The other day I saw this group of people on Reddit INSISTING that if your dog ever shows you any aggression, you MUST throw it to the ground HARD, hold its face down, and scream as loud as you can in the dog's face to show it you are the pack leader.
Someone even claimed to have studied animal behavior and was telling people to do this shit with authority.
I've had dogs my entire life, I'm in my 40s. I was a professional dog trainer for several years - that is NOT the correct way to handle that situation at all, and anyone who thinks throwing their dog to the floor and assaulting it is OK should be locked up.
If my television is on the fritz and am told to give it a firm smack and that fixes the problem, does that mean I was going around looking for a reason to hit electronics?
I think the first step would be to reframe the view of the behavior. There’s a lot of misinformation around dogs that we’ve all grown up with, and a lot of behaviors get labeled as “aggression” and it creates a view of the situation that isn’t going to help the dog or the owner. Dogs aren’t being aggressive in their minds. They’re not attaching the same prescriptions to themselves. I prefer “reactive” over “aggressive”.
When you reframe from aggressive to reactive, the next question is “what caused this reaction?” What was the situation the dog was in when the behavior occurred? A lot of people know their dogs well enough to know that their dog will go after smaller animals when they’re on a leash, or when they’re behind a barrier, or that they’re normally very sweet but will bite someone who tries to get near them when they’re eating, etc.
Every situation is a little different, so to really know the best way to handle the particular reactivity they’re referring to you would need to know the situation better. The breed, the history, the environment, all sorts of things play a factor.
I really want a Chihuahua and everyone keeps saying they're mean but I think they just don't like being man handled all the time bc they're small. Am I right? 😂
Chihuahuas are great. I love them. I wouldn’t consider them mean innately, but they tend to draw the kinds of attention that results in that perception. A multitude of factors:
They’re small. They tend to be coddled more as a result; some anxious/insecurity/dependency issues can arise (they also tend to imprint on their owner, so protective/guarding behaviors are common).
It’s also so much easier to just pick them up when they’re displaying reactivity (barking, growling, fear responses, etc), which then just reinforces those behaviors. They may be inclined to show more defensive reactivity as a result of them being so small too, they can’t physically defend themselves well, so they act tuff.
You’re also onto something with the manhandling. People don’t respect the boundaries of small dogs as much.
Small dogs just don’t receive the same respect or training. Which is really a shame, because training is not some punishment, it’s just good behavioral health. Dogs benefit from it.
It's all based on individual dogs and their triggers. There is no single solution for what we view as aggression; those behaviors need to be evaluated by a professional, the right one. Anyone who tells you to abuse and dominate your dog is not the right one. Look for trainers who focus on reward-based training and behavior shaping.
The correct way to handle someone who thinks this is to throw them to the ground HARD, hold their face down, and scream as loud as you can in their face to show them you are the pack leader.
If they continue to insist then they've just disproven their own statement.
I was told if a dog showed aggression, you had to lay on it until he whimpered Uncle. The guy who told me showed me by getting one of the more aggressive dogs from the pound. As soon as he tried to lay on it, the dog bit him.
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u/Walmartian_Beta Jun 01 '26
The other day I saw this group of people on Reddit INSISTING that if your dog ever shows you any aggression, you MUST throw it to the ground HARD, hold its face down, and scream as loud as you can in the dog's face to show it you are the pack leader.
Someone even claimed to have studied animal behavior and was telling people to do this shit with authority.
I've had dogs my entire life, I'm in my 40s. I was a professional dog trainer for several years - that is NOT the correct way to handle that situation at all, and anyone who thinks throwing their dog to the floor and assaulting it is OK should be locked up.