I don’t want to see a man drown in slobber.
12 Likes
Me either.
I can’t believe he’s five times more likely to live longer than a cat owner. At least a cat will give some warning (flattened ears, rapidly swishing tail, a fixed stare that means, “Put your hand in my face again - I dare you”) before it bites. 
2 Likes
Not really. It’s just that little dogs are horrible.
4 Likes
Having owned a sweet dog that was attacked 2-3 times (and while being attacked he still thought the other dog was playing) and once requiring stitches i don’t trust other dog owners telling me their dogs are well behaved. Your dogs might be ok as you say but owners don’t typically recognize problematic behavior or choose to ignore it. Maybe the pup in the video truly is playing but i’ve seen that type of biting in person before and i don’t think its cute even if it comes from a small dog.
8 Likes
And having a human child that was attacked 3 times before the age of 4 by supposedly sweet and loving dogs from ca. 15-50 lbs. I concur.
Yep. This. Your dog is a fucking nuisance and not nearly as well behaved as your wishful anthropomorphic projections of them assume. Keep that leash tight and keep that beast well away from any being that isn’t sentient or wise enough to keep their own distance.
6 Likes
I’ve seen so many of these dogs in a professional capacity, that I think I’m qualified to say that with a lot of these dogs it’s a combination of many factors.
- these little dog breeds have some inherent “napoleon complex” wiring that makes them more aggressive. (just imagine a different situation, like retrievers inherently knowing how to retrieve, if you believe the common myth that “there’s no such thing as a bad dog, only badly trained dogs”. Overblown levels of aggression is actually one of the more common tactic in very small animals for defense.)
- people mis-train them by allowing aggressive behaviors that you would never tolerate in a larger dog because it would seem too threatening. Or my personal favorite, let’s accidentally actually train them to be aggressive by comforting them and offering positive reassurance every time they exhibit aggressive behavior. Hmm… so every time the little shit acts up, you coo over him and pay attention…?
- a lot of these dogs do have fear anxiety issues and other behavioral pathologies (see point one though…)
- It’s rarely because the dog has a history of abuse. More often it’s a combo of breed predisposition to certain behaviors, and human failure to train properly.
16 Likes
You would be wrong then.
This is a dog acting very aggressively. It may be fear anxiety based, but these are definitely true warning bites, not play behavior.
Qualifications for saying so: Licensed veterinarian with extensive behavior training.
13 Likes
His points are all looking to be correct though.
-An actual “expert” (i.e. veterinarian).
5 Likes
My last pup was a wire haired jack russel, similar to the one on Frazier. Super smart dog with tons of personality, but he was the opposite of chill, fully wired and ready to go. Not aggressive though.
My current one I got from a pound, a jack russel/ beagle mix, the most chill dog you could ever meet.
4 Likes
That is so David Cronenberg 
1 Like
How does anyone think they’re superior enough to refer to any living being as a mistake?
1 Like
I can think of a clear example…
4 Likes
I see this too often.
Our dog is a bit nervous - he was rescued and has since been attacked for no reason whatever by a German shepherd and a large Labrador. He gets on fine with most other dogs, but he has now learned an important lesson; if he’s faced with baring of teeth and growling his options are run, or dominate.
So the other day he was walking peaceably through the field until he came to a woman with a bulldog/pug cross (!) on a lead. He approached it carefully, as he usually does. It did nothing till he got really close, and then did the teeth baring growling bit. So he put his paw on it.
And the owner went ballistic.
I said “They’re dogs, you have to let them be dogs” - but it was clear she thought it was a baby. Failing to socialise dogs as dogs seems to me to be a growing problem.
Even chihuahuas are dogs, and holding them like babies and playing with them seems to me to be something of a category error.
1 Like
In my opinion, the problem is that there are no universal social conventions with dogs among owners. My understanding is that socialization with both other people and dogs should be done deliberately and with the agreement of those involved.
The other dog owner had no idea at that point if your dog was going to attack hers in the same way that your dog had been attacked in the past. It seems dangerous to expect that any given dog is friendly or safe or wants to interact with other dogs anymore than a random person would.
I was raised with firm rules about keeping my dog on a tight leash and away from other dogs and people that might not want to interact with my dog, and to never approach another person’s dog without permission, in an effort to minimize anxiety between both.
4 Likes
Oh man you totally nailed it! My neighbor has two small terrier-cross (I think one is terrier x dachshund, the other is terrier a x terrier b) and you describe precisely what she has done over the years. “Oh” she nearly simpers “watch out, my dogs bite!” she says, laughing [perhaps a bit nervously? who can say?] well after my son is already reaching his hand well within bite range to pet one of these barky barky defensive Napoleons.
Nailed it. Yup. I call it the “two legs bad, four legs good” problem, where the owner should be retrained before any of her/his animals get behavior shaping.
Our own 80-pound rescue dog has separation anxiety (he came to us like that already). He has been a challenge shape, and my family will often miscue or make up cues (argh!), leading me to have to retrain them before we can address unwanted canine behaviors. We have had very limited success training our dog to chill out when left alone.
After a suite of imperfect strategies, and since I am not going to medicate him every time he is left alone, and since our house is 800sq ft I can’t manage getting him a companion dog, he has become a mostly ok therapy dog for my elderly mom. He will always be something of a trip hazard, and I have to remind and rewarn my mom to watch her step. So far, so good. We walk a knife’s edge on this. She loves our dog, and I think he loves her. So far he hasn’t tried to eat her for lunch (though he has tried to eat her lunch once or twice); I call that a qualified win.
At least he is not a fear-biter. That’s a hard one to train out as well, I was warned by a friend who has been learning to train dogs for search and rescue. Shock collar training is not effective long term and can set up cloaked behavior making the original issue worse.
Maybe some Calms Forte or Rescue Remedy in the ol’ water bowl and a nice Thundershirt for starters on that chihuahua. And a lot of outside time for exercise, assuming that is not a stressful scenario for that dog. I can’t imagine trying to train out fear biting
I love Circus Chicken Dog and Darren Peterson’s work with his Hurricane Katrina rescue dogs, each talented and ready to learn and perform. I learn a lot from Darren, mostly that I underestimate how trainable most animals are.
And how much I appreciate people keeping Austin weird.
A few years ago, a holiday performance of “The Muttcracker” … please forgive the amateur quality of this video, but like a lot of the fun weird stuff in Austin, it’s all homemade and DIY:
4 Likes
I am not sure if you really are that uptight or just pretending to be so.
1 Like
Replying to myself to share this pic of my colleague‘s chihuahua princess, just so you can see I am tongue in cheek with my dismissal of those little pests…
3 Likes
