Ep190 Warnings and Bites

[00:00:00] Chrissy Neumyer Smith: Episode 190 Warnings and Bites. What is the difference between a dog who is giving you a warning and a dog who is trying to hurt you? And I don't want you to think that a dog can't hurt you. Maybe they think they're too small or too old, or too young. Any pet can hurt you.

[00:00:18] I also don't want you to think that maybe a dog missed. You got lucky that he missed. They rarely missed. So we're gonna talk about the difference between warnings and a dog that's trying to hurt you and why. As professionals, we should take warnings very seriously. I. This is the Creating Great Grooming Dog Show.

[00:00:35] I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith. I'm a master groomer behavior specialist, a certified professional groomer, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a certified professional dog trainer, a fear free certified trainer and instructor at Whole Pet Grooming Academy. And I'm the owner of Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire.

[00:00:51] And this, my friends and colleagues, is the show where we talk about teaching dogs and and other pets to be calm, comfortable, and cooperative for grooming and for other types of care. So let's jump into this idea of warnings and bites. We talk about aggression a lot in dog grooming, and maybe owners don't realize that that's a big issue, but it really is.

[00:01:13] If you listen to the show often, you know that we talk about, behavior problems are when dogs get hurt, people get hurt, equipment gets broken, and owners get upset. I. An injured dog can ruin a groomer's business and their personal grooming reputation forever. So we need to take behavior very seriously, but we also need to think about the safety component.

[00:01:35] Now, my first thought always when I'm talking to owners is about keeping their dog safe. But today we're gonna delve into keeping our groomers safe, or our owners, or our vet techs or whoever is trying to work with this particular animal. And I want you to know that. Any dog of any size or cat can make themselves totally and entirely untouchable.

[00:02:00] And what I mean by that is the animals that I have seen mostly, I have only seen this when I was a vet tech and it was an animal who was full on panic and injured and panicking. , and just trying to get them to a point where we can at least give them an injection so that we can sedate them and take care of their medical issues, but they can make themselves untouchable.

[00:02:22] Do not believe that you got a muzzle on a dog who wasn't gonna let you, that if you got the muzzle on, that dog was still letting you. There are a lot of things that I think we just take for granted that we're like, oh, I, I was able to handle that because he wasn't, you know, he's really aggressive, but he wasn't that bad.

[00:02:40] That dog is giving you warning signs. If they are not trying to hurt you, they're still warning you. They're still trying to negotiate, and while aggression can look really, really scary, of course it can think about it more in terms of an argument like this animal is having an argument with you. And as professionals, we really need to see it that way.

[00:03:03] And as groomers specifically, we need to step back and realize that we are not in a medical emergency. So if an animal is so upset and finds something so scary, or so unpleasant, uncomfortable, and or scary, because that's why dogs have trouble with grooming. They find it unpleasant, uncomfortable, and or scary.

[00:03:24] Their reaction might be to do something that looks aggressive, an aggressive display, and that is normal for them to respond that way. It's up to us to say, Hey, you know what? I don't want the dog to feel like he needs to do that. I want this dog to trust me. I want this dog to feel good about what I'm trying to do, and I want to teach them to be calm, comfortable, and cooperative for the future.

[00:03:51] Lots of things that you hear a lot on the show, but calm, comfortable, and cooperative for the future. And that might mean that I have to look at a dog who might have just done something like an air snap or a growl. Help them calm down. Now, when we talk about aggression a lot of the time, , when I'm not wearing my trainer hat, non trainers a lot of the time, think that aggression is something that must be punished, that must be, um, squashed.

[00:04:19] And instead I want you to think about, , aggression as something that makes us pause what we're doing and think about why the dog is behaving that way and try to help that dog feel better. Help the dog who's trying to tell you that this is too much. I need space. Please don't do this to me. Okay? And that can be really difficult.

[00:04:43] I'm sure someone out there just went, wait a minute. That is not what I was taught. I was taught you need to get some leverage. He doesn't respect you. But I want you instead. Take a deep breath. Think about it. What is the dog responding to that we're doing some weird things, some really weird stuff and things.

[00:05:01] Okay, so I talk about this as safety, safety, safety, safety, right? A dog that is giving you a warning is likely to stop warning you if you keep pushing it. I know. I'm gonna say that again. If they're giving you warnings and you just keep pushing it and maybe decide that you're gonna. Tell him how wrong he is, you know?

