​When I was young, I remember waiting in line at the grocery store behind a mother and her young child – probably between 3-5. The kid, bored from a long trip through Kroger, found a glimmer of hope in his day when he saw the brightly colored candied section at the checkout aisle. The aisle, as they tend to be, was filled with Snickers, Sour Patch Kids, gum, Skittles, and any other mainstream candy you could have imagined.

“Mommy, can I have some candy?” the child asked politely as his tiny hand grabbed for some Peanut Butter cups.

“Not today, honey” the mom responded without even thinking.

And then it began.

The child, sensing his mother’s distraction and lack of conviction to her “no” began to escalate.

“PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!” he said.

“I said not today,” she said.

“BUT I WANT CANDY!!!” he said.

The mom then glanced around the store, feeling the impending doom of a full meltdown, and changed her tune.

“Okay honey. Since you were good in the store.”
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This scene is something we’ve all either been a part of – whether as the parent, the kid, or a bystander thinking about we’re happy we don’t have kids or how much better we would handle the situation if we did have kids ( was the latter before I had kids myself and gained a massive amount of empathy for parents put in that situation). 

One of my best clients recently posted a viral video where a dog, seemingly out of nowhere, bites a toddler who was crawling all over her. Be warned, it’s a disturbing video, but watch how it happens here:

On the Internet, everyone is an expert at everything, so the comments are even more vicious than the video itself. The responses all fall into a few of these categories:
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1)      Destroy the dog

2)      It’s not the dog’s fault at all and the parents shouldn’t be allowed to have kids or a dog.

3)      It is so obvious that the dog was going to bite the child

4)      The dog was obviously punished for growling and that’s why he went straight to biting.

I will answer these claims quickly and then move on to the bigger issue:

1)      Probably not. While the video looks horrific, the more I watched it, the gentler the bite looked. If there was significant damage, this may be the right call. However, because the dog escalates so quickly, it’s probably not a good fit for an inexperienced home with kids.

2)      Dog lovers are so quick to pardon dogs of all wrong doing. There needs to be more accountability for dogs. The dog could have gotten up and walked away. It could have growled. It had any number of choices to make and made a bad, yet natural one. We need to advocate for our dogs always, but also to hold them accountable.

3)      One can easily see the dog was going to bite if one already knows the result. The dog stiffened and whale eyed a bit. However, reasonable people would not necessarily assume that would escalate to a horror movie-like bite.

4)      This is a theoretical concept that floats around the Internet, but is not necessarily grounded in facts. I doubt this dog experienced a great amount of punishment for growling in the past, but that is just speculation.

What’s more interesting to me is the societal epidemic we have of misunderstanding what dogs are: at the end of the day they are still animals that carry dangerous weapons in their mouths. We have a historical co-evolution with them, but over the last 50 years dogs have entered a bizarre transition from dog to child replacers and “members of the family” that has caused some growing pains like the situation we watched happen in this video - the dog corrected the baby the same way she would her own puppy or a sibling.
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People present dogs one way:
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​Then the same people get angry when new dog owners mistake their own dogs for cuddly, live-action teddy bears that their child can crawl all over.

If you choose to bring a dog into your home, it’s important you understand dogs to some extent – not just that you can read a dog’s body language and correct it before things go wrong, but sometimes, despite your best efforts, things can go wrong and dogs will react the way animals do.

As a society, the best change we can make is to start letting dogs be dogs again. That means less cute outfits and more exercise. Less having your toddler play with your dog and more training your dog with your toddler. That also means if you put your dog in a situation to make a mistake, you understand that even the best dog can make a mistake.
And yes, as I like to say, your dog probably needs more direction and less affection.

Dogs are and should always be members of our human pack. But that pack will only function smoothly when we let the dogs be dogs and humans be humans while still always working together.

 Right now, we have the big picture wrong and dogs are getting a bad deal in our society – being forced to play roles they weren’t born to play, not getting the direction they need, and not getting to enjoy the freedom every being craves.
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We owe it to dogs, and our human babies, to be better.

*Please like, share, and comment if you find this helpful / informative.
Follow Andrew on Twitter: @drewwarner
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One of the biggest things I see in the world of dogs is dogs who blow up at other dogs when they are on leash. They aren’t necessarily aggressive with dogs in all situations, but their lunging, barking and pulling towards other dogs is certainly unacceptable behavior that needs to be addressed.

Leash aggression (or leash reactivity as it is often called) is an incredibly frustrating thing for you and your dog to live with. It makes enjoying your dog a very difficult task and the responsibility is on you to solve it. You don’t have to live this way and it is important as a pack leader and a dog owner to take this unnecessary stress away from your dog.
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While quick fixes aren’t always an option for your leash aggressive dog, here are some tips to start solving the problem: