They re loyal, friendly, affectionate, and fun to be around. In other words, a dog who bites a child who takes a toy from him is behaving normally. This is hard for people to accept, but it s necessary if we are to reduce the number of dog bites and the ensuing anti-dog legislation that is becoming more common every day. And there is something we can do about it. The simple answer is that you can t explain to a dog that biting a human being may get him killed or cause him to lose his home.
Aggression tends to lead to aggression.
What you can do, however, is counter-condition the dog to accept what he normally would not. Through conditioning, you can actually cause a dog to think that having toys, contraband items, and even food taken from him is good that it s likely to result in reinforcement, just like sitting for petting or lying down. A personal anecdote will illustrate this point better than anything else. The people were amazed. Becket is an extremely confident, even pushy, representative of a confident, pushy breed.