02/20/2025
Aggression is an emotional response. When you begin to look at it from that perspective everything changes.
Let’s talk about it it….
It is a topic that is so commonly misdiagnosed. So often misdiagnosed that it is incredibly rare and almost to the point of non exhistant.
Why would I say that?
What is aggression? This is when a dog is overwhelmed about a stressful situation and begins to shifts into defense drive.
What is defense drive?
Defense drive is when a dog goes into a state of mind where they are triggered into fight, flight or avoidance in order to remove stressful stimulus.
What is a stimulus?
Well some obvious stimulus would be:
“My dog hates hats, fast moments, putting your face into the dogs face, oncoming dogs, barking dogs or men.”
When it comes to diagnosing “RAGE SYNDROME” , there are so many silent or not so obvious stimulus than can put a dog into defense drive.
Let’s give an example of a human who goes into defense….
Let’s say someone survives a house fire.
3 years later, they could be relaxing and watching a movie while their partner is cooking. The slightest smell of smoke when someone else is cooking on the other side of the home, can cause for the fire survivor to jump off the couch and search for the source of the smoke. This same person would put out the tiniest flame in fear that things could’ve escalated if not done fast.
Their natural fight or flight response can kick into gear when the smell of smoke has triggered them into taking action to remove whatever is possibly creating a dangerous situation.
Now let’s translate this to dogs.
A dog can jump out of its sleep if he smells something that represents a memory of a traumatic experience. Like a human with PTSD.
Let’s say that someone with a particular odor accidentally fell onto a sleeping dog who had a wounded leg.
Now, This persons odor = suddenly have to defend itself.
Now let’s imagine that dog sleeping after this event. Suddenly, it jumps out of its sleep and attacks whoever it spots first when the odor of that person who fell on him enters the room.
Now At first glance, this dog lunging after anyone when it was “unprovoked” and was sleeping is often labeled as a neurological issue or RAGE SYNDROME.
Dig deeper and it’s usually an emotional response to PTSD.
When people say that the dog is attacking “out of nowhere” and “totally unprovoked”, let’s keep in mind that not all triggers are obvious.
Again. The brain can develop a learned response to smell, sounds, energies, movements, tools, touch and more.
Teaching a dog to run away from rattlesnakes is a good example of training a dog to go into defense at the sight, movement, and sound of rattlesnake.
A dog can develop an emotional response to receiving baby talk that can trigger a dog into high level “uncontrollable” excitement or anxiety.
Dogs can learn how to respond to stress on their own and although the owner hasn’t abused their dog intentionally, PTSD can develop and often, it leads to misdiagnosed RAGE SYNDROME.
Medication cannot fix an emotional response to PTSD. Medication CAN help while the dog is being shown how to respond to triggers.
Not all triggers are apparent but more so than none, it takes someone willing to slow down and look for tiny things that are pushing a dog to go into defense drive.
For an expert evaluation, contact us and we will find the underlying triggers and create a rehab program that focusses on emotion and trigger reshaping.
Please do not attempt to solve a dog’s aggressive behavior without experienced handler advice. If improperly diagnosed, the dog’s condition can progressively get worse with age as well as develop more triggers with an inexperienced handler over time.
