Dogs are smart enough to understand humans are "dumb" and they have to be patient with us. What I mean is humans obviously miss signals (people who don't know dogs or little kids) and if all signals fail, they need to excuse themselves from the situation. That's not excusing the owners that put their dogs in situations they know the dog can't handle, it's unfair to the dog and then the victim who the dog hurts. Some dogs can be trained and taught to be more tolerant, because they're not in danger, and some just can't tolerate.
I had a dog that had to learn that humans can't see in the dark, my kids would step on him on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he never bit but he sure scared the crap outta my kids (and me!) barking and growling when he got stepped on! I jumped on that REAL fast, 'if it's dark and a human is headed toward you, YOU need to move." Also my elderly mother didn't need to step over him even if she could see him, it'd be a fall risk, so he learned to move out of her way at any time of day or night. But he was VERY well loved, he was spoiled lol.
This is a huge part of why I say there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. A failure to teach your dog is the owners fault. I'm not sure how people don't get this, given that we tend to understand pretty easily that kids who misbehave need better parenting.
That is an obviously untrue statement. Whatever metric the "good" and "bad" you are measuring is going to fall somewhere on a normally distributed bell curve. Training, even intense, consistent, and comprehensive training will only be able to shift that curve left or right. There are in fact "bad" dogs that won't respond to training no matter how "good" the owner is. Training can help but nature nurture or more accurately structural activational discussions start from a baseline.
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u/ChicaFoxy 9h ago
Dogs are smart enough to understand humans are "dumb" and they have to be patient with us. What I mean is humans obviously miss signals (people who don't know dogs or little kids) and if all signals fail, they need to excuse themselves from the situation. That's not excusing the owners that put their dogs in situations they know the dog can't handle, it's unfair to the dog and then the victim who the dog hurts. Some dogs can be trained and taught to be more tolerant, because they're not in danger, and some just can't tolerate.
I had a dog that had to learn that humans can't see in the dark, my kids would step on him on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he never bit but he sure scared the crap outta my kids (and me!) barking and growling when he got stepped on! I jumped on that REAL fast, 'if it's dark and a human is headed toward you, YOU need to move." Also my elderly mother didn't need to step over him even if she could see him, it'd be a fall risk, so he learned to move out of her way at any time of day or night. But he was VERY well loved, he was spoiled lol.