This morning, I visited Amazon online. Naturally, Amazon suggests things I might like to purchase. Usually I breeze past them. Elegant gold women's watch? Not my style. Cat tree? Hmm. I'm pretty sure my invisible cat is happy enough without one. What did catch my eye was a book about dog aggression. This book promised, right in the title, to eliminate the problem... in just seven days!
Now, I haven't read the book, and this rant... er, post... is directed in general at the idea of "curing" aggression immediately. In short, it's ridiculous. Oh, I suppose you could do something so painful or scary to a dog whenever he shows aggressive behavior that he stops right away. I mean, come on, if you hit me over the head with a mallet every time I bit my nails, I'd stop doing it. And it would look as though the problem was fixed. But although the punishment stopped the behavior at that moment, it didn't remove the underlying cause. What if I were biting my nails at the time because I'm nervous around horses, and we were near one? Did the mallet whack cause me to become less afraid of horses? No, but it probably made me more afraid of you. It also gave me another bad association with horses. See where this is going?
Humane, scientifically sound methods for handling dog aggression are not flashy. They don't come with wild promises, bells or whistles. Proper behavior modification can take time and patience. What it doesn't do is scare the dog, break the trust between dog and owner, or make the problem worse. The dog learns over time that whatever was causing him to be afraid and therefore reactive (the vast majority of dog aggression is fear-based) is really nothing to be afraid of. Once the underlying reason for the aggression is gone, so is the behavior. Rather than slapping a Band-Aid on the symptom, there is a real, long-lasting cure.
Well, I'd best get back to Amazon and try to remember what I was there for in the first place. Maybe I'll find a book on fixing my memory in seven days.