© Can Stock Photo/MarcinSl1987
Current protocols available vary widely in suggested human interventions to prevent fights. I wonder, though, how much our methods affect fight frequency and intensity. Are there more fights and more injurious fights when we elicit frustration (and frustration related behaviors like barking, thrashing and lunging) by overmanaging social interactions with leashes and restraint? Are we creating, or reinforcing, fear of other dogs by punishing any normal, noninjurious display of aggression or distancing signals? Or, as some people do, punishing normal displays of even nonaggressive behaviors like mounting or chasing? Read article.