Some time ago now I owned a wolf/GSD-hybrid named Troopre. He had golden eyes and was pure white. In his prime he weighed 120 pounds. Overlapping Troopre was a chow/coyote/border collie mix named Coal Tryne. Both of them were great dogs, lived long, healthy lives and are missed to this day.
At the time I lived in Arizona on an acre an a third lot that was mostly sand and native trees. The majority of the property was fenced with chain link and known as “the dog lot”. There was an interior fence of manicured yard behind the house and the front of the house was landscaped with a small patch of grass and xeroscape. Most of the yard was pokey – literally everything in the desert seems to want to stab, sting or bite you including the plants.
When Coal became sexually mature we had him neutered, but the time prior to that was not without squabbles as Troopre reinforced his position in the pack over this young whipper snapper. One day I was going through the gate and Coal did not follow my command to “wait”, I reached for his collar and missed, my hand landing somewhere behind his shoulders, he turned – bit! and immediately let go once he realized who he had a hold of. He never broke the skin, but I did have a compartmental hemorrhage in the pad of my thumb requiring a trip to the ER. Coal Tryne never bit a human before or after that. He was well socialized and well trained. So what happened? I believe it was a case of mistaken identify. Troopre had been right behind him, was probably bullying him as the pack leader and he turned to defend himself.
Another time I reached down to pet Troopre and he growled at me. Troopre had NEVER shown aggression toward me EVER. When a 120 pound dog growls at you you take notice! I pulled my hand back and used my voice to correct him, but I was pretty intimidated at that moment by my own dog. Why all of a sudden would Troopre show aggression toward me? Later that day I called him into the house as usual and loved on him as usual, as I was rubbing and petting him, he growled at me again – but he wagged his tail…what in the world is going on with you dog! I put him in a down stay and slowly started going over every inch of him. I felt a small bump and he growled again. As I parted the hair to see what the lump was I discovered that he had a tiny pimple there. I gently scraped it open and a thorn popped out. As I continued to examine my dog I found over 100 of these little abscesses each one containing a Palo Verde tree thorn. Troopre had laid on the branches we trimmed off the tree and those aweful thorns had broken off into his skin. No wonder he growled, they are very painful. Even though it must have hurt he remained calm and quiet as I worked over his 120 pound body to remove all the thorns. He never growled at me before or after that.
I’ve met a lot of dogs in my life and only one has ever made me concerned about its temperament. It was a blue Doberman that was “registered” with the CKC (continental). When I trained dogs, I trained a lot of them that were big, bullies, ill-mannered, poorly behaved, lacked impulse control, and all owned by owners at their wits end, but I never had but the one that was a temperament issue. Dangerous temperament anyway.
I think its important to recognize that dogs have different personalities and that a growl or attempt to nip is not always the sign of a temperament problem. If I had written Coal and Troopre off for those single incidents I would have missed out on a long happy life with a great pair of dogs. This is not to say that such incidents should be ignored, but let’s not write a dog off simply because it had a bad moment. Was it out of character? Is there an underlying health issue? Have you trusted the dog up to this point? The answer for me with both Coal and Troopre was yes. What if they had gone in for a temperament test that day? Surely they both would have failed the test. Does that one test in that single hour of a dogs life describe the entire dog? IF the behavior would have occurred again then I certainly would have had cause for alarm. I’ve had a dog growl at me and wag its tail at the same time. I had to teach the dog that growling at me is not the proper way to communicate. We never had further issues and I trusted the dog until the day it died, but you can bet that I went over that dog with a fine toothed comb to make sure there weren’t any health issues causing this lapse in canine judgement.
Ways to avoid problems with temperament. Get a puppy that “seems” to have a good temper. If you are concerned, over look how cute it is and keep looking. If looking at an adult dog, does its behavior when you first meet it cause you concern? Many times that first meeting (even the first week an adult dog goes to its new home) the dog is out of its normal character because it is intimidated by its new situation. Some dogs are bold, some are timid. If its a puppy, then socialization usually takes care of the problem. If it’s an adult what experiences did it have prior to coming to you? I had a dog that acted as though everyone was going to hit it, yet the dog had never been hit when it lived with me, so who knows what the poor thing went through before I got it. Unsocialized puppies will often act this way. Carefully socializing puppies and dogs solves a lot of “temperament problems”. For adult dogs, do be careful, work with a trainer, and consider a muzzle when taking the dog out for socialization until it demonstrates social skills and you are both confident that stress will not illicit a fight response. Along those lines, the fight or flight response should not be ignored. It has a purpose, so listen to the dog and figure out what is going on.
As always, comments are welcome and thank you for reading this article.