When you think of aggressive and dangerous dogs, usually you think of specific breeds or maybe childhood memories. A recent study from the Huffington Post called “Human directed aggression in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): Occurrence in different contexts and risk factors,” actually shows that aggression is based off of many factors besides breed. Now breed can be an included factor, but not exclusive. Aggression is defined as ” barking, lunging, growling, or biting.” The study sent out over 14,000 surveys and got about 4,000 responses with only 3% reporting aggression. The study focuses on aggression toward family members, strangers in the house, and strangers outside of the house.

Basically, the study found correlations between a lot of things and level of aggression. Dogs with older owners tended to be less aggressive. Dogs coming from a breeder tended to be less aggressive than those coming from a pet store or shelter. Dogs who were spayed or neutered were less aggressive than those who were not. The study also looked at dogs who went to puppy obedience class and had the following findings.

“Attending puppy class correlated with less aggression toward strangers both inside and outside the whole — but attending a training class for four or more weeks was related to more aggression toward family members. (Remember: the researchers found correlations here, not causation, which means it’s possible that dogs were going to obedience class for a long time because of their aggressive tendencies.)”

I thought this was interesting to note that without a more experimental study, this specific study cannot show that correlation equals causation. This is obviously very important to note as a scientist or researcher on this topic. As we discussed in class, making the assumption that correlation equals causation could have cause a serious error in the final conclusion of the study.

The study does say that breed can affect aggression in dogs but stresses that there are other factors that are not considered. The study also suggests that a certain breed may seem more aggressive but that could potentially be due to the owners. Certain owners may be more attracted to a specific breed making the dogs seem more aggressive when in reality it is directly related to the owners. This was not specifically studied but rather suggested as a hypothesis.

An article on the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals talks about aggression. This gives an extensive list of things that qualify as aggression like different types of biting, lunging, growling, showing teeth, and a few other rather bizarre behaviors that are said to be aggressive. This post then goes into different types of aggression. I think this section is very important. This looks at potential environmental caused aggression that most likely the owners might not admit to in the previous study by the Huffington Post. Some types of aggression are territorial aggression where the dog is aggressive towards an intruder of the dogs space. Another type is possessive aggression where the dog is possessive over its things like toys, food, bed, etc. Other types of aggression include protective, fear, defensive, social, frustration-elicited, redirected, pain-elicited, sex-related, and predatory aggression.

The article then goes into risk factors of aggression. Risk factors listed include size, age, bit history, severity, predictability, targets, triggers, ease of motivating the dog. Really, the only factor that directly is caused by the breed is the size. The other seven factors are related to the personality of the dog, environment, and owners. Still, I find that large dogs are usually more docile. This article is saying that in theory, large dogs are able to conflict more damage than small ones.

I think that a study should be done to evaluate the owners as well as the dogs. The owners could answer questions about the dogs and the dogs should be observed to see if the answers match. The owners should also be evaluated because the owner obviously directly affects the dog and if the owner is not aggressive, it would be interesting to see how aggressive the dog is in return. My conclusion for now is to be kind and not aggressive toward your dog and regardless of the breed, you’ll have a sweet dog.