determines the type of rescue centre answering the call. Does the centre take this statement literally or does the centre ask appropriate questions to discover the scenario behind the bite? Is the dog’s life viewed as important enough to have some detective work involved?
I can assure you there is in many of these cases, external circumstances and much more to the situation than an unprovoked launch of random aggression towards a child that was not in any way at fault (in terms of action not moral responsibility) and was being actively supervised. Let’s bear this in mind for a moment and consider if many parents actually do this – active supervision! I’ve heard of many cases in various rescue centres like the above, and actually in every single one I know of, on investigating the situation the centre found there had been a lot of stressful occurrences – trigger stacking – in the days leading up the incident.
Often you will find that the ‘bite’ was in fact a snap, or a nip that caused no damage to the face, or if damage it is superficial due to a nick in the skin. The incident itself had involved inadequate adult supervision, with the fact it was the child’s face that was bitten being due to the child kissing a sleeping dog, hugging a dog trying to eat its food, a child jumping on top of a dog, or a child pinning a dog to the floor to copy TV dog training techniques (let’s not open that can of worms).
Is the child at fault? No it’s a child. Is the dog at fault? No, not in my opinion. Should the dog be labelled as ‘aggressive?’ No, but the next home should be carefully vetted due to the now bite history, and the dog should be reassessed on return to the rescue, a lot of dogs can be successfully rehomed and never repeat ‘offend’ if all facts are examined. Of course there are those where the bite was severe and this does understandably effect the decision to rehome.
If the dog usually has good responses to real life stressors that you can’t shield the dog from then you would look into different circumstances for rehoming. Is the dog biting as it is in pain or has an undiagnosed health condition? – this is a massive reason for many dogs biting seemingly with no warning, and no prior cause – this must be looked into before casting a dog aside. Is the owner calm enough to give a coherent account of what happened – were they in the room at the time of the incident or are they relying on a young shaken child’s account of what occurred? Is the owner angry at the dog due to feeling protective of the child and so potentially exaggerating, or are they angry at themselves and so don’t explain all the facts. Crucially, are they going to defend the dog and, potentially, not tell the whole truth? The facts are important, whatever they reveal.
It is really not the case that when a dog has bitten it is sitting there, eyeing you up and plotting when and how it will bite again, and yet we label dogs that have bitten once as ‘biters’ ‘vicious’ ‘aggressive’. If I lose my rag and after lots of provocation and tormenting, shout at a friend, am I an aggressive violent person? Surely my entire temperament should be looked at to determine this. How do I respond when I’m not stressed, not provoked – am I likely to commit mass murder in the future, because I raised my voice in response to a very stressful experience? Should the person that triggered me to raise my voice not also adapt their behaviour in future to lessen the likelihood of this happening again? Or should I be imprisoned or killed off in case I may one day go beyond raising my voice? Extreme example – yes – but no more extreme than what we do to dogs.
Let’s move onto looking at the kennelled dog’s mental state now, and the possibility for a dog in kennels to show aggression, and to do this properly we need to take into account kennel stress. There are very few human equivalents to this if any, and no example that perhaps can be logically comparable, without seeming like a desperate clutching at straws comparison. The best example I’ve heard commonly used, is a comparison with a maximum security prison. Are we going to expect these prisoners to act the way they’d act in society – possibly in some cases yes actually due to the fact they have been imprisoned in a pretty impenetrable prison, but in a lot of cases, no. Being captive, surrounded by aggression of various kinds, having your choices taken away, your freedom, having sensory deprivation and restriction on exercise, little or no comfort, total lack of social interaction or very limited in some cases, potentially poor quality food and so on – would you not be negatively influenced by this in some way? Would you not become somewhat ultra-protective of what little resources you do have? Would you feel physically, emotionally and mentally healthy in this environment? Would you not panic if taken from your cell by unfamiliar people in uniform, put in an unknown environment and then another prisoner is brought in on the other side of the room. You’d most likely have no idea why you are in that room, what is about to happen, know who this other person is – using the example of the staffie perhaps you have been placed in a test to measure your social behaviour, now, bearing in mind the stress you are under in your daily life, the fear you are experiencing due to the environment you live in and have suddenly been placed in, are you going to behave socially and get top marks in these ‘tests?’
Experience has shown me that judging a book by its cover, and taking things at face value, without further investigation, can be highly detrimental and lead you down the wrong path. I am passionate about setting a dog up for success and not judging things without a proper examination of the dog, any external factors, the history and so on, because I believe every dog has a right to this. It isn’t my intention to insult any rescue centre, but merely to put across my hope that each rescue will be a devil’s advocates as I am being and examine in depth every possibility. It would be rather sad for rescue centres to do otherwise, to not value life enough to carry out analysis of the bite, the dog and the potential for rehoming.
To sum up, in the words of a much wiser person than I, “Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance” Albert Einstein.
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