For years, some of the hardest calls I took were from families whose dog had bitten them.
Not a guest. Not the maid. Them. The person who carried him home as a puppy and has slept next to him every night since. And it was nearly always the same dog. A shy one. He was always a scared dog, they would tell me, he hid behind the sofa when people came, he shook during Diwali, and we loved him so much. And now he bites us.
Being bitten by your own dog hurts somewhere a bite does not reach, because you gave him so much love. You did. You gave it at the wrong time, because nobody had told you when the right time was. So before anything else, do not be hard on yourself. You were doing your best with what you knew, and this chapter is the rest of what you need to know.
How a shy dog comes to bite
Chapter 18 told you how it starts. A sensitive dog is frightened, and a loving family picks him up and comforts him, every time. When your worry goes into your hands and your voice, he takes the worry, and a nervousness that keeps being fed has a name, which is insecurity.
Now look at the rest of his day. A house that gives affection at the wrong time is very rarely a house that gives leadership at the right time, so he has nobody to follow. Very often he is not walked enough either. He is frightened, he has nobody leading him, and his energy has nowhere to go. That is fear, insecurity and frustration together, and that mixture is what turns into aggression.
Here is the last piece. A dog under stress has four ways out. He can avoid the thing, turning away from it. He can run from it. He can give in. Or he can fight it. The shy dog in a flat has lost the first three. He cannot avoid it any more, because he is already full of fear and every small thing tips it over. He cannot run, because he lives behind four walls and the door is shut. And giving in belongs to a calm dog, which he is not. So the only way left is fight. And who does he fight? Whoever is nearest when the fear comes, and in a flat that is the family. The same family who gave him all that love at the wrong time. A shy dog on the street will run away. The same shy dog in your house will bite.
, open the figure largerI want you to hold one thing from this. Shy dogs are not aggressive dogs. It is not in them. When a shy dog bites, he is not being bad. He is cornered.1
So we do not need to treat his aggression. We need to build what he never had, which is confidence. Once he has that, he has nothing to bite about.
The rest of the Foundation
The Six Rituals
When Something Is Wrong