Thank you very much. I'm very excited to be talking to you guys today about a topic that's always interested me. So we're gonna be talking about owner directed aggression in dogs today.

The one thing that I did realise when I was, writing this presentation, and again when I was timing myself giving the presentation, this is a massive topic, and it can be a little bit controversial, which is one of the reasons why I was so keen to And talk to you about it today. But that what that does mean is unfortunately, within a 15 minute talk, we're not gonna have the time to get really into all of the nitty gritty. So what I'm hoping that you're going to go away with today is a really broad, interest maybe, and definitely, insight into the reasons why dogs may demonstrate these kinds of behaviours towards their owners.

Give you a few top tips about how best to prevent these issues. I'd really like you to go away feeling confident about just giving some really safe. I've called it band-aid advice and to owners I normally call it sticker plaster on it advice.

It's basically management, so how can we make the dog safe, improve its welfare, and stop the behaviour from escalating and getting any worse, and then where can we send these dogs for further help. So I hope you'll all find the talk interesting. There'll be some time for questions at the end, and, and I've tried to put a few references in here if you guys are interested in.

Going out and reading up a little bit more about the subject after today. Fabulous. So, just to kick us off with some facts and figures, really, there's a couple of interesting things that I wanted to share with you and hopefully, again, give you a bit of an insight as to why I felt it was so important to talk about this topic today.

So firstly, it's shown consistently across many studies that aggression is the most common reason for owners to seek behaviour advice from, you know, either their vets or behaviour prac practitioners. And, and aggression directed towards owners is often, if not the most common, problem, one of the most common problems that people will seek help for. Also a really significant cause for relinquishment dissenters like the Dogs Trust.

So a couple of reports suggesting around 50%. And interestingly, in those studies, the most common issue being aggression directed towards owners. Obviously, what we can get following on from that is behaviour problems being one of the main reasons for owners to return a dog after they've rehomed it from a rehoming centre.

And one study here demonstrating that about 80% of owners, whether if they did return a dog, the reason was for behavioural, issues. So it's something that we're really interested in doing a bit more research in at the Dogs Trust, and also putting a lot of resource into trying to help prevent these problems in the home and give support to our owners as well. OK, so a couple of other interesting points that, I found reading up in the in the literature.

So one of which, which you may already be familiar with, because it's fairly well decimated this information, that the majority of reported dog bites, are sustained by people that are familiar with the dog. So that's not necessarily the owners. It could be friends of the family, but definitely people that know that dog.

And children appear to be the highest at risk. Do you remember with these kind of statistics, that's reported dog bites. So a factor might be that people are more likely to go to the hospital if a child's been bitten by a dog.

But again, the kind of, evidence that's come out of a few different reports is that those are the highest risk groups. Again, quite consistently, male dogs seem to be overrepresented for aggression-related behaviour problems, so not specifically aggression to the owner, but aggression in generally. And a couple of top points that I really wanted to pick out to talk to you about today, kicking this talk off as well.

So the results of quite shocking results in my opinion, of one study that was conducted in the UK in 2013 established that behaviour problems were actually the predominant cause of euthanasia in dogs aged under 3 years, 3 years of age. And despite this, studies are showing quite low referral of behaviour cases, when compared to most other specialists. So a couple of studies here that were conducted in Spain and America, finding about 35 to 49% of vets said that they weren't, referring on behaviour cases to another specialist, be it a veterinary specialist or a, non-veterinary behaviour specialist.

So lots of facts and figures that kind of tell us, yes, this is a really important issue. It's important, obviously, not only from the dog's perspective, but also from a human health perspective. I don't really need to talk about how much of a risk aggressive dogs can pose to people, but it's definitely something that from a public health perspective, it, it really pays to try and prevent this and treat it as responsibly as possible.

OK, so the majority, of the, of the influence, I guess, that I really wanted to put in today's thought was talking to you about the broad reasons that a dog may choose to show these sorts of behaviours that people may interpret as being aggressive. And when I'm talking about aggressive behaviour, I'm talking about things like, barking, grow, growling, and lunging, biting, snapping, and that people have interpreted as a, as threatening type behaviour. So if any of you are familiar at all with reading behaviour texts and, looking into this topic at all yourselves, what you've probably found is that there's been lots of different attempts to categorise aggression.

What I'm gonna be talking about, to you today are really broad, categories, if you like, broad differentials for aggressive behaviour. That, based on the core emotions that we know dogs are able to experience and what their motivation for that behaviour may be. So what's the underlying emotion and what is the dog hoping to achieve with its behaviour?

And, and I hope you'll find that by looking at the, categories in this way, it kind of simplifies. How we understand the behaviour and what we also find is that those contextual cat categories will fit within those so things like territorial aggression, for example, you'll probably find where you'll be able to fit that in amongst the, the differentials that we'll be talking about today. So, a couple of key questions just to pop us off with this, because we're gonna be going through a few different, diagnoses that could be possible.

One really nice way when you're trying to work out what's causing aggression is in the dog, is to think about what caused the aggressions, so what happened directly before the aggression. How exactly did the dog react? So what exactly did it do and what happened directly afterwards.

So that kind of sequence, some people refer to it as antecedent behaviour consequence, and that often just helps you almost put yourself into the dog's perspective, drill down to those core emotions and what the dog's hoping to achieve, and try and find out what the aim was of that behaviour. Owners can often give us very subjective reports of their dog's behaviour, and if they've already come to a diagnosis themselves as to why their dog is behaving in a certain way, and they may be quite descriptive already about the emotion that the dog has. So if you're having difficulty or just when you're trying to understand what the dog did, just ask them to describe what the dog looked like.

So describe to me exactly what your dog did. And also what you'll find as we talk about these differentials, where we can, finding out what happened when the behaviour first developed is so, so helpful. And we'll talk about that and the reasons for that as we go through the talk.

OK. So then, what we're gonna do now is talk through these broad, differentials for aggressive behaviour directed towards the owner. I'm talking just to kind of specifically about owner-related aggression today, so that's the spin on it.

But, these, these categories can be covered for any type of aggression. So I've, like I said, I've made them very broad. So if you're thinking about a case of aggression to another dog, for example, your categories are going to be very similar.

So what I'd like you to do is just spend a couple of seconds thinking about what your guesses might be, I suppose, in terms of the differentials that I'm gonna pop up on my list. So what are these core emotions that dogs might be feeling or what are the core situations that a dog might get itself in where it may trigger, behaviours that the owner interprets as being aggressive. Some of these are gonna be fairly obvious, if you like, and some of them are gonna be a little bit more, Need a little bit more thinking about.

So we're gonna go through them one at a time. Hopefully you will have all identified that dogs that are in pain, are much more likely to be aggressive and pain can elicit, aggression. But there may also be other medical causes that will elicit aggression, for reasons other than pain.

You're also all probably thought of fear-based aggression. Frustration related aggression is something that is sometimes a little bit more, I don't want to say controversial, but perhaps something that isn't still fully understood, certainly within owners, sometimes within the professional community as well, but it's something that we're talking about more and more. This is the one that you may not have thought of.

So excitement or play related behaviour, is the owner misunderstanding or misinterpreting that as aggressive behaviour, or has it reached a point where actually it's quite dangerous? Predation, you know, you could kind of think of that as a form of excitement, the dog is working to get something it wants. And it's very rare, especially towards owners, but I've popped it in there just to tick it off the list.

And the other thing that I'm gonna spend quite a bit of time coming back and forth and talking about is the role of learning and how that's so important, but also how it can sometimes cloud our judgement a little bit when we're thinking, very specifically about these different reasons for aggression. The one thing that I wanna say before I start off going into a bit more detail about each of these categories is that it's not one or the other diagnosis, so we wouldn't, or we would very rarely say that a behaviours . Elicited purely by fear, it does, it does happen, but often we're gonna be seeing a combination of emotions that are going on at one time, so these aren't kind of exclusive emotions, we can't only be scared and therefore never feel frustrated at the same time.

OK. So just to start us off then, pain and medical causes, for me, in the context of aggression directed towards owners, this is massive. So a couple of facts and figures for you on this one.

About 50% of dogs in one study that had been, had bitten a child, were identified as having an underlying medical. That was, thought to be a contributing factor. So those, included dermatological and orthopaedic issues.

There's also been a more recent study that looked at a small population of dogs that have been referred for, behavioural reasons, and they found a higher, incidence. So, dogs that have been referred to aggression, about 75% of those in this, other study, and I've got in my mind, actually were identified of of having orthopaedic issues as well. So again, lots of evidence that suggests that dogs presented with underlying medical conditions were more likely to show aggression towards their owners.

So we know that medical conditions that lead to pain and discomfort are likely to increase the risk of aggression. Thinking about, you know, the cases that I see, within my capacity as a behaviourist, I would push that, percentage even higher. So I think when we're thinking specifically about aggression towards owners, I haven't looked through all my case studies, but I would be quite confident in saying that at least 80% of those dogs have got something underlying that's causing them pain or discomfort, that I believe to be contributors to the issue.

So, a really, really big one. Like I say, painful stimulation itself can just elicit aggression straight away, but also generally being in pain, reduces the threshold for aggression. So that just means that you're more likely to be aggressive if something comes along that, say, makes you scared or frustrated, and then you would be if you were otherwise healthy.

We're not gonna talk too much about it, but there are some medical conditions that could cause or contribute to aggression without making the dog painful per se. There's a couple of examples there, and there's a couple more in the notes sections that have been provided. But also another thing to bear in mind is that a treatment that we recommend could also influence aggression towards the owners.

So let's say the dog's got a painful ear infection and that dog needs topical treatment, it needs drops or eye drops. If that's painful, and if the dog is the sort of dog that would react badly to that kind of treatment. And that may really lead to a breakdown in the relationship.

And I've seen many examples of that. And when we're thinking about providing treatments to these sorts of dogs, we need to be really careful about helping owners, make a plan for that, and, and what to do if it's not going to plan, because often, often they'll persevere and persevere and actually not ask for help until, the issue's quite significant. OK.

So this is really your bag, ruling out pain or medical causes, so again I'm not gonna go into any veterinary stuff on this, but what I have done is added a couple of kind of behaviour based questions that you might find quite useful when you're approaching these conversations. So, have there been any other changes in behaviour? That's really important, and it might include things like sleeping, toileting, eating, drinking, and does the dog seem itself generally?

Is this a very sudden change? Has the dog been quite happy wearing its harness and then one day started to be quite reactive to that? Would the owner described the aggression as quite uncharacteristic, and perhaps they describe their dog as a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character.

It's quite unpredictable. Quite importantly is that aggression is by handling, so I'll often get dogs that, are OK being straight near the front end, but don't enjoy the back end. Being touched and groomed, potentially, as we've seen a lot of these dogs that present for these behaviours could have underlying orthopaedic issues.

Is there some pain back there, and that's why the dog is reacting to handling in that context. And, interestingly, a study that came off of the back of the one I was referring to with the 75% underlying medical issues presenting for aggression cases. They looked in a little bit more detail at those dogs that We aggressive and had underlying pain, and found that moving the dog from resting positions, was a characteristic of those dogs that were in pain.

And also the dogs that were quite sudden in their aggression, quite easily distracted. So definitely ask a little bit about the context there, and if it seems to be around resting or particularly around evenings or when being handled, definitely look into potential painful influences with that. But also just thinking about, does the behaviour fit with an alternative diagnosis, so does it make sense in this situation that the dog would feel scared if it wasn't in pain?

Often that helps us when we come to ruling out differentials. OK, so we're gonna move on to fear. I think luckily, this is now quite a well recognised cause of aggression in dogs.

So, I don't think I've spoken to anybody who would say that a dog was, would never react aggressively when it was scared. And we know that a dog may learn to, be aggressive when it's fearful, and that kind of response may be triggered earlier and earlier. So first, a little bit about fears.

They could be caused by either a lack of experience or experience that have been experiences that have been perceived as being negative. And the motivation in this instance, what the dog's trying to achieve is to increase that distance between them and their owner. So fear related aggression is more likely to occur when other options that the dog has about getting getting away from the thing it's scared of or stopping the situation are unavailable or ineffective.

So in this way there's a link with frustrations, so. In most cases, aggression won't be the dog's first choice when it's scared. In most cases, you're going to see an escalation in signals all the way up to the point of aggression, because aggression's actually quite a high risk option to choose if you're feeling scared because there's a high likelihood that somebody's going to fight back.

And dogs evolving as a social species have developed this really nice, A really nice way of being able to signal their emotions, so. They're gonna go from quite low levels of looking worried, maybe, up to the point of kind of turning away, moving away, trying to get away from the situation, showing what we would call appeasement behaviours to diffuse social threats. So that would be things like cowering, rolling over on their back, making themselves look a little bit pathetic.

And then the last resort in the normal sense is usually to use aggression, and that would be from kind of a tense direct stare to a growl. To a snap, to a bite. So normally there's a lot of preamble before a dog decides, I'm just gonna go straight in and be aggressive when I've identified a threat.

But learning has a massive influence. So if the dog learns over time that aggression is a successful way of dealing with a threat. And that behaviour becomes practise, they may learn, OK, what's the first predictor for this situation?

Can I react to that? They may learn that the most confident displays of aggression work the best, and that's where you may see the dogs start to look a little bit more proactive, and, and that's where the influence. Of frustration is particularly important as well.

So, not only is frustration going to make the dog more likely to be aggressive if they can't get away, and that's what they're motivated to do. Once a dog's learned to use aggression, if that suddenly becomes ineffective, that frustration's gonna, chip in and escalate that, aggressive reaction. So really, really important, and Quite complex actually, when you drill down into it.

So a fearful aggressive dog isn't always going to present as a dog that looks terrified when it's aggressive. But looking into the history of that dog is really important, and looking at the context and where it, it uses aggression and thinking, well, are they worried about similar things as well. OK, so I've popped this little picture in, just to give us a bit of an overview of exactly what I've just talked about.

So that I this is this is developed by Kendall Shepherd, and you'd find it in the the SAVA manual. It's quite a nice one to give to owners whose dogs do do this really nice escalation in their reactions and almost try and avoid getting to the top tiers where they're showing aggression. And so it shows us what we might consider a normal development of reactions.

And this is a very simplified view, so not all dogs will escalate in this way. And as I say, if we've got, if we've got learning that's taken place, we might actually just go up the 1st 3 rungs and then possibly skip right the way to the top because that's the most effective thing to do. And we'll talk a little bit about why punishment isn't a very effective way of dealing with aggression.

But just to point out here that, punishment may quite effectively suppress something like a growl. So you'll often hear it being referred to as taking the batteries out of a smoke alarm. Never punish the growling dog because the growl is a, it's a communication signal.

The dog's trying to avoid escalating. If we take out the growl, and then that's when we've got dogs that are more likely to inverted commas bite out of the blue, without warning. OK.

So we're gonna move on to frustration, which is one of my favourite topics. So this is a really, really nice, definition that's been developed by, Lincoln University. And I'll just talk you through it.

So frustration is the emotional state which can arise when an organism is, is stopped from obtaining something. It wants to get, or keeping something that it already has. Frustration can occur where previously learned expectations aren't met, as well as in situations where there are actual potential barriers to autonomous control.

So that could include things like physical restraint, inter intrusion into personal space and territory. So frustration is the emotion that we feel, basically, when we are, when our, when our, we have a barrier to achieving our goals. And the point of frustration is that it's gonna invigorate our behaviour.

So we're gonna try harder, we might try different things, we might try for longer. But it's very adaptive for us to feel aggressive when there's a barrier in the way of us achieving our goals, because that's the behaviour that then would propel us to actually get what we're aiming to achieve. So the really important point about frustration, is that it can relate to to attempts to get what you want.

So get something I like, or keep it. Or avoid things that I don't like. So, like I said, we can understand aggression in the context of fear related frustration in the context of fear related aggression if the dog's not able to get away and it wants to, or if it's already learned to use aggression to, avoid a threat and that's no longer successful.

So do bear that in mind. Frustration is not always just about, I want to play and I can't, and it's also about trying to avoid those things you don't like. So like I say, the point is to invigorate behaviour.

Some dogs will be quite, aggressive with frustration, so they might just give up, walk away, appear quite shut down. And we're not talking about those dogs today, we're talking about the dogs that react aggressively to frustration. Not every dog will react aggressively to frustration, but it's a risk.

And, and that aggression may be redirected, and redirected means that, we're targeting something that's not the original source of our frustrations. So for example, if I'm walking down the street with my dog and he wants to go over to the dog across the field and say hello, but he can't, and because he's on the lead, I'm potentially going to get some redirected aggression there. Possibly more likely when certain needs aren't met, and we'll talk about about what those needs are.

But especially when we're thinking about our dogs that do require a lot of stimulation, both physically and mentally, if there's deficits there, then potentially those individuals are much more likely to feel frustrated. And just like our fear related aggression, an aggressive frustration response will be reinforced by our learning. So if that aggression is successful in achieving an aim, that behaviour, just like any other context is reinforced.

OK, so I have the pleasure of having adopted a Malamo at 7 months of age who hadn't lived with people before and did have a lot of frustration related issues. So I'm going to show you a couple of videos of him, and what I'd like you to do as we watch through these videos is think about what emotional state you're perceiving in this dog. So I've already told you he's frustrated.

Is he frustrated because he wants to have a good interaction, he wants to seek something that he finds quite rewarding, or is he being frustrated because he's perceived something as aversive and he's trying to avoid that? OK. So, best time to adopt a Malamoir is when you're renovating your entire house.

So hopefully you saw quite a few signs of frustration in that video. I will play it for you, one more time. But the preamble to that is that I was playing tuggy with him with the rope, and we were playing on the carpet, which is quite, has quite a lot of traction.

And when I moved into the kitchen, he started to, bark and mouth, at which point I got my camera out to take a video of him. So in this case, his frustration is relating to wanting to continue that game, on the carpet. And that may be influenced by the floor being slippy, possibly his legs are a little bit painful, and that makes him not want to play on the slippy floor.

But in this instance, he's using that reaction to try and solicit the game again in the area that he wants to solicit the game in. And he would escalate this reaction, so if I hadn't moved away, then he, he would likely start to mouth my arm. OK.

So we can see there as well that I'm giving him a cue. I'm saying out, and I've taught him out in quite a positive way, but frustration there about, that not being his motivation. So we've got a second video here.

In this video, we've got two dogs, both of whom are showing, frustration related behaviours. So again, I'm gonna give you a chance to watch this video. Please think about the emotional state of both dogs, what both dogs are aiming to achieve with their behaviour, and then again, we'll talk about it and then watch the video one more time.

Oh, this one potentially isn't wanting to play. Let me just have one attempt to play this on a minimised screen and if we're not working then we might have to give this one a skip. OK, I'm afraid I don't think that video's gonna work, but I'll talk you through it.

So in this video we've got a little Jack Russell that's, wanting a social interaction, so he's chasing after the Malanoir, vocalising, wanting to play, and the Malanoir's got a ball in his mouth. And he wants to have a game with the handler, that is my partner taking the video. And as he drops the ball, the Jack Russell comes to take the ball, and he gets, rushed towards with the vocalisation.

The dog moves away, drops the ball again a little bit closer, and the same happens again. So in that instance, we've got aggression from the aggressive display from the Malimo as regards to his frustration about wanting that resource and wanting the game, and not wanting the Jack Russell to join in. OK.

All right, so I'm gonna talk to you a little bit now about excitement and play. So like I said, this is one that sometimes when I, when I'm talking about this to people, they almost write it off and say, Do you know what, that's a really easy one to rule out. But I would say from my experience, not so much.

Probably partly because of, breed type characteristics. It can be quite difficult for people to identify whether dogs are playing or not playing. And, and at some point, aggression may, excitement and play may tip over into something slightly more sinister with certain individuals.

So we know that biting, what we call ragging, so grabbing things and throwing them around your mouth and growling are all common in play. There is evidence that says actually it's quite difficult for some owners to distinguish that, especially based on the vocalisation alone. In this example, the motivations for the dog to seek an interaction that they find enjoyable.

So prosocial behaviour, there's a feel good emotion that comes along with that rough and tumble play that the dog is seeking. And again, it's reinforced by a learning. So if the dog learns, if I grab hold of your arm and growl, that works really well to get you to push me, and then we're having a, a rough and tumble game, and that response is likely to occur again.

Questions relating to the dog's normal play style and behaviour are really going to help you rule this out. Thinking about, OK, well, does the dog's body language tally, if it's trying to play and it's excited, and that's all it is, you should be seeing really loose playful body language. And does the context of the aggression make sense as well?

I did have another video here to show you, this one is working. OK. OK, so, again, we've got the dog there, and we start off not really knowing what's going on.

The pretext to that is, again, my partner, who is, well trained now to take videos of my dog wherever possible, was getting him quite excited, wanting to have a game with him in the snow. The dog's excitement levels and arousal levels just went up to the point where, we've got that growling and mouthing behaviour triggered. We can see from the dog's body language afterwards.

That he's very excited. Possibly a bit of frustration in there relating to just wanting more rough and tumble play. And that mouthing behaviour being one that was already established when we took him on.

But you can see there that if, if you didn't know that dog, or if you just adopted that dog, you would be, you know, it would be completely understandable for you to say, Hey, my dog's being aggressive. OK. So I said I wasn't gonna spend very long on this slide.

I've, I've never come across a case myself where there's been predatory aggression, directed towards an owner. It, yeah, it's very unlikely to happen. But it, it does, it is, it has been reported, so it, it can happen.

In this case, you could almost think of it as being, linked in with excitement to some extent. The motivation there is to seek something the dog finds enjoyable. And the whole sequence in this case is rewarding, so the hunt as well as the kill and the consummation.

But the point is that you're reducing distance and you're delivering a really high intensity of what you might call aggressive behaviour, . In order to, to deliver that bike. OK, so let's think a little bit about the role of learning again.

So I've mentioned this a few times if we've got, as we've gone through our different differentials, but basically, we know that behaviours that are effective in either getting something that you want or avoiding something that you don't want are repeated. Practise makes perfect. So the more you practise a behaviour, the easier it is for that pathway in your brain to get triggered, and the more and more habitu will become.

So learn aggression can very easily become detached from the original emotion that was underlying. So like in that example I gave you of the fear-based aggression and becoming something that looks very confident. Learned behaviours may become quite habitual and invariant, so the dog may appear less emotional, lower arousal levels, and arousal will refer to like how wound up the dog looks, so it's pupil dilation, it's heart rate, all of those things.

It's important that we know the history of the behaviour wherever possible, because we can then unpick, OK, actually, how did this first develop. But if we can't do that, it's not the end of the world. And, and certainly for you guys, it's, it's not essential to know that because, unless you are specialising in behaviour, and your time, etc.

Is gonna be limited to that, sticker plaster on it advice. OK. Just slipping it in here for fun, really.

A little bit about dominance. So I've put in a key references. So if anybody's interested in going up and reading about dominance, please do so.

There's another paper that's been published by the same authors more recently, again, going over, some of the discussion that's occurred around this topic. But just to summarise it, because I don't have much time, and the reason I said just for fun is because I could spend a long time talking to you about this. But as a summary, really, it's been now widely accepted that using the term dominance to describe a dog's behaviour traits, has been unhelpful, for the work that we do with dog behaviour.

So if, you know, if I was giving this talk to you, say, 20 years ago, it might be something that I was, you know, Telling you was a predominant cause for aggression, particularly towards owners, and it's really a theory that stuck. But it has since been disproved. So since there's been more research that's gone around looking at the relationships of, dogs and people, dogs and dogs and even walls where the original theory came from, and there's been a lot of evidence there to disprove the original, application of that word.

The problem with it is that it's, it led to a lot of methods that are intended to reduce status, or to teach the dog who's boss. A lot of those rely on aversive techniques. And those techniques are associated with a higher incidence of problem-related behaviours, including aggression.

Unfortunately, these recommendations are still widely accessible and regularly broadcast. So there's a real risk there, both in terms of human, safety, but also dog welfare, safety and wellbeing. So do go and have a look at the paper, do have a look at dominance.

But the most important takeaway point from this really is that those methods that aim to reduce status or rank aren't going to be helpful in order to teach a dog not to be aggressive to its owners. And in many cases they're actually gonna, cause more problems than they would aim to solve. OK.

Just a little bit of a recap then, and we are exactly on time, which is fabulous. So these are our main kind of differentials, and we're thinking really broadly and like I say, drilling down to those, emotional causes of, behaviour that could be interpreted as being aggressive. Don't forget that we can get a combination of these.

So, as is often the case, we may get a dog that's worried, but also frustrated, excited and frustrated. Perhaps they're quite frustrated, but also in pain. So it's not a rule out, it's not a case of ruling it out.

My job would be much easier if it was, but it's not, so we can get quite a complicated soup of things going on. But like I say, it's not always essential, especially not for you guys to completely identify exactly what's going on with every single trigger. Alright, so we're gonna move on now to talk a little bit about key life stages.

Again, this is one of the most important. Aspects for me when we're thinking about preventing these sorts of issues, first and foremost is responsible breeding. So, again, I think for a lot of you guys, hopefully this is somewhere where you can have a little bit of influence, so we know that genetics have got an influence on certain aspects of aggressive behaviour.

We certainly want to be promoting the breeding of dogs that have got a sound temperament as well as a sound from a health perspective. So certainly responsible breeding of the right kind of healthy, well-balanced dogs, in my opinion, is something that we should be, encouraging. But yeah, certainly breeding away from aggressive, type characteristics, .

So, I will try not to go on a tangent about that and move on. To the socialisation period in puppies. You'll all be familiar with this.

It's that period during early life where the brain is still developing very rapidly. It's a really important period for building social relationships with, with dogs and other people, and it occurs from about 2 to 14 weeks of age. And so really important time for getting puppies used to handling, used to meeting different people, etc.

Etc. Really helping them set them up for success. And it, from, you know, speaking from my own experience, I have had many conversations with owners that have had their dogs from puppies and their dogs gone on to develop, aggression towards unfamiliar people, that they would say that they socialise their puppy really, really well.

He was fine meeting lots of new people. And then suddenly, as he got a bit older, the aggression started to come out. On further questioning, those puppies were the ones that were quiet, they were under the chair, they were in the arms and not coming forward to seek that interaction.

So just do bear in mind when you're speaking to puppy owners and we're encouraging socialisation. It's socialisation. It's not, it's not kind of overdoing it.

Because if we overdo it, especially with the wrong types of, dog, we're actually, again, most likely causing more issues than we are solving. So it needs to be based on the individual puppy. And if you're noticing you've got sensitive puppies, do encourage those owners to take things slower, rather, give up some of that rapid socialisation in favour of teaching the puppy some solid skills with things it's more comfortable with and progressing things more slowly.

OK. Really the key life stage when we're thinking about, the development of aggression, and again, I'm thinking of aggression more generally in this, in this, area rather than specifically aggression directed towards owners, the juvenile period is really important. So that runs all the way up until the end of the socialisation period to the time of sexual maturity.

And there's believed to be a secondary kind of sensitive period that would occur around the region of 7 or 8 months, where the dog again is particularly sensitive to aversive experiences. There's not a massive amount of research that's been done on this, but there are papers out there which, Reinforce the importance of this period, especially when we're thinking about aggression, and so that the diagnosis of certain types of aggressions more likely to occur at the time of sexual maturity and, and developed during this time. So really important time to think about our dogs.

And then obviously, as our dogs age, they become more susceptible to things like orthopaedic issues which are potentially gonna make them a little bit less tolerant, and they also change the needs that they have. So just supporting owners and best supporting their dogs as they age is really important as well. OK.

So I'm gonna blast through a couple of just key lessons, really. And these, are just things that I've pulled off the top of my hat, to be honest with you, that I feel are particularly important when we're thinking about, preventing these issues. So firstly, I believe it's really, really important that owners understand how to meet the needs of that individual dog.

So especially when we're thinking about dogs that have got, Higher exercise requirements, if you like, or stimulation requirements and have been bred potentially for doing certain things and they have that, that almost that need, and if we don't meet it, then potentially we're gonna have frustration related issues. But also the basic thing. So access to somewhere comfy to sleep, you know, a suitable diet, access to water, and places where they can go to be away from people as well as a suitable amount of time with people.

So really understanding what, what it takes to take care of a dog and, and meet those needs. It's really important to understand, have a basic understanding about how dogs learn, about their social interactions. So just understanding that the dog isn't trying to get one over on them, and they don't have to, employ techniques to reduce status, because I think a lot of owners do feel that pressure with their dog.

Really vitally, when it, when it comes to this specific issue as well as understanding communication, so particularly signs of fear. Because if you're doing something to your dog and it suddenly starts to look scared or run away from you, we might prevent them learning to use aggression if we educate owners a little better on how to react to that. And how to employ reward-based training techniques.

A couple of key lessons for dogs, which obviously people need to teach them. Learning appropriate play for me is a massive one. So not only does that help build a really good relationship, but it also helps dogs learn how to react appropriately when they feel frustrated.

It gives them some really good coping strategies, and it's a massive confidence boost as well. If you have a dog that's a little bit nervous, learning how to play games with people is gonna really help that. As I say, building confidence, specifically with our puppies, learning to be handled in a formal way.

So learning to have their feet picked up and looked at, learning to have their nails trimmed, learning to have their teeth checked, learning to have somebody suddenly hold them and take a look at a tick under their belly. All of that stuff we need to prepare them for in a gradual and positive way. Learning to share resources, so not by practising, taking them away, but by adding something better when the dog has something.

And as I said earlier, learning appropriate coping strategies, if you get really excited, if your arousal levels go up, if you get scared, if you get frustrated, how should you react in that situation in order to get the, outcome that you're looking for? OK. Just quickly, to neuter or not to neuter is something that I, get asked about a lot.

I would say over the 10 years, the amount I get asked about this has reduced, . But there is essentially quite a complicated relationship, particularly between testosterone and aggression. So studies have given conflicting results.

So in, in some, in some studies, castrated dogs are seen to be less aggressive than int males, and in other studies, the reverse has been demonstrated. In my personal opinion, I think it's quite dependent on the type of aggression that's developing or is seen. And possibly in some cases of frustration related aggression that are influenced by sexual behaviour, say, then taking away that testosterone may be beneficial.

In the cases of fear-based aggression, that's likely to be detrimental because testosterone. And brings with it a certain amount of confidence. So it's a really nice paper out, that's Open Access, that came out this year, where they talked a bit about the results of their own study, but they also gave quite a nice review of, the studies that have been undertaken in the past in this, in this topic.

And their conclusion was that currently the evidence base isn't strong enough to support a blanket castration rule to reduce or prevent aggression in male dogs. In female dogs, very specifically hormonal changes at the time of the season in some individuals or around phantom pregnancies can increase the risk of aggression. But again, there's not strong evidence to say that neutering females is gonna reduce aggression generally.

Chemical castration is a possible temporary option if you're thinking it might be beneficial, but it can't be relied upon to give you exactly the same results as you would expect from a, a, a surgical castration, and there's a couple of studies out there that that that will discuss that. OK. OK, so where and how can we give owners these messages?

Obviously, we want to philtre it through to them, but we can't, kind of force them to take this on board. But I think that practise is a really nice way of doing this, and actually it's a really nice way of building a relationship with owners, because if they think that you take an interest and you Care about their dog's behaviour, they're more likely to take an interest in your clinic and feel like they've been cared for. And, so definitely resources and welcome packs, popping posters up in your waiting rooms of just really simple things like signs of fear in dogs, and then how to react to them, or how to best prepare their dog for a visit to the vet.

Potentially, you're going to have newsletters or social media where you can possibly do blogs that look at some of these key prevention messages. But also just paying attention to little things and consults. And if you're thinking, oh, there's something easy that I can just tell you that's going to help prevent an issue here, for example, when you're, recommending a topical treatment, say, do give those extra little bits of advice and handouts are often a really nice way of doing that.

Dog trainers are a fantastic place to go to help prevent these issues occurring in the first place, and I'd recommend those that are qualified with the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. OK. Just a little shameless plug.

Dogs Trust do run dog school classes. So we've currently got 28 schools across the UK and we run puppy, juvenile and adult rescue classes. We deliver basic training, but also we spend almost just as much time just discussing key messages with owners.

So that's the preventative measures that we've talked about. So, essentially helping owners under. Understand their dog's behaviour, so that they don't need to ask a trainer, to troubleshoot things.

They can almost do it themselves. And, so we keep the classes really small with our, lots of really well qualified instructors. So many of our instructors are APDD qualified and we're putting more through every year.

And, and you can also look at our website for some free training and behaviour advice and handouts that you might find useful. OK. So what advice would I recommend vets give in a consult room when somebody's come in and said my dog is doing X and I really need help right now.

So like I said, this is my sticker plaster on it advice. First and foremost, we need to assess the safety of the situation and safety as regards to the people, but also the dog and the dog's welfare. So is there a way of managing this situation where we can protect all of that?

So people are safe, the dog is safe, and the dog's welfare is acceptable. And in order to do that, we probably need to go through the triggers one by one and take a good look at them. But if the answer to that question is no, this is really unsafe and the owners cannot manage it.

The second question is, could it be safely, feasibly safely managed elsewhere? And if it could then, perhaps look into things like, where that dog's gonna be better going to another environment. If it's another no, unfortunately, sometimes we may need to consider, euthanasia, but I would recommend always, asking for extra support and help when those decisions, come about, unless it is an extremely dangerous situation, in the first instance, which is no way of being managed.

OK, but for a lot of those cases that do appear quite hopeless on the surface, with some help, we can get some good, good results. OK, so the second thing on the list is to rule out likely medical causes of pain. So that your stone a really nice prognosis in cases where we can say, yes, this is causing you pain and we can treat it.

And then we can provide the safe, welfare appropriate support. So what I would suggest is you identify a list of key triggers for the aggression and have a think about what the likely underlying reason for that is. For each trigger, can they avoid it?

If they can avoid it, even if it's a bit difficult, I advise that they avoid it, because that will stop the pattern of the behaviour, just becoming further and further reinforced and obviously also keep people safe. If it's not possible to avoid that trigger, we need to, this is where the, the, the, creative bit comes along, really. We need to try and find a way to prevent that escalating whilst diffusing conflict.

So I'll give you one example, Let's say we've got a dog who. Bites the owners on the legs as they leave the house. We could say, OK, that dog's quite anxious about being left.

It's also very frustrated. It doesn't want the owner to leave. Is there a way we can avoid that?

No, the owner has to leave the house. OK, well, could we manage it using something quite positive? Yes, maybe we can prepare a safe, long-lasting food treat like a stuffed kong with something the dog really likes, set the dog up with that before the owner leaves and just sidestep the issue.

Like I said, this is not, I'm gonna treat the issue and teach the dog something new advice. This is, I'm gonna stick a plaster on this, keep it safe, keep everybody happy until you can get further help. Definitely stop any punishment-based training techniques.

They are not your friend, they're not gonna help the situation. Even if they appear to stop the dog in its tracks, they're likely to, lead to a deterioration further down the line and can be quite risky. Definitely try and ensure the dog's core needs are being met.

So maybe ask a couple of questions about is the dog getting suitable exercise. So, enough exercise, but also the right type of exercise, for that dog, thinking about whether there's any other stresses in the environment that are, causing the dog issues and aim to reduce them as much as possible, making sure that they've got a suitable diet, suitable resting places, the option to be away from people in the home if they need to be. And then put into place reward-based training, so use treats, rewards, play, food, and as much as possible to help manage your dog in a short term where it's safe to do so.

