Dog Meets Dog

What happens when two dogs meet and greet one another?

According to Donaldson,

A good meet and greet consists of the two dogs making muzzle to muzzle contact followed by some mutual rear investigation. Then either play will break out or the dogs will go their separate ways. A male may urinate on the next available surface.

Dogs with polished social skills give many, many warnings that things are not going so well during a meet-and-greet, long before the situation gets to the point where there is a threat of injury to the dogs or people involved. Posturing, stiffness and standing over serve to give the other dog an opportunity to respond and offer and alternate bevahior.

Before dogs snarl or growl, you may observe a "volatile looking stance such as a stiff and growly T-position (perpendicular to each other with one dog's chin or chest over the other dog's withers)." Donaldson suggests that real problems can be averted by interrupting the encounter and disengaging the dogs with happy talk while separating the dogs from one another.

Dog-owner Education

Auto insurance companies offer discounts on policies to new drivers who have completed a driver education class. Indeed, "preparedness training" is now available for a wide range of "life events" (e.g. getting married, having a baby): the benefits of education in such cases is not monetary; rather, many individuals feel that the benefits of marriage and parenting classes is that their marriages will be more successful and that they will be better parents.

Dog-owner Education, or, as Donalson refers to it, "Pre-Puppy Education" can be an opportunity for a prospective first-time dog owner to learn how to differentiate between good, healthy canine social behavior and canine sociopathy.

Leash handling when your dog is meeting another dog

Dogs with good intra-species social skills are able to meet and greet another dog on loose leads, without lunging at one another or dragging their handlers along the sidewalk. Since normal canine meet-and-greets involve a mutual circling investigation, it is necessary to follow your dog around in a circle to avoid tangling leashes. Donaldson empahsizes the importance of maintaining "high situational alertness without any telegraphing of tension to the dog:" you should be "bubbly loose and happy on the outside, but vigilent and planning for emergency break-aways on the inside."

Ritualized Agression and Play

Ritualized agression looks scary: that's the whole point. In fact, ritualized agression can look worse than the real thing. Displays involving horrific noises and faces and rearing up on the hind legs are neither efficient nor effective if the goal were to kill the opponent. Think about professional wrestling.

Ritualized agression should not be confused with play. Donaldson suggests that the purpose of ritalized agression is to achieve a "truthful" outcome—to find out without the cost to life and limb who would have won a real fight.

Donaldson does not think that we have to tolerate ritualized agression in our companion dogs, or that we should just "let them work it out." Rather, it is important to be able to distinguish ritualized agression from the real thing, if only so as to remain remain calm while calling your dog off. A handler who allows her or his emotions to become elevated will have a harder time controlling the dog.

Dog-motivated dogs

When training our dogs, we talk about food-motivated dogs, for example. Food-motivated dogs are relatively easy to train by positive reinforcement, because, as long as the trainer is doling out treats, she pretty much has the dog's undivided attention. Some dogs are toy motivated: if there is a tennis-ball within visual range, these dogs can be oblivious to anything and everything else in the environment. Some dogs can become so focused on a tennis-ball that they will chase a tennis-ball into a busy street, even if they are otherwise "street smart" when there are no toys around.

Dogs that are dog-motivated think that other dogs are the best. Period. I saw a dog get hit by a car and killed because it was trying to get to another dog on the other side of the street during the evening rush hour. Even though the dog was on leash, the dog saw the other dog before the person holding the leash did, and the person was not able to hold onto the leash when the dog unexpectedly bolted. The sad irony is that this happened right outside the gates of a park in which five or six other dogs were playing. The dog's owner had decided not to bring her dog into the park to play with the other dogs, because she was afraid that her dog would become too excited and that she would not be able to control her dog. Very, very sad.

An excessively dog-motivated dog becomes intensely excited around other dogs. If the dog "knows" obedience commands ("sit," "stay," "come," etc.) he will not respond to these commands when other dogs are present. If the dog is on leash, he will pull obstinately trying to get to other dogs. Donaldson observes that

the dog's intense excitement, sudden non-responsiveness to the owner and pulling on leash make the owner feel out of control. The concerned owner starts avoiding other dogs, choking up on the leash, jerking the leash or otherwise trying to discipline the dog, all selectively in the presence of other dogs.

There is a spiral or snowball effect involving both the dog and the owner. Other dogs come to mean not only an excited dog but also an angry owner. Both the dog and the owner grow increasingly tense and unhappy around other dogs.

Sadly, many dogs that are excessively dog-motivated are often deprived of all access to other dogs. These are the dogs that bark at you from behind the window when you walk past with your dog.

When a dog-motivated dog that is deprived of intra-species (dog-dog) socialization does meet other dogs, fights can result. His extreme excitement can cause him "to commit social gaffes—he is too much in the other dog's face and fails to read the other dog's body language." His social skills—meeting, greeting and reading novel dogs—are "coarse." Donaldson calls these poorly socialized, highly dog-motivated dogs "Tarzans:"

Think of a human who has been raised without being around other people until age 18. Imagine him as a guest at a cocktail party. Not only might he walk on the table and put his fingers into he dip. he might go right up to someone, stand too close, slap then on the back (or worse grab their privates) and fail to read subtle cues from the host or guests that he is out of line. He is eventually wrestled to the ground and handcuffed. The dog equivalent has terrific interest in other dogs but also lacks social grace.

If your dog does happen to meet a "Tarzan-type dog," you would do well to monitor their interaction closely and remove your own dog if the situation seems likely to deteriorate. Donaldson cautions that "a severe Tarzan can dish out some pretty awful stuff:" "body-slamming, growling, mounting, and failing to turn any of this off when [the other dog] delivers 'back off' body language." Subjecting your dog to this kind of sociopathy puts your dog at risk of developing a fearful response not only to Tarzan but "to all dogs that remind her of him, to most large dogs except those in her circle already or, in the worst case, to all dogs."