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Bhaisahab is a big dog, and a powerful one. His person had to go out of town for two weeks, so he hired a helper to walk him, and he explained everything before he left. Put the muzzle on. If any dog comes, turn him around and walk away. For two weeks nothing happened, because when you turn Bhaisahab, he turns, and he ignores the other dog.

A young helper walks a big muzzled fawn dog away from a street dog behind them. The big dog trots beside him on a loose leash, ignoring it. — Two weeks of this. Turn him and walk away, and he turned and ignored the other dog.

Then his person came home, but he was still resting, so the helper kept walking him. And by now the helper had decided that he could handle Bhaisahab. He stopped putting the muzzle on. One evening there was a street dog in the lane, and a face-off. Bhaisahab barked and barked, and the helper held the leash pulled tight the whole time. Not a pull and then a release, the way he had been shown. Just tight, and held there.

Bhaisahab bit him. Not the street dog. The helper.

When his person told me on the call, he laughed. Bhaisahab had made his life colourful, he said. His own finger had not healed yet, and now the helper was getting injections. I said what I say every time. It is the handler's mistake. And his too, for seeing the helper get overconfident and letting him carry on. How can you punish a dog for being instinctual? There is no thought in it. There is only instinct, and the instinct did exactly what instinct does.

The bite was not meant for you

A family wrote to us in 2022 about a dog who, when he saw certain dogs, turned and bit them. Not the dog. Them. I wrote back that this is redirect biting, and it is the whole mechanism of this chapter. Something sets him off, and everything in him goes towards it. Then he cannot get there: the leash stops him, a gate stops him, a lift door stops him. On one of our calls I put it simply. If tension is coming from somewhere, and the dog is not able to release his energy, he will go towards the source. With Bhaisahab, the source was the hand holding the leash tight and never letting it go.

An evening lane by a closed shop shutter. A big, heavy fawn dog on a short, tight leash has whipped his head round, mouth open, at the arm of the young man in a grey T-shirt who is holding him, while the street dog he could not reach stands a few metres off. — Where the bite goes. The street dog is out of reach, the leash is held tight and never released, and all that charge has nowhere to go but back up the leash, to the one thing he can reach.

Dodo and Pino are sisters. They would be standing in the lift, the doors would open on another dog, and Dodo would not go for the dog outside. She would turn and snap at Pino. When Dodo gets triggered, she wants to grab the other dog, and when she cannot, she grabs whoever is nearby and softer than her. It is not personal. If there had been a pillow lying there, she would have torn the pillow. Inside a dog there is an instinct to grab, pin down and bring down. If that gets switched on and has nowhere to go, it goes into whatever is closest. Pino is closest.

So when it happens to you, the first thing is to take it out of your heart. He has not decided you are the enemy. He has not stopped loving you. He was full, and you were there.

Two panels in a lift. The doors open on a strange black dog and a lean fawn dog goes stiff, staring at him. A second later she has spun round and snapped at her softer brown sister beside her, who flinches. — Not personal. Dodo cannot reach the dog outside the lift, so she grabs the one she can, her sister. If there had been a pillow lying there, she would have torn the pillow.

Reactivity and redirected biting

The bite was not meant for you

The rest of chapter 23 is in the book