In the world of dog training, “leadership” is a complicated word. To most people, the word “leadership” conjures up images of alpha dogs and the military men who shout commands at them on the training field.

That is one type of leadership – unfortunately it’s not one that every person can authentically pull off. Some people have a softer touch than these obvious “alphas,” but can still lead dogs with expert precision.
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When I am dealing with softer human personalities, I ask one simple question to help them understand leadership with their dog: Who is adjusting to whom?

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.

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Follow Andrew on Twitter: @drewwarner
Like me on Facebook: facebook.com/andrewwarnerdogtraining
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The last few years have been the years of change for me and my wife. We've moved, added a few kids to the household, have launched and expanded this business, and more
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In the previous version of our life, there was considerably more sleep and a lot more freedom (what did we do with all of that time!?) - but with all that freedom, it would have been easier to let things like routine and discipline slip through our fingers. Had we gone that route, our now more crowded life wou...ld be that much more difficult to handle today.
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Now that our family walks look like a mixed-species military walking through Irvington, I'm glad all the work we put in with our own dogs is paying off - each one has gone from absolutely terrible to a functioning member of a group that is bigger than themselves.

When you bring home a baby from the hospital, that first night alone, without the aid of nurses and a constant flow of family and friends willing and eager to hold your new little one, can be frightening.
 
You’re excited and completely in love, but at the same, there’s this sinking feel: my life will never be the same again.

People always comment to me that I’m training them and not just their dogs. This is true and it is one of the most important skills a pet dog trainer can utilize. Once you understand dogs and are able to understand their communication, dog training becomes relatively easy. Training people is the same way, but the communication and motivation aspects are much more complex.  
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As you rehabilitate your dog or teach them simple manners, you will come to find that the dog might be ready to learn, but the other people in your life will be far more difficult to train than your dog.