Don't Dump The Dog (9 page)

You also want to desensitize the dog to baby smells. Consider dusting the house with baby powder, and then borrow some unwashed baby blankets from a friend, which you then place on the floor. If the dog so much as sniffs the blanket, let alone tries to lie down on it, shake your can of pennies or give her a squirt with the water gun and redirect her to a more appropriate place.

Once in a great while, a new parent calls me and says the
family
dog growls at the
new
baby. I stress those two words, because the situation usually only occurs when this is a family’s first baby and is nothing more than a temporary case of newsibling jealousy.

Think about it: For thousands of years, we’ve selectively bred as much of the wolf out of the dog as we can, which means we’re basically left with a hairy two-year-old kid who makes a lot of noise and licks his own butt. Like a toddler, he depends on us for everything. He can’t hunt, he can’t problem-solve, he can’t imagine any world besides his own, so when you—his parent—bring home
someone else
, routines, affections, and everything else and then some changes.

He is, in effect, confused.

So make it easy for him to understand. Whenever you hold the baby, reward the dog; whenever you feed the baby, feed the dog; whenever you change the baby’s diaper, give the dog a treat. If you reward your dog every time he comes near the baby (and sits on command), it won’t be long before the baby becomes your dog’s favorite person, besides you.

Finally,
never
punish the dog for growling, because that only teaches him not to warn before biting. Remember, growling is not a bad thing—it’s the only way your dog has of warning your child that he/she is too close, too smelly, or too annoying.

As a last resort, you can always put the baby in a plastic bubble (which would be my choice, personally). It would make for great conversation when you have company and could be great exercise for the baby.

Quick Fix-4

W
hile aggression in dogs takes several forms, if their behavior involves any of the following, I’d bet my secret stash of Reese’s Peanut Butter

Cups that it’s dominance aggression:

• She growls at you when you get near her food bowl, take a toy away from her, or try to get into bed when she’s already there.
  
• She acts aggressively toward some family members and not others.
  
• She insists on being petted sometimes and growls when you do it at other times (especially when she’s resting).
  

It’s easy to confuse dominance aggression with fear aggression (see chapter 10), but if a dog growls at you from a crouched position with her eyes averted, then it’s fear, and if she growls while in an upright position, staring at you with a look that says, “You are a quarter-pounder,” then it’s dominance.

Whenever a person contacts me about a dominant-aggressive dog, I first run them through Randy’s Power-Freak Personality Disorder Test, because many people who have dominance issues with their dogs also have dominance issues with their people. Dr. Gupta says they have
asymmetrical dyadic relationships
, which sounds like they worship Satan, because they try to control others by limiting choices, and using physical or psychological abuse, but I just call them people who shouldn’t have dogs. (
Note to Self
: Consider replacing the MEAN PEOPLE Suck bumper sticker on my van with ASYMMETRICAL DYADIC PEOPLE Suck.) So Part I of my test consists of starting a few sentences and then ... pausing.

“So you’re calling about ...”

“... Copper.”

“You said in your e-mail that Copper growls when you get into ...”

“... bed.”

“And she doesn’t like her toenails ...”

“... trimmed.”

If they finish the sentence for me, then I move on to Part II, which I designed with the following cleverly camouflaged questions:

1. Do you reprimand your wife when she buys the wrong toothpaste?
   
2. Do you think the world would be a better place if you ran it?
   
3. Do you yearn to wear a crown?
   
4. Do you identify with your inner ape?
   

If they answer “Well ... yeah,” as if they were stupid questions, then I move on to Part III, which is asking them what their address is, and what time I should pick up the dog.

Usually, and unfortunately, the reason dominance-aggression problems arise between dogs and their people is that the people don’t know how to lead. All too often, I receive calls and e-mails laced with phrases including “I did an alpha roll,” “I stared him down,” and “I made him submit,” but in most cases the e-mails end with, “and he bit me anyway.” So, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: DO NOT EVER try to dominate an aggressive dog physically unless you like visiting emergency rooms. DO NOT stare him down. DO NOT attempt the so-called alpha roll, which I explain below. DO NOT yell, hit, or challenge him in any way, because he will eventually take your arm off in an attempt to save the family.

Yes, in an attempt to
save the family
.

Here’s what’s going on: Researchers who studied wolves years ago thought packs organized themselves according to a hierarchy of physical power, with the strongest male and female dominating the others with force. They based this theory on what they thought they saw: alpha males and females forcing subordinates to grovel by flipping them to the ground and then staring them into submission as if they were in a WWF wrestling match. They called it the “alpha roll,” not related to the popular egg roll, and it eventually became a trendy dog-training technique in which people were told, among other things, to grab an aggressive dog by the neck, force it down onto its back, and then hold the sides of his cheeks while staring directly into his eyes. Advocates of the alpha roll and other physical techniques (including—I’m not kidding—hanging dogs from trees and choking them nearly to death) thought that if wolves used force to control the pack, people should too.

