Owner Attacked by Dog and Loses Arms: Was it Provoked or Out of the Blue? [View all]

[baldguy]

Short answer: Probably not out of the blue:

While most dog attacks are not intentionally provoked, in some cases the dogs are intentionally trained. And in the case where a tough-breed of dog is owned by a violent criminal that cause is higher on the list.

A far more frequent cause of aggression, though, is that humans generally have inadvertently triggered the behavior or accidentally reinforced behaviors that can eventually lead to aggression. For instance, the most common cause of aggression to unfamiliar people is fear, and especially fear brought on when people approach and overwhelm a dog in an accidentally threatening way. They fail to recognize signs that the dog is fearful and they stare at, lean towards and reach out to the dog, often with friendly intentions. To the fearful dog, it looks like human is homing in on them with an intent to harm. For months the dog may cope with this type of greeting by backing away or freezing but it can just be a matter of time before they realize that the response of barking, lunging and even biting works better for keeping people away. For the humans, who do not know how to recognize the signs of fear and anxiety, the defensive attack does truly appear out of the blue.

But even non-fearful animals can become aggressive if certain types of behaviors are reinforced. What behaviors would these be? The ones that encourage impulsivity, over-arousal and encourage the dog to just react out of excitement rather than exercising self-control. For instance, puppies love to grab and chew any object they can get in their mouth. If you accidentally reward grabbing or chewing of your clothing or arms or jumping all over you in excitement, then you can be creating a serious problem for yourself down the road. By reward, I mean if you wave your arms around and squeal in surprise or pain, you sound and look like a human squeaky toy and you end up training the dog to grab you more. Even if you shout at the puppy in reprimand, often this causes these dogs to become more excited and to grab, jump and pull harder.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-yin/owner-attacked-by-dog-and_b_4293988.html

If a dog is trained by humans to attack other humans - the dog isn't to blame.
If a dog is abused or neglected by humans & responds in fear to human contact - the dog isn't to blame.
If a dog is not trained & socialized properly and inadvertently harms a human - the dog isn't to blame.

And more importantly: if a dog does any of these things THE MILLIONS OF DOGS WHO DON'T DO THESE THINGS AREN'T TO BLAME EITHER!

So, let's stop blaming dogs for the actions of humans, shall we?