[00:05:23] Uh, but if you keep pushing it or you keep adding more equipment, adding more straps, doing more stuff to make it happen, that dog is likely to stop with the warnings or make those warnings bigger. , and that dog could turn into a dog who actually tries to hurt you. Now, I went through and I was reading a book.

[00:05:45] I haven't read it in a while. But I went back and I read Dogs Bite, but balloons and slippers are more dangerous by Janice Bradley. Great book. I'll share a link in the show notes. Ah, but she talks about how most dog bites look at the bandaid level. They are really not usually a dog who is trying to hurt us.

[00:06:06] Now, we as groomers might be thinking that that means that most dogs aren't able to hurt us. Most dogs are just choosing to not hurt us. And while I agree with the things she says in her book, great book by the way. Read it. Um, the thing that affects groomers and veterinary staff and trainers is that we often are put in a position.

[00:06:30] Maybe an owner has not told us that this dog has some issues. So we're thinking, well, this is Bella, and Bella's gonna be great because Bella's, Bella's been groomed before, not knowing that maybe this dog has an aggressive response to some of the procedures that we may do. So we are often put in situations that the average public is not put into.

[00:06:54] And because of the nature of our jobs and the way that many of us were taught. We keep pushing despite all of the warnings, and we need to stop doing that. Oh, I know. I just said that. That sounds really stern, doesn't it? But we need to stop doing that because the long-term goal to help that dog feel better about it.

[00:07:16] If they're giving us all these warnings. And a lot of aggression is ritualized. They, they're referred to it as ritualized displays of aggression, where the dogs. If they were working with each other. If you observe two dogs getting into an argument, they tend to do all of these things without necessarily causing any damage to each other.

[00:07:38] And why? Because they tend to live in groups. You don't let your, you know, you don't hurt your family. So if we think about ritualized displays of aggression as ways for dogs to communicate, like knock it off, stop it. If we ignore that to get a perfect trim or to get these ears even, or to, you know, take care of a toenail, what we're doing is we're actually teaching them groomers or humans don't know what we're talking about when we do these subtle signs.

[00:08:12] So we need to be more exaggerated. Okay. Um, I'm gonna give you an example there, there was a dog I used to groom that, um, would like scream if you touched a foot. Right, because in her world, no one had ever paid attention to any of the more subtle cues that she was giving. Like, ah, what if I just pull it away?

[00:08:32] And like, no blissfully unaware. We're just like, hold on. You know, what if I yelp a little bit? What if I put teeth on you? Like, ah, just a little bit what nobody listens. And the more we ignore all of those warning signs, the more they accelerate. This dog is going to continue to have a problem with you.

[00:08:52] This dog is not gonna be like, oh, nevermind. I guess it didn't hurt. Anyway, I think we also need to get away from the idea that they will only do something like that, because they perceive that the procedure is going to hurt. Not everything hurts, right? The people who are afraid of snakes. How many of you have been injured by a snake?

[00:09:12] Probably not very likely. The people who are worried about spiders, have you ever had a giant spider lay eggs in your forehead? Then you're probably just make afraid of spiders, even though they have not hurt you. So fear doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not they got hurt. If they got hurt.

[00:09:30] That of course, can make them afraid, but we need to let go of the idea that I'm not hurting you, so everything is fine. No, let's look at that warning for what it is. It's a warning. It's a dog asking for more space or asking for us to slow down or asking for us to stop. And if we want to groom this dog for a 15 year lifespan.

[00:09:53] Respecting that and backing up and helping that dog feel comfortable is the long game. All right. It doesn't mean that we just stop forever. Okay? And I think that that comes up a lot. Groomers are like, I can't just stop. He needs his nails trimmed. So if his nails have been this long for a month or two months, do they really need to get done today?

[00:10:18] Can we send an owner home with some homework and maybe work at this for the next couple of weeks? Do you think two more weeks or three more weeks of gentle, gradual progress is gonna be the, the, the destruction of this dog, so let's think about the things that we're doing. It's not a medical emergency, and yet if we can spend some time working on it, maybe we can change this dog's mind forever.

[00:10:48] It's not that we are never gonna groom this dog's nails, it's that we're gonna take the time to teach this dog to be calm, comfortable, and cooperative with it, and that we're gonna take their warnings seriously and hopefully not put them in a situation where they feel like they need to warn us. How cool is that?

[00:11:06] Let's just pause for a minute. That's not wishy blushy. That's fricking cool. That's just good animal handling. This dog never feels like they need to give me a warning if they just kind of do a slight, oh, I'm kind of uncomfortable. And I as the human go, oh, are you uncomfortable? Let me see if I can make this more comfortable for you.

