Hello everyone,
Today is about dispelling a myth. A myth specificaly in fact, about growling.
Back in the day, growling was often seen as a bad thing, even by the experts. No one wanted a dog growling. And so, if we didn't want it, we tried to train it out. Often this entailed a big dose of discipline, including verbal and physical punishment. Sometimes it led to even worse fates for our dogs.
Let me share something with you. It's an example from my childhood which describes this exact scenario.
We had a new puppy. A beagle called Bracken. She was beautiful. All big eyes and that black, tan and white coat that reminds us of all things distinctly English. And one day, while still a young pup, she was found by my mother, growling ferociously at her over a plate of chicken.
Not being at all experienced with dogs, my mother (with four young kids in tow) banished us all to a separate area and took Bracken straight to the vet. She recounted the tale and the vet took around two minutes to decide this dog was inbred. He diagnosed what I now know to be idiopathic aggression. This just means 'aggression of no known origin'. It's the worst kind although, incredibly rare. Unpredictable and likely to return when you least expect it. It's untreatable medically or behaviourally. The answer? Immediate euthanasia.
So, my mum returned to the car to deliver the news and we came home empty handed and with broken hearts. My mother had done the only thing a parent would do - listened to a professional telling her the dog would do this again and again and risked harming the kids.
Nowadays, I like to think that the clinical world has progressed. It is clear as day to me now that this little puppy was likely not suffering from idiopathic aggression, or at least needed a much more detailed assessment before sealing her fate. I suspect she was trying her luck at resource guarding, and being a beagle, had a propensity to be highly orientated towards food, placing high value on it. Where a dog places high value on something, they're much more likely to put up a fight.
So, to our question for today - when is growling bad?
Growling is only ever a bad thing - when we ignore it or try to eradicate it as a behaviour. That's it.
Let's turn this problem on its head a little. In the vast majority of instances growling is actually rather fantastic. You see, it's your dog's way of being very polite, before things get nasty. They are courteously letting you know that they need you to stop what you're doing and hear the warning. This may be because they feel threatened themselves, or because they are guarding something - the space around them, their food, their toys, their bed, their family members, or anything else they have placed value on.
But you have a dilemma now don't you? I hear you! I know what's coming. "Rachel, no, we can't have this" It begins to feel a little like your dog can just dictate what you can and cannot do around them, and that's what we want either. No, it's not. Neither do I advocate this as the outcome of your deal with any dastardly mutt baring their (hopefully) dazzling teeth in your face.
The key is, in fact, to heed this warning if it arises, and then rethink every single interaction you have with your dog for a while. Behaviorists do really well at helping you work all of this out. We know that if this has started happening, there's a risk it will become a strategy that a dog adopts for a growing range of scenarios and can therefore develop into a common behavior. That's dangerous.
Instead, by adjusting the way we approach interactions, and the resources we afford our dog, we can nip a growling moment in the bud with a few simple tweaks, often quite quickly and usually very successfully. However, to do so requires some translation and understanding of the exact origin of these growls including the reasons why they've arisen. We must identify them, anticipate them, and use each potential situation as an opportunity to rewire your dog's brain.
So, in conclusion, growling is only bad when you ignore this warning, or when you interpret it as bad behaviour and respond with discipline or punishment. The risk is that you'll confuse and worsen the behaviours. Or even worse than that, you'll encourage the dog to skip growling completely and jump to their next option which is aggression - usually to a bite or snap, without warning. That's a much bigger risk.
If you're struggling with any of this, do please get in touch. These issues are some of my favourite to deal with and I like to see families bond again with their dogs once these episodes are rectified.
Take care till next time :)
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