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My Dog Teaches … About Aggression
 The intent behind the various breed
bans and "dangerous dog laws" is avowedly to protect the public
from aggressive dogs.
Yet the laws rarely define aggression in any meaningful way,
leaving the door open for broad interpretation and misuse. For
example, under Ontario’s Dog Owners’ Liability Act, a dog
owner may be charged "if it is alleged that the dog on one or
more occasions acted in a manner that posed a menace to the
safety of persons or domestic animals". As discussed in an
earlier Petitorial, none of this is defined anywhere in
the law. Chasing cats, barking at strangers, growling at another
dog would all fit into this criterion.
Laws in other jurisdictions have their own hazy concepts such as
"approaches in a vicious or terrorizing manner" or "in a way
that endangers a person."
In her excellent book Dogs Bite: But Balloons and Slippers
Are More Dangerous, Janis Bradley comments, "My own state,
California, may take the prize for haziness in describing as
dangerous a dog that ‘engages in any behavior that requires a
defensive action by any person to prevent bodily injury.’ A dog
who runs into the street causing a car to swerve would qualify
under this definition. If he did it twice, this dog would be
certified ‘vicious’."
The difficulty in all of these vague and fuzzy descriptions is
that enforcement is often based on the irrational fears of those
who may have felt "threatened" or "endangered" or "menaced" in
some unspecified manner. Such as the couple on the opposite side
of the street who hurriedly scooped up their infant son from his
stroller and ran away terrified when they saw Hunny. From my
perspective, this behavior was really quite comical as Hunny was
walking contentedly beside me on a leash at the time, but I have
no doubts that in their own minds, they truly felt
threatened/endangered/menaced.
I can certainly empathize with those who have little experience
with dogs and who are nervous or afraid in their presence. But
they can hardly be expected to have a proper perspective on
canine aggression; in fact, many dog owners themselves
misunderstand this aspect of dog behavior.
In reality, all dogs display aggressive behavior at some time or
other. As a point of comparison, what man, woman or child does
not get angry every now and again? Humans have language with
which to voice our upset or displeasure with another. We might
express it in other ways such as facial expressions or body
language, but rarely does the anger escalate to physical harm.
Dogs, not having the finer nuances of spoken language available
to them, communicate on a more simplistic level. They may growl
or bare their teeth or snap threateningly to establish the
limits of acceptable behavior amongst themselves. On occasion,
this can escalate into a full-blown fight. Yet even in this last
scenario, it is extremely rare for any dog to be seriously
injured. The explanation for this is really quite simple. Dogs
are social animals adapted to living in packs; their mutual
survival demanded that disputes among themselves be settled in a
manner that did not weaken the pack through injury to any of its
members.
Thus, even though a fight between dogs may look and sound
ferocious, complete with gnashing teeth, almost invariably each
dog is merely posturing aggressively. Even if one does manage to
get the other in its jaws, the bite is inhibited to prevent any
real injury.
As any person who frequents dog parks can tell you, displayed
aggression towards humans is very much less common than towards
members of their own species. For anyone to accomplish the
extremely rare feat of getting bitten by a dog, I would venture
that, in almost every case, somewhere along the line he missed
the warning signals telling him to "back off". (Which is why
young children should never be left alone with any dog; they
don’t have the experience to understand the dog’s
communication.)
Because all dogs posture aggressively, it becomes a meaningless
exercise for anyone to try to predict if a dog is dangerous
before it has actually harmed a person or another animal. Very,
very few are unless they have been maliciously trained to be so.
Labeling dogs as such based on a poor knowledge of what
constitutes aggressive behavior is human folly. If dogs can
generally sort out their own squabbles peacefully, albeit
sometimes belligerently, surely we can apply our time-honored
principle of "Innocent until proven guilty" to them.
Previous "Petitorial"
articles by David McKague:
Editor’s note:
I would like to encourage dog lovers everywhere
to start a PETITION to have this law thrown out or revised to such
a form where justice prevails. SFR.
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