[00:11:22] I know, that's just, good animal handling. Yet many of us weren't taught that way. So let's go back to some common sense, animal handling, common sense. Yeah. Hey, you look uncomfortable. Let me help you be more comfortable because you literally could break my finger off. Let's think about that. These dogs can hurt us.

[00:11:41] So in the next part, we're gonna talk a little bit about something I think you might not even know about, which is a bite scale. How do we assess what kind of bite it even is? So we'll talk about that in the next part. I hope you're enjoying the show. If you are enjoying the show, please tell someone else.

[00:12:01] Maybe it's your veterinarian or a trainer or a groomer or an owner, but there's content for all of those groups on this show. So let's talk about the bite scale. Ian Dunbar, and I'll share a link in the notes. I usually use Ian Dunbar's bite Scale and it's, um, I actually have it in front of me of the very few times I'm gonna read some things, but it's an assessment of the severity of biting problems based on an objective evaluation of wound pathology.

[00:12:29] What the heck does that mean? It means that instead of saying he bit, we're saying, how hard was the bite? What kind of bite was it? That's important because so many of these dogs are not trying to injure us. They're not trying to injure us. Crazy is that yet we tend to think they're trying to hurt us, and I want you to stop thinking that way.

[00:12:53] All right. This dog didn't miss this. Dogs rarely miss, if you think that dog put teeth on you and just forgot to sink their teeth in. Uh, I have news for you. They didn't miss. , they were trying to tell you to stop in a more stern way, but they were very aware that they were not puncturing your skin. So let's say level one bite is obnoxious or aggressive behavior, but no skin contact by teeth.

[00:13:23] All right? That's like kind of your, your little air snap, the quick boop. , it might be a muzzle punch, which I kind of, I'm gonna put on here on the bite scale because it's definitely one of those warnings.

[00:13:34] That's something that more of the herding dogs do as someone who's like on has, has lived with Border Colies for a very long time. Yeah. Border Collies will definitely do a muscle punch, just sort of this shock and awe. I could have bit, you knock it off. Okay. But that's the level one. It's really no skin contact.

[00:13:52] I have had so many of those types of bites over my grooming career, right? The, the really quick poop, you know, and former me like I've made all the mistakes used to reach for a muzzle. That was my first thought. Whoa, okay, I heard your warning. I'm gonna put the muzzle on and I'm gonna continue to do the exact same things I was doing that made you do that to me.

[00:14:15] And what do, what happens? Let's think about what happens that dog next time. Doesn't want you to put the muzzle on. Ooh. Right. How many of us have dogs? We're like, you're not getting that muzzle on me. Mm-Hmm. I remember last time, this is not cool. I'm not gonna do it. So we need to think about these warnings and think about instead.

[00:14:35] Ooh, okay. I pushed too far. Um, or what was I touching? What was I doing in that moment? What was, what else was going on in that moment? Was that me? Was that something else happening across the room? What else happened in that moment? 'cause that dog gave me a warning and mm, dare I say, a socially acceptable warning, that dog did not try to hurt.

[00:14:59] In fact, imagine how hard it would be to have sharp, pointy things on your hand. Reach out fast, clamp onto it and not leave a mark. Alright, some real self-control there. Level one bite, obnoxious or aggressive behavior, but no skin contact by teeth. Right. That's a training issue. Training. And sometimes it's training for person too.

[00:15:22] , I think we forget when we're grooming or when we're being a vet tech or doing some of these other things, an owner trying to put in medication. This is very different than like, I was walking down the street and a dog walked up to me and I tried to pet him. Right. We're being really intrusive.

[00:15:36] We're all over that dog. We're touching that dog, and that dog tells us to stop and we're like, got a job to do and we keep going. We need to think about that, that we are at a different risk level than the average community because most people don't walk over to a strange dog and pick them up in their arms and put them on a table for starters, as groomers.

[00:15:57] We do that a lot. So level one, obnoxious or aggressive behavior, but no skin contact by teeth, air snaps that quick kind of maybe they grab the edge of his shirt, right? They don't, they aren't trying to hurt you. Level two. Skin contact by teeth, but no skin puncture. So they actually like, boom, get on ya.

[00:16:18] But they don't actually puncture anything. Again, a great amount of self-control. There might be a little bit of a nick. Um, and in his bite scale he says, less than one 10th of an inch deep, slight bleeding maybe caused by lateral movement. You know, like when we go to pull away or when the dog gets pulled away from by somebody else, you know, like that, that can.

