In order to understand the problems of and in dealing with dogs, the distinction between
- Snapping
- Biting
- Uninhibited biting
necessary, but has not yet been done in research.
Snapping here means that the dog isn’t seriously hurting you, but is trying to discipline you by snapping. Therefore, this already indicates a serious problem in the relationship between human and dog. The dog doesn’t recognize the human as the pack leader.
Biting, on the other hand , causes serious, deep injuries to the body that require medical attention. The reasons for this are varied and may, for example, be an aggressive catastrophic reaction . However, a certain inhibition still exists.
In uninhibited biting , this inhibition is lacking; the goal is to kill the other person. When dogs attack their owners in this way, for example, it indicates a profound disorder both in the dog and in the relationship between humans and dogs.
To indiscriminately label these three behaviors as “biting incidents” is unhelpful.
Snapping can be stopped if you manage to become the ” important other ” for the dog, which isn’t so easy with “demanding,” i.e., intelligent, dominant dogs. However, with biting and uninhibited biting, depending on the cause, compensatory education becomes increasingly difficult or almost impossible.
