I’ve been bitten by lots of animals. Usually it’s because I’m ‘touchy, feely’ too soon. So I blame myself.
My own animals have bitten if I had to be hurtful in a way of constraint or medical care.
Except, Bear my male Siamese. Big exception. He’s just mean sometimes, or taste testing. Not sure. He likes to nip me. As a matter of course.
The brat.
There are ways to train dogs not to bite. Some work better than others.
“One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in Columbus on the subject of “Harmonious Vibrations.” She wanted to find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations into a dog. “He’s a large tan-colored Airedale,” mother explained. The woman said that she had never treated a dog but she advised my mother to hold the thought that he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got the iceman but she blamed that slip-up on the iceman. “If you didn’t think he would bite you, he wouldn’t,” mother told him. He stomped out of the house in a terrible jangle of vibrations.”
My chihuahua would bite me only if he was sitting on my girlfriends lap and I attempted to pick him up. Once I picked him up all aggression stopped instantly but while he was on her lap he would bite. It seemed instinctual, I don’t think he even knew why he was biting.
That is odd. I wonder whether something was happening that your boss, and possibly the friend, weren’t aware of? I have known cases in which I thought there was clear provocation but the humans seemed entirely clueless that anything had happened which might have caused the dog to bite.
If the dog’s suddenly taken to biting people with no warning and for no clear reason, the dog’s human ought to take it to a vet. and report this. If the dog’s been like that all its life, the dog’s human is doing a terrible job of living with a dog, and should have much sooner either worked (with a trainer, if necessary) to stop the behavior, or stopped taking the dog out in public.
I had a very vicious Dalmatian for a number of years.
I blame her wanting to bite and snarl and eat people on inbreeding.
Funny she never bit or tried to bite us.
It was recommended we destroy her many times. It was full on muzzle and restraint at the vet. She leash walked well but I never took her out among people unmuzzled.
She was a conundrum.
My daughter got bitten by a strange dog at the dog park recently. It was fighting another dog, snapping and snarling. Her dog was close by and she ran to grab him before he could get involved. She got too close to the first dog and it gave her a solid bite on the leg (she had to go to hospital). She screamed, and the dog instantly let go and ran away. It was weird, because it obviously meant to bite, and bite hard, but then it seemed to feel like it had made a mistake. I wonder if it stopped because she was a human, or if her scream scared it.
We’ve talked about that. But my boss said she was just talking to her neighbor and ignoring the dogs (there were two). She’d never met the person with the dogs before.
Maybe the dog thought it sensed some tension between my boss and her neighbor and/or neighbor’s friend. But my boss is the sweetest person possible. She’s not really a dog person, i.e. never owned one, but gets along well with the couple of dogs that come visit our office.
A few months later, she told me during his daily walk around the neighborhood, she saw a stray dog across the street. The dog suddenly started to cross the street (she was the only one on that side) in a charge, but was distracted when a couple walking their dog came out of their house. The attacking dog changed direction and attacked the other dog. Who thankfully survived the attack.
Wait, you hit your pets? Are we going to gloss over this? You say lightly, but it apparently is hard enough to cause them to warn you.
My cat does something interesting. He likes to play-bite, even grabs on and shakes his head from side to side. But, only if I’m wearing long sleeves. If I’m not, or if my sleeves are rolled up, he’ll just look at me if I try to coax him, but as soon as I pull my sleeves down, he’ll bite. It’s never a hard bite, but I’ve yet to figure out how he learned to only do it when my arms are protected.
We have a cat who gets absolutely giddy when the weather turns cold enough for me to wear a sweatshirt, because that means she can play-fight my arm. We actually have a retired oven mitt that we’ve repurposed as a cat glove for summer, but she can’t really let loose with the full array of bites and bunny kicks because it doesn’t go far enough up the arm.
My brother’s dog is a maniac and doesn’t know how to play right. She goes too hard. My dog Grady is (now) a gentle boy who has had to do some work to deal with leash aggression, so he knows what being corrected is. The dogs are the same size.
When my bro’s dog comes over, she goes hard at Grady. He tries to get away but can’t always get away (she’s jumping on him, not biting). He’ll “bite” her - not viciously, but with his mouth on her neck. And he immediately gets guilty, and cowers. But it’s his ONLY way of telling her to stop. And if she doesn’t stop, and it escalates, if he has to get out his mean bite teeth, then everyone gets yelled at and the poor boy feels EVEN WORSE.
He’s pretty much terrified of this dog now. He knows he’s not supposed to bite. He knows that when she’s around there’s yelling and scolding.
We try to keep them away from each other these days. They’re both hot messes.
This is territoriality most likely. He was telling you he wanted your girlfriend to himself. Dogs do this with each other all the time. This is MY stuff, not yours! Which includes petting, proximity to favored people, food, toys … It isn’t usually directed at people, but this is a chihuahua.
If you ever want to start a dog fight, just start petting two rival dogs at once.
This happened to me when I was a kid, walking along a road. A mini poodle ran up to me silently and bit me on the calf and then ran away. Weird.
As a child, I got bit by my own dog trying to break up a dog fight. Dogs go kind of blind with rage when they fight and they don’t judge the way they would otherwise. He clearly never meant to bite her, and was horrified at his mistake.
