Don’t Punish the Growl

Growling is communication and a warning signal. We want dogs who talk to us.

Clients are often baffled when I tell them not to physically or verbally punish their dog for growling.

But if the dog is displaying inappropriate behavior, wouldn’t you want to communicate to your dog that that is not what you want?

Yes and no.

Here’s where there needs to be a line drawn between working on basic training (behaviors that either get rewarded or punished to either increase their frequency or decrease their frequency respectively) and working with aggression, where the dog is upset. The growling (and other behaviors that are used to increase distance) is occurring because the dog is upset; in other words, because the dog has a negative association with the stimulus that is present (aka the “trigger”). Growling is a form of communication. Dogs can’t verbally say “hey, leave me alone,” so their way of “saying” this is through growling and giving other distance increasing signals. It’s a warning sign. A red flag. A, “please stop, I don’t want to (have to) hurt you.”

If we were to punish the growling, the dog may very well stop growling in this particular situation. However, since growling is a warning sign, (that the average person can recognize easily) then we would risk not knowing when the dog is saying “hey, leave me alone.” Removing the growling from the situation, does not change the dog’s negative association with the stimulus (trigger) that is present. It does not change that the dog is upset. And it does not change that the dog may bite if pushed past his/her threshold. Just because a dog isnt growling, doesn’t mean that the dog will no longer display aggression - including biting. So essentially, punishing a dog for growling is similar to removing the ticker from a time bomb.

Why does this matter? If the person is not well versed in reading dog body language, then they will have a false sense of security. Most people believe that no growling equals a dog who is non-aggressive and perhaps even relaxed and comfortable. That couldn’t be further from the truth though. Yet having this false sense of security means that they will put the dog in scenarios that the dog cannot tolerate, and with no obvious way for the dog to say “I’ve had enough, leave me alone,” the dog is likely to choose lunging, air snapping, or even biting as their next line of communication. If you don’t hear a ticker, you won’t be expecting a time bomb to blow up. Similarly for most people if they don’t hear a dog growling, they won’t be expecting a bite to occur. The dog needs to be able to say that they’ve had enough, so we can communicate.

I actually encourage “rewarding” growling in a sense, because we want a dog who communicates to us, versus a dog who decides to escalate quickly to biting. I’m not talking about giving praise, food, or other rewards for growling. I’m talking about giving a functional reward: space. The purpose of a growl is to increase distance. If we give the dog the distance that he/she is asking for, the dog is more likely to growl the next time he/she may be placed in that scenario vs choosing to lunge, air snap, or bite which are much more inappropriate and dangerous choices. Also, by giving the dog space, we keep ourselves, the dog, and the stimulus safe.

In addition, I do NOT whatsoever condone or encourage people to be ok with growling and just let it happen. If your dog is growling in a specific situation, then you absolutely have to make some changes in your dog’s environment including but not limited to implementing management strategies that prevent the dog from being placed in this situation again as well as behavior modification exercises. So, “rewarding” the growling by giving the dog space is only when/if you just so happen to placed in that situation. We DON’T want to purposely make the dog growl just so we can “reward” it. At the end of the day we still want to avoid the dog becoming upset at all and avoid allowing the dog to practice this behavior.

Dogs who warn us with more obvious signals are safer than dogs who warn us with less obvious signals that get overlooked by majority of people. Don’t punish the growl. Don’t remove the ticker from the time bomb.