[00:16:40] Create a, a, a rip, if you will, you know, a scratch, but most of the part, most time, most of the time, maybe a little bit of bleeding, probably not much. That's a level two bite. Like this dog probably start off, started off with level one, moved on to a level two, right? Sometimes they start off that way. Maybe those other levels were with somebody else.

[00:17:03] I don't know about you guys, but because I do a lot of grooming for dogs with behavior problems, I get a lot of dogs with some long-term, significant behavior problems we need to think about like what our clientele is now level three.

[00:17:16] Level three is one to four punctures from a single bite with no puncture, deeper than half the length of the dog's canine tooth. Okay. And you might have some lacerations from the person pulling away or someone pulling the dog away, or a, or a gravity because the dog jumps up to bite you and it slides downwards.

[00:17:34] Again, this is from Dr. Ian Dunbar's Bite Scale. It's A PDF, and I will have it in the show notes. So level three, they're not actually trying to sink their teeth in as far as they can, but they nailed you and they got some punctures in and one single bite. Okay. This is progression, but I gotta say. How often do we even see that one in our grooming shops, right?

[00:18:01] Not really. Not really. Um, most of the things that we see are level one, maybe a level two. And like I said, former Chrissy, Chrissy, from years ago, would've put a muzzle on that and kept going the same way. Chrissy now might still put a muzzle on, but proceeds entirely differently. Proceeds in a way that is, how can I evaluate which part of this procedure made this dog respond this way?

[00:18:30] And how can I help this dog feel better about it? So if I do use a muzzle, it's simply to make sure that we're all safe. But I also want to address, I want this dog to feel comfortable with the things that I'm doing, and maybe this dog is in pain. Now non groomers might not realize how often groomers are dealing with dogs that have long-term pain issues, but that dog with hip dysplasia or sore knees or whatever other health issue still has grooming needs.

[00:19:03] We as groomers still see them and we ask them to stand and do a lot of stuff that a lot of people don't ask them to do. So we're gonna see problems that others don't see, and we might push a dog that. Is generally kind of sore to a point where they're like, I just can't handle this anymore. Okay? We need to be very aware of that.

[00:19:25] Comfort of the dog should be our first thought, not how to make him understand how wrong he is. Okay, so level one, level two and level three bites are all things that we consider like send that dog to a trainer, right? That's dog training. Let's find out what's going on. Teach 'em to be comfortable with it or maybe teach people to not do the things that they're doing.

[00:19:48] Um, and what I'm gonna say about that, I know keep, I keep doing that this time. What I'm gonna say about that is a lot of the things that we do when we're grooming, or as a vet tech or as a veterinarian or an owner trying to put in medication, if we saw someone else do that, we'd look at them and go, oh my God, what are you doing?

[00:20:07] Stop teasing that dog. He's going to bite you. Right? It's the most. Obvious thing in the world. Stop teasing that dog. He's going to bite you. Right. We don't consider it teasing 'cause we have a job to do, but it seems really reasonable. If you saw any layman just doing that out there on the road. Just la la, la.

[00:20:28] I'm gonna walk over to this strange dog and I'm gonna check in between his toes. Like that dog is gonna bite you. It seems so obvious, but we forget. We forget. And why would a dog do that? Because it's unpleasant, uncomfortable, and or scary. So level one, obnoxious, aggressive behavior, but no skin contact by teeth.

[00:20:48] See that all the time? Level two. Skin contact by teeth, but no skin. Punctures Maybe. Maybe a slight nick, maybe a a little scratch that. You know, like bandaid stuff like, Hey, I should probably wash that. Maybe put on a bandaid. Level three is when we have one to four punctures from a single bite. No puncture deeper than half the length of the dog's canine teeth, right?

[00:21:11] Like the dog that it did not actually clamp down. That's levels one, two, and three. Pretty common. And those are all considered dog training issues, right? Let's just find out what's wrong and get them, get them some help. They are still a dog who can hurt you and we should not push that dog further. We should regroup and think about how we can help that dog be comfortable.

[00:21:36] Level four bite is one to four punctures from a single bite with at least one puncture deeper than half the length of the dog's. Canine teeth might also have some deep bruising around the wound the dog might have held for seconds or, or really bore down.

[00:21:50] There might be some lacerations from where they shook their head from side to side. Okay? This is the dog who does one bite, really clamps down, clamps down, shakes it a little bit, right? This dog is definitely trying to hurt you, but hasn't lost their mind, right? They're, they're like, okay, I told you I was gonna hurt you and now I'm hurting you.