Cats do the same, and maybe more so. I once grabbed my roommate’s kitten, who had cornered my older Siamese under a bed, and she gave me a really deep bite on my hand. In a way, I was glad it wasn’t the kitten, since he was just trying to play and it could have injured him very badly. In another way, it wasn’t good having to go to the doctor when my hand puffed up like a balloon and it really wasn’t great having to convince an Animal Control officer that my elderly cat didn’t need to be impounded for quarantine.
Oh yeah, that would make sense. In his mind, you’d crossed a territory line. The line was invisible to you, but very real to him. Once you lifted him across the line, you weren’t crossing it any longer.
Years ago, I read in the paper about a case in which somebody got badly bitten; and neither the person bitten, nor the one writing the article, nor the dog’s human had any idea why, though it was immediately obvious to me.
The dog routinely rode in his human’s truck. The human drove, with the dog in the truck, to his worksite. When they got there, the human and the dog both got out of the truck. One of the other workers came over; the humans talked, the other worker patted the dog, everything was fine.
Then the dog was put back in the truck (suitable temperatures, apparently, and probably windows down) and the two of them went to work. After a bit, a tool was needed. The dog’s human had one in his truck – and told the other worker to go and get it out of the truck.
New acquaintance, dog’s human not present, opened the door of the truck with the dog in it and started to take the tool. Dog bit.
– well, yeah. The space outside of the truck wasn’t the dog’s, or his human’s, territory. It was neutral ground. And the dog’s human was present. That the dog was quite willing to be patted in that situation didn’t mean he wouldn’t attack someone who, from the dog’s point of view, was breaking into his house and stealing stuff!
Only time I ever had a dog seriously try to bite me was once when I was walking past a house on the sidewalk, and a Very Small Dog came charging out of the yard and did his very best to bite my leg.
It was a Very Small Dog and I had on thick leather boots. The dog couldn’t get through, and couldn’t reach high enough to bite above them. But was certainly trying.
– another time I was walking down the road some distance out of town and a quite large dog came running at me in what actually was full threatening charge mode: silent, fur bristling, teeth bare, ears full forward or full back I don’t remember which, tail flat. I knew better than to run, but was so startled that I just stood utterly stock still with my arms down – which turned out to be the right move. As he got close, he appeared to realize that I wasn’t behaving either like prey or like a threat; he put on the brakes, and literally skidded to a stop right in front of me, so close that his bared teeth banged into my leg hard enough to leave a bruise; but he didn’t actually bite.
At which point his human appeared, frantically calling him; which worked.
– I’ve also had two very large dogs come running at me out in a vineyard. Entirely different body language, not aggressive at all; but I was really glad I knew enough Dog to tell. They sniffed, I patted, everybody was fine.
You nailed it. I had a dog from a long line of surly working ranch dogs that would allow strangers in my truck only if I was present – and he wouldn’t take his eyes off them while they were there. If I wasn’t there, you’d be a fool to touch my truck. People used to value dogs like that highly, in remote areas. He was the smartest dog I’ve ever owned, and he was a walking lawsuit in the modern era.
I have a cattle dog who is, true to his breed, rather mouthy. Every morning when I come down the ladder from my loft he feels it necessary to wrap his mouth around my thigh but he doesn’t bite, it’s like a handshake for him. He does the same to other people, though more usually on the forearm but he does not ever bite down on a person and if there’s any pain involved all you have to do is say “OW!” and he releases immediately with very apologetic body language. He sometimes makes my female dog (also a cattle dog mix of some variety) yelp or squeal when they play fight but he immediately lets go when she does because he came from a big litter and learned very good bite calibration. My teenage grandchild likes to wrestle with him and play rough but gets zero roughness back from the dog, just some quizzical and somewhat resigned looks when things get past his comfort level–which is when I step in and have the kid back off some, teaching the human version of bite calibration I guess. He’s a very balanced dog with very little in the way of either fear or aggression and that’s just how I like my dogs to be.
Yes, if they’re doing something they shouldn’t… I don’t have children, but I wouldn’t hesitate to lightly hit them or push them if they were misbehaving either.
I had a very bad bite on my hand a few years ago. I think I posted about it here on the board, somewhere.
A dog came up to the house and I bent down to read his tag and he grabbed my hand and chewed on it.
It was a mess.
The dog ran off when we all started the uproar.
He was found at his home. The owner was less than receptive about turning him over and finding rabies papers from his vet. He was made to turn it over by the sheriff’s office. The dog was deemed healthy. And returned home.
I was ok with that til he turned up in my yard again.
Apparently he wanted seconds.
The sheriff was called. The dog was destroyed.
He had bitten since me. And a sheriff’s deputy was badly bitten when they picked him up.
His owner was irresponsible for not keeping him tightly penned and controlled.
He was probably ill-treated. He was mean and vicious because of it.
IMHO.
I have a crazy dog now. He’s wild and a runner. We work daily to keep him kenneled and exercised. He bit his trainer who used a shock collar on him. And flunked out.
He’s not a biter though, you can tell. It was unusual circumstances he bit. I’ll always believe that.