Are dogs really unpredictable?
Marguerite Ledner
2025-07-19 18:51:55
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Why do some people refuse to acknowledge that dogs can be dangerous and unpredictable? Why do people forget that dogs are animals first and foremost, that can't be constantly controlled? Why do they dismiss how lethal they can be despite dogs being really high on the list of animals that kill the most people? Hell, I agree that occasionally it is man's fault, because underestimating dogs is what leads to someone getting hurt or worse.
Bethel Gleichner
2025-07-19 18:48:50
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If we don’t know our dog is going to do a certain behavior – we can’t predict it – it can feel truly unsafe to have them in certain scenarios. For starters, the best indication of future behavior is past behavior, especially in times of stress. If your dog has shown certain behaviors in the past, such as aggressive responses towards people, we can reasonably predict they will show them again without behavior interventions. Behavior is much more predictable if you can see it coming. A sense of predictability will also increase if your dog frequently responds in the same manner to the same triggers. If your dog always barks and lunges at new people, for instance, that isn’t safe, but it is predictable. When we ask the question “Is my dog unpredictable?”, we are fundamentally asking “Is my dog dangerous?” Learning your dog’s warning system and what their triggers are is a good way to be better equipped to predict their behavior, and helps both you and your dog feel safer.
Stanley Hessel
2025-07-19 15:44:12
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Most dog behaviors, and most dogs, are predictable. With a predictable dog, you can guess pretty accurately what a dog is going to do in a given circumstance. And if the dog is presented with that same circumstance, the probability is very high that the dog will do exactly the same thing it did the last time. An unpredictable dog is just the opposite, you can put the dog in exactly the same situation, and get significantly different responses. Truly unpredictable dogs are typically not medically well. Medically well dogs are almost always predictable. Even abused dogs will do predictable behaviors when placed in the same circumstances over and over again. Oftentimes, when someone says their dog is unpredictable, they are really saying that THEY can’t predict what the dog is going to do. It doesn’t mean that the dog is responding in random ways to the same situations. Most of the time, when someone says their dog is unpredictable, they are saying they don’t know if their dog is going to like or dislike someone or another animal.
Javier Zboncak
2025-07-19 15:22:24
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But unfortunately living beings are not very predictable. We are not machines where the same input will result in the same output. Instead we - and our dogs - are contextual. So dogs are not unpredictable - at least no more than we are! It is just that we need more information than just the presence of a trigger to be able to predict their likely response. But once we start to think of them as contextual rather than unpredictable, it becomes much easier to predict what might happen. The bad news is that it means our dog’s behaviour will not always be the same, given the same input. So one day, our dog might see a man in a hat and be fine about it. The next day, the same man in the same hat could trigger a riot! Context is everything and contexts are rarely the same from day to day - even if you are in the same place meeting the same person.