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"Dog wise" owners know that barking and growling is the way that dogs talk. Some is positive and some is more along the nature of a warning. But Chows being Chows, we need to go further. We need to assure that our dogs will neither threaten nor intimidate.
I have just resumed reading "The Culture Clash" by Jean Donaldson, James and Kenneth Publishers, 1996. What came to my attention today is what Ms Donaldson calls "Bite Threshold Model." She draws diagrams to illustrate four thresholds: 1) Dog freezes up/is uncomfortable, 2) Growling threshold, 3) Snapping threshold, and 4) Bite threshold. Then she illustrates risk factors such as: strange men, night-time, approach, hands, children under five years of age, food-bowl guarding, paws touched, etc.
What I always knew was that growling comes before snapping, etc., but Ms Donaldson presents a graphic illustration. She says that each of the risk factors becomes additive so that a dog that freezes as men approach may growl or snap as men approach in the dark or that a dog that might allow kids to approach may snap as kids reach toward the dog's paws with their hands.
Now each of these risk factors can be addressed by training and desensitization. For example I know that I need to work on a stranger approaching in the dark. I can conduct general training in the dark to desensitize my dog to the dark. Then I can have friends approach in the dark. (I might have strangers approach in the daytime but this is not a problem.) Finally I can have selected strangers (to my dog) approach at night - first a distant approach and then gradually closer. If at any time my dog growls, I know that I have moved too quickly with the desensitization process.
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