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Originally Posted by Francie Don't reprimand them for growling? Confused...by ignoring it...isn't that giving the pup carte blanche to act "aggressively"? Don't get it...so at what point do you reprimand behavior that is "out of line"? (Gonna take notes here) Francie |
As I say, this is a bit of a new concept to me, too. I'm not real comfortable with a dog who growls either. But what some trainers are saying these days is two-fold. One, that a dog warns you that he's reachng the end of his rope, so to speak, by growling. Take that away and he has no choice but to go straight to bite mode (if he can't flee). This makes sense to me. The other aspect that I've been reading is that there is no evidence that not punishing a dog when he growls leads to a more aggressive dog.
But, the important part, to me anyway, is what you do with the information about what caused the dog to growl. When Joey was a young puppy, he growled at men in uniforms. The treatment for that was drastically increased socialization so that he learned to be comfortable around people of all different sizes, shapes, colors, clothing styles, etc. He now longer growls at "odd" people. Currently, he occasionally growls when people approach if he has a high value object - for instance, a new bone. The treatment there is a systematic approach to desensitizing him to people's approach in that situation. So far, it is working for us.
So, you see, I'm a looong way from "ignoring" it. But the treatment I'm using isn't punishment.