I don’t know. I watched the video again and I still don’t see “raised hackles”. I still a lot of fools and dog who’s pretty much just standing around most of the time. I don’t think I believe that the dog bit three kids, any more than I believe that he was serious about biting anyone in that store. Again - that’s a 2:30 video of a dog not biting anyone.
I wonder if the owner is hoping to sell the dog as a fighting dog and is trying to make him famous.
I saw uncontrolled fear aggression. I’m sorry to say I have to recommend that the aggressors be put down in the name of public safety before something worse happens.
And that the dog be re-homed.
OK, more seriously. I can’t get the second video with news story to play, so I can’t comment on it.
The original barbershop video is pretty small and blurry. I see darker coloration on the dog’s back; whether that’s hackles, normal coloration, or something an idiot threw or sprayed onto the dog I cannot tell, without PapSett’s advanced image enhancement technology.
I do see a lot of useless swatting at the dog, and it looks like someone threw a shampoo bottle at (him?) and, bizarrely, it looks like that guy rushes at the dog with a plugged-in hair dryer? What might be going on in these guys’ minds? That’s not what “blowing the dog away” really means.
Their reaction is juvenile and stupid. It’s also weak. “Yeah, I threw a shampoo bottle at him! Take that, suckah!”
If the dog wasn’t attacking or threatening at first (and it’s hard to see at that level of detail) he might have been doing so by the end, and if that is the case, it’s hard to blame him after the panicky threat gestures and attempted beatings.
Certainly no dog should be off-leash in any unfenced setting, and certainly it’s a mistake to let a dog with that much energy run at strangers, whether or not he was actually aggressive.
However, it’s instructive to note that there was an another dog attack yesterday that did not make the TV footage, YouTube, or the Straight Dope – an attack in which a six-year-old girl was sent to the hospital in serious condition with bites to her face. Why isn’t this attack bigger news? The dog in question is a yellow lab.
Maybe the news station already has a “Pit Bull Attack” graphic but no “Yellow Lab Attack” graphic.
what would I have done?
Grabbed the dog by the scruff,
pushed it down to the ground
held it in that position until it submitted
told the room full of morons to shut the hell up and quit acting like 7 year old girls.
that dog was in over excited play mode and pretty small, who reacts like those people did?
What are you talking about? At 1:01 the dog looks to have a pretty good hold on that guys leg as he drags him off the counter.
I dunno. I don’t see a pissed off dog there. Just look up videos of pitbulls and other similar dogs attacking people on YouTube, and you can see if the dog is really pissed at you, you’re screwed. This looks like a playful puppy to me.
It’s worth noting that this "alpha roll"method has been debunked.
It was originally based on flawed observations of wolves. Wolves do not grab another wolf and force that wolf to submit – the submission is voluntarily offered.
Many dog experts do not recommend this technique, because it doesn’t work and it’s dangerous.
Yeah, after several of them have been beating on him, including using a belt shortly before that apparent bite.
He has a good hold on his pant leg. According to the news story none of the idiots in the barbershop were injured.
:rolleyes: No, I don’t have ‘advanced image enhancement technology’ but what I DO have is a lot of years experience with dogs and a good knowledge of their body language. That darker colored patch was clearly the “t” over the withers with hair standing up. Now… that in itself doesn’t mean all that much, I had a Doberman who would put her hackles up when playing hard with other dogs and there was not an aggressive bone in her body. BUT… to me the real sign of aggression was the tail. Not all tail wagging is happy. When the tail is carried high and stiff and is wagging… watch out. That is a dog that is asserting his dominance.
Maybe the dog was reacting to the panic; I don’t know. But the news clip said several people WERE bitten and went to the hospital for treatment.
I stand by my original assessment- this is not a dog that needs to draw another breath, and I don’t care WHAT breed it is. If a Toy Poodle barged into that barber shop and was acting that way, my reaction would be the same.
I’m not even convinced the dog has a solid hold on the guy’s pants.
First off, the dog doesn’t “drag” anyone. The guy you’re talking about probably weighs seven times what the dog does.
Secondly, the guy never made it fully onto the counter in the first place.
At around :40, he’s trying to climb up via the window sill while the idiot in the white tee shirt is slapping at the dog - but he falls back off the counter while no one is even bothering him.