[00:22:12] Okay? Level five. A multiple bite incident with at least two level four bites or multiple attack incident with at least one level four bite in each. And what that means is now that dog is like, bam, bam, bam, bam, that's the dog that, um, jumps up and bites across your arm four or five times. Like it's an ear of corn, ba ba ba bam.

[00:22:36] Um, I had a husky do that to me once, uh, long, long, long ago. This dog had no teeth. She was an elderly husky. I forget what triggered her. 'cause God, that was like 30 years ago. It was a long time ago. Um, but I do remember that it seemed very sudden to me at that point in my career. And she jumped up and Rapid fire, did like full, full on grabs all the way from my elbow up to my hand.

[00:23:07] Uh, she got me about six times. Luckily she didn't have any teeth, but the bruises were epic. And if she had teeth, I'm pretty sure she could have broken my arm. Okay, that's a level five, multiple bite incident, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? Like, that's a dog who is having none of this.

[00:23:24] This is a dangerous dog, all right? Um, or a dog that does that multiple times. Does that make sense? Okay. Level six bite is when the victim dies. Let's not forget that dogs are able to kill a human. And I know there was like something about like the average dog of about whatever size could kill a human.

[00:23:48] , basically I look at it, if that dog can get their mouth around your neck, they can tear out your throat. And I'm not trying to scare people away from grooming or from working with animals, but let's face it, these animals could really hurt us. I have two border collies. They move faster than I can. Most of our dogs can move faster than we can.

[00:24:09] Um, but my two border collies can move faster than I can, and they definitely have a mouth that is big enough to rip out my throat. So a reality check, folks, you know, and again, I want you to look through the book. Um, let me get that title up here again. Dogs Bite, but balloons and slippers are more dangerous because the fact of the matter is.

[00:24:31] These dogs put up with so much of our bologna, okay? Most of these dogs are not trying to hurt us. Most of these dogs are just trying to give us a warning, and if we spend a moment to take in that, okay, you're trying to warn me because you find this unpleasant, uncomfortable, and or scary, and those are things I can work on.

[00:24:58] I can work on if this dog finds this unpleasant or pleasant. I can work on if this dog is uncomfortable or comfortable, and I can work on if this dog finds this scary or not, and I can help that dog be better. But I want you to always remember a dog of any size can hurt you. And you might be thinking, oh, come on a, a little Yorkie.

[00:25:20] Their mouths are built to grab and tear, flesh and break bone. Those molars are for grinding down and breaking up bone. Your fingers are very vulnerable. I like all of my fingers. I have all of them still, and I would like to keep them. Okay, so I want you to think about the different levels of bites and just how often these dogs are giving us a warning, right?

[00:25:50] They do. They very rarely jump directly to a level four, level five, or a level six. Okay. We need to know that those levels exist because if we just keep pushing a dog and pushing a dog, okay, especially with something that they find scary on their physical body, that we are doing something on their body.

[00:26:09] We are really putting ourselves in a risky situation and a situation that the general public does not. Expose themselves to, and often the general public think this is simply our job. And we can tell them, no, that is not my job. I'm not here to get bit by your dog. Um, that doesn't come with the nail trim.

[00:26:28] Thank you very much. Okay, so the bite scales, that'll be, there'll be a link in there. I'll give you a link to the book too. So again, there are six levels of bites. Level one, obnoxious or aggressive behavior, but no skin. Contact by teeth level two, skin contact by teeth, but no skin punctures. Level three, one to four, punctures from a single bite level four, one to four, punctures with from a single bite with deep punctures.

[00:26:58] Maybe some lacerations from head shaking. Level five is a multiple bite incident with at least two level four bites, and level six is when they kill somebody, right? 99% of the dog incidents are level one and level two, but I think that, again, if you look through this, that's for the general public. Every groomer I know, every vet tech I know.

[00:27:22] Every veterinarian that I know, every dog trainer I know has at least one story of a really dangerous dog because we put ourselves out there in an entirely different way, and it's really important for us to see these as warnings. So again, I. Hope you're enjoying the show. Share it with your friends. I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith, and if you are interested in the Master Groomer Behavior Specialist program, I teach that at whole Pet Whole pet nh.com.

[00:27:50] You can find more information at creating great grooming dogs.com, including full transcripts for episodes, and if you are watching on YouTube, you can find this as a podcast anywhere you find podcasts. If you are listening as a podcast, you can find this on YouTube at creating great grooming dogs.