And definitely consider muzzle training, and again, that should be introduced in a gradual way and there's some advice on how to do that on our dog school website. It's not going to be appropriate for every single case. So if you have a dog that's presenting to you, with the issue of guarding its food or guarding food generally.

The first step probably isn't going to muzzle train it, because, A, the muzzle's gonna be of limited use in that context anyway, and B, you need to teach the dog to wear the muzzle using food inside the muzzle and the owner doing up the strap. So if you have a dog that is resource guarding food, definitely speak to the behaviourist before you recommend muzzle training. OK, and then nowhere to go to get specialist help.

So it's really important that whenever we can, we encourage these owners to go and get proper support elsewhere, because unless you're specialising in behaviour, I can't imagine that you've got a huge amount of time to spend speaking with these owners and supporting them, after you've given them that initial conversation, and a lot of them do need that. Quite intensive aftercare support. So behaviourists qualified by the Association of Pet behaviour counsellors, or qualified with a certified clinical animal behaviourist status, are gonna be really essential.

Those behaviourists are covered by insurance, some insurance companies, for example, PET plan, and they will always ask for a veterinary referral. So they will undertake the behaviour consultation, which often is in the region of 2 or 3 hours. They'll talk through in massive detail the development of that issue, and they'll put together a really structured plan for the owner, based on what they've heard.

And they will send you a summary of their advice or a copy of the report. And they may then contact you afterwards to discuss if they felt that further medical workup would be indicated, or possibly the use of adjunctive behavioural medications may be useful, unless those behaviourists are vets themselves, and they won't give you specific recommendations, but they'll ask for your advice on those aspects. OK, so, I know that was a really quick whiz through and like I said, it was, really broad, but what I hope it's done is given you an idea about how much of an issue it can be, this can be, how significant it is for our, our kind of our dogs, but also our people, how much significance pain and medical causes have, And kind of what the key reasons may be for a dog showing this behaviour and what our key sticker plaster on it ideas might be to keep everybody safe, and stop the behaviour escalating, but also where to go in order to get that extra help in terms of, OK, bringing, bringing this on and improving things.

So that's exactly 50 minutes, so I'm gonna wrap it up there. I hope that you guys enjoyed my talk. Oh.

Suzan, that was absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing it and I, I can hear the absolute passion as we did the last time you were on the webinar vet and I I'm sure if we got you off on a tangent on any one of these topics, we could keep you going for many hours. You could do, yeah.

What we'll have to do, you see, is, is get you back for more webinars, which would be absolutely great. Fab. Just to, to touch on a real hot potato, the story of neutering and that sort of thing.

For many, many years it was considered that if a dog started to show signs of aggression, a male dog, you should get him neutered as soon as possible. But in more recent years, it seems to be that Any signs of fearful behaviour and that sort of thing, it's controversial, and even contraindicated it's new to them until you've got the behaviour under control. Can you just touch on that a bit?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely one of those subjects that was and still is controversial to a certain extent, and it's, it's one of those that I have kept an eye on over the years because I remember when I first started to look at behaviour, there really wasn't that much evidence for it. And then the evidence that we did have was very much based on looking at different populations of dogs, so comparing dogs that have been neutered with dogs that haven't been neutered and looking at instances of aggression. And more recently, there have been studies that have looked a bit more proactively, so they've taken a population of dogs.

Some of them have been neutered, some of them haven't, and they've looked at, at trends in behaviour. And as I say, a lot of these more, recent studies have actually found the reverse is true. So the, the, the relationship with testosterone is quite complicated.

It, it does give a certain amount of confidence, and there's some research that's been done, for example, in mice that would indicate that instead of making them more likely to be aggressive in the first place, if the dog has shown aggression and been successful, perhaps the testosterone gives them a bit of a boost and is an extra reinforcer factor. But certainly speaking from my own experience. I think particularly when we're thinking about sensitive periods for dogs, a lot of male dogs might get neutered.

You know, just before sexual maturity around that time, and, you know, thinking about my own cases, I can think of lots of examples where I've seen a decline in behaviour following that. And whether it's because of the effect of testosterone or whether it's because of having a stressful experience at that sensitive time, I'm not sure. But yeah, as a blanket rule, it's definitely something that we turn away from a bit more nowadays.

Yeah, it really is quite a, a hot potato because I don't think anybody has got the right or wrong answers. And it's one of those things that's probably gonna smoulder along for a number of years to come. Definitely, I'll be interested in in seeing them further research that comes out on the topic for sure.

I think that would, would make a lot of vets' lives a lot easier having some tech research. You know, standing in the consult room and go, well you could do this, but maybe you shouldn't and must be, you know, and the client looks at you as if to go, well, do I or don't. It can be a minefield.

Yeah, yeah. This is why as a as a practising vet, I'm very grateful for people like yourself cause I can just go, well I'll tell you what, why don't you go and see Suzanne and see what she says. And then I say, go back to your vet.

Suzanne, thank you so much once again for your time tonight and we really do look forward to seeing you and listening to you again on the webinar vet going forward. No problem at all. I've enjoyed it.

Thank you. Folks, thanks for attending tonight. Really appreciate it and to Dawn my controller in the background, thank you as always for all your help and I look forward to seeing you on another member's webinar.

It's goodnight everybody.