Then white tee shirt man runs into the crowd and the dog chases him around the chair.
Then the dog just stands there looking around while the guy starts to make a second attempt to climb up on the window sill and move to the counter.
Then, after a few seconds, the dog goes over and jumps at the counter guy’s legs, which are partly on and partly off the counter. The dog is on its hind legs at the time - which means it doesn’t have the center of gravity or the purchase on that slippery floor to pull a man who vastly out weighs him off of a counter.
Then the guy and the dog get tangled up and he comes off the counter because he’s off balance and it looks like the window blind or something he’s holding onto - maybe a shelf? - gives way. He almost lands on the dog when he comes down with the dog between his legs.
Then he and the dog run to the front of the store - it’s obvious that his pants are undamaged the whole time.
The guy was barely on the counter to begin with. He fell off because the shelf(?) thingy gave away and he was off panicky, not because the dog was dragging him.
Everything I’ve ever seen suggests that a tail up and wagging indicates excitement, so, while it isn’t necessarily friendly, it’s also not necessarily aggressive. One of my dogs does that all the time when playing, and he’s the least dominant dog I’ve ever met.
That didn’t look like an attacking dog to me. Not because it was a pitbull, but because I can’t imagine a powerful, graceful dog like a pit attacking in such a ridiculous fashion, enclosed in a room with that many panicked people, without someone emerging seriously injured. I’m just not buying it. Heck, you can practically hear Yakety Sax playing in the background.
I am would not be trying to get the dog to think I was in charge or his new alpha, in that situation controlling the dog and ending the behavior would also put a stop to a room full of morons running from an already excited dog. I doubt there would be any long term negative effects from using such a move to gain control of the situation.
(I am also larger than average and have some experience with dogs, I suppose I could see how a smaller person with no real experience could freak out if they only knew what the media tells them.)
Some people are afraid of dogs, I think that’s what we’re seeing here. I know a few people who are very uneasy around dogs. It’s astonishing though that there wasn’t one dog friendly person in the place, looks like the dog could have been easily brought under control, although who knows in a confined place like that with people freaking out.
Another consideration is the noises the dog was making. When my very submissive dog gets really playful she can sound downright vicious. Even folks that don’t understand dog body language recognize that sound as threatening. Normally, this is a good thing. But I think, in this case, it served to escalate a non-threatening event.
I’m in the “just playing” camp. But clearly the dog should be rehomed. Multiple (owner-related) problems are evident in this short video.
What a bunch of idiots. I would have gotten the dog’s attention by responding to its play cues, and had it chase me outside away from the morons jumping all over the place, and then calmed it down and put a leash on it.
Either staged, or a bunch of panicked idiots acting inappropriately around an excited dog.
Watched it twice, couldn’t tell whether it was playful, excited, scared or aggressive…at first the body language looked just hyper/playful, but after being tackled, hit and having people screaming and running away from it it seemed to have a bit more purpose. Not that I blame the dog. It looks like a situation that could have easily been diffused if the people in the video hadn’t acted like a crowd of hysterical little girls.
Hard to say what I would have done (I also have decades of owning and working with dogs) - probably tried to get all the people to STFU and stand still, then calmly gotten the dog’s attention.
These responses are idiotic. I don’t have a dog. I have no interest in owning a dog, nor any interest in learning about “dog body language” :rolleyes:. If I was in a barber shop, with a dog charging in aggressively trying to grab at people, especially a breed that I recognize can do terrible damage to a human, potentially making threatening sounds, I’m going to treat that dog as a threat and act appropriately.
Seriously, I don’t know a damn thing about dogs, and I wasn’t aware that “knowledge of how to control a dog” was a prerequisite for getting your hair cut these days. I don’t like dogs, they scare me, and if one runs into a business I’m in and starts barking its damn head off and chasing around biting/nipping people, I’m going to freak out and try to get away. I guess that makes me an “idiot”.
People who are scared of dogs and try to get away from any acting aggressively are certainly not idiots. 5 adult men whose best reaction to an excited, nipping mid-size dog sliding around on a tile floor are hysterics, flailing, slap-fighting, whipping, and blow-drying look pretty stupid though.
There are plenty of non-idiots in that video. They remained relatively calm in crazy circumstances, removed children from the area, left the barbershop, climbed out of reach of the dog, or stood in the corner not making a commotion.