The problem—what I call The Great Misconception Meant to Make Randy’s Life Difficult—is that the early wolf researchers got it WRONG, all WRONG, and, in fact, SO WRONG, that this trendy little dog-training technique resulted in trendy little stitches for many sorry people. You wouldn’t believe how many power freaks glommed onto the alpha-roll theory and how many of their dogs I re-rescued as a result.

What researchers thought they were seeing—an alpha wolf grabbing a subordinate and flipping it to the ground—was actually the subordinate wolf
offering
his muzzle to the leader who then placed his own muzzle
gently
over it. The subordinate then
voluntarily
rolled to the ground. Reread the italicized words in the last sentence, because they’re important to remember when dealing with an aggressive dog. It is more like Wolf Theater and acting. The leader wolf doesn’t use force; the subordinate wolf volunteers submission (as in, willingly). The only time, and I mean the
only time
a wolf uses force against another wolf is when he wants to kill it, literally, and as contemporary wolf researcher David L. Mech wrote in his paper, “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,” “Dominance contests with other wolves are rare, if they exist at all.”

This takes us back to why an aggressive dog is often just trying to save his family. According to Dr. Mech and others who’ve actually lived with wolves, the alpha male and female do not lead as pistol-carrying tyrants who use force to control the pack, but rather as parents who use diplomacy to control who sits where at dinnertime. A wolf pack is, in fact, a family unit usually consisting of the parents, their pups of various ages from various litters, and an outsider or two allowed in from other packs to keep things copacetic. There’s no mysterious, primal, hierarchical structure here; a wolf pack is simply a wolf family, and the alpha male and female are Mom and Dad—pretty basic
Brady Bunch
logic here.

As such, Mom and Dad rule, and any displays of “dominance” are really just Mom and Dad making sure everyone stays safe and gets fed. When the pack brings down prey, for example, Mom and Dad eat first—not because they need to display their power, as previously thought, but to keep themselves strong enough to take care of the kids (why I eat first at home with my “kids”). It’s the same principle behind putting the air mask over your own face before Junior’s when the plane goes down. They in turn decide who eats next. If times are good—and for wolves, this would be when large prey like moose are taken down—everyone eats at the same time. If times are bad and the prey is small, Mom and Dad “ration” by feeding the youngest pups first and allotting the older siblings only what’s left. “Thus,” Mech writes, “the most practical effect of social dominance is to allow the dominant individual the choice of to whom to allot food.” Simple as that: It’s all about groceries.

The only fighting or jostling for dominance in a wolf family takes place among the pups, who establish future alphas while they’re little, before they can inflict any real harm on each other. Once pups decide potential alpha-ness, it’s pretty much set in stone for the rest of their lives. That way, when Mom or Dad get older, or die, the successor has already been chosen and can step peacefully into place.

Mom and Dad, therefore, “rule” with calm, inherent authority, because they have nothing to prove. As parents, they are leaders in the purest sense of the word, because their goal has nothing to do with self-interest but with the safety of the family as a whole. They don’t bare their teeth or roll subordinates to the ground or in any way strut their stuff to display their strength, because as parents, as true leaders, they don’t
need
to.

And neither do you.

If you bring a new dog into your family and he acts aggressively toward you, it’s because he doesn’t understand who’s leading the pack. You, apparently, aren’t, so for him it’s like entering a pack of insecure, squabbling pups, trying to determine future alpha-ness. If even one leadership chromosome inhabits his body, he’ll step in to fill the void, because in every functional family,
someone
has to take charge.

Let me regurgitate: Your new dog, the biological equivalent of a wolf pup, enters your home expecting to find the functional fairy-tale family, complete with calm, dignified parental leaders and kids who adore and obey them. But if he possesses any dominant tendencies and finds no leadership—the leadership that should be there, that must be there if his new pack is to survive—he’ll automatically assume that role so the pack
does
survive. He thinks he is helping restore order to the dysfunctional clan.

In other words, when your dominant-aggressive dog growls or bites, he is not challenging your authority; he’s already assumed leadership and is reprimanding
you
for challenging
his
.

Unfortunately, and in large part because of The Great Misconception Meant to Make Randy’s Life Difficult, dominance aggression in dogs usually plays out as follows:

Almost any dog, no matter how dominant, will resign his leadership post if a better leader surfaces. Remember, dogs are mentally equivalent to wolf pups, and if you act like their parent—like a true leader who controls the resources without using force—they will follow you gladly. Consider which boss you’d throw a lifeline to if necessary: the short-tempered, highly stressed bully who uses threats of demotions and firings based on compliance, or the even-tempered, calm-headed boss who promises promotions based on merit.

While we’ve spent the last billion paragraphs setting up the solution, which was necessary, the solution itself is the easiest in the entire book to accomplish. It’s so easy, in fact, that you might feel a little cheated when you find out that all you have to do is ...