Originally published at: There's no such thing as a bad dog. This Dog Training Essentials Course can turn even a problem pet around. | Boing Boing
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they’re good dogs Brent
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As a Veterinarian, I’m going to argue this.
It’s not a popular viewpoint, but just as there are irreparably damaged humans, there are dogs with inherent “bad” behaviors. Can they be managed, usually, depending on amount of effort. Can the behaviors be reduced? Also often yes. But just as much as there are human serial killers etc… there are dogs damaged beyond repair as well.
The myth of “no bad dogs” or “no dangerous breeds” causes quite a bit of harm to people not ready to handle a problem animal.
That’s not to say that these animals are not “safe” with the right handlers in the right situation.
An example: When I was in practice about 15 years ago, there was this awesome ~110# PitX. Sweetest dog in the world. I could draw blood from him with one hand and hold off the vein with the other. You could do anything to him, even painful/uncomfortable things by just petting him first. But… we had to walk him in the back of the hospital, and cover all cages so that he couldn’t see another animal. If he saw another animal his eyes dilated, and he went apeshit, and would absolutely do his best to attack/kill it. The owner lived by herself, was well in control of this dog, had seen behaviorists, and this was a “controlled” situation, but nothing was ever able to remove this dog’s prey drive/urge to fight/kill. Bad dog? depends on how you look at it. Great dog for a woman living by herself in a not so great part of town. By society’s standards, a 110# unhinged animal killing machine… probably “bad”.
I’ve also only ever seen one Jindo that wasn’t out of control aggressive. “Bad” breed? …Or just engineered to do exactly what people wanted it to?
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Our pit-mix was similar, without the pupil dilation. She especially wanted to go after small dogs. She caught a bishon frise and a pug, but thankfully she never bit down or hurt them. She also had an unfortunate encounter with our big love bug of a cat, who bit the hell out of her and sent her to the vet. As a result, she gave our three cats a very wide berth in the house.
We worked with a handler who was amazing, although we could never get close to that kind of dog mastery. So what we chose to do was watch her like a hawk. We never, ever let her even get close to another dog, and it worked out in the end. She was awesome with both adults and kids, but we never took her sweet disposition for granted.
So I understand what you mean about it being seriously hard work. For us it was worth it, but we took our responsibility for this dog (and the damage she could potentially do) very seriously. Not everyone is cut out to be this hands on.
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Some people are just assholes, even people who went to school.
Why do you think it would be any different for dogs?
(That said, I support schooling for humans and dogs alike.)
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I met a blind guy who told me how he accidentally “untrained” his very first seeing-eye dog. The solution was that he had to go to seeing-eye dog school. With his dog, of course.
Good dog. Not as good owner.
Why go through the effort of training when a natural plant extract has just been scientifically proven to reduce aggressive behavior and totally mellow out stressed dogs?
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