Furthermore, in all of the cases, aggression was stimulus-specific. That is,
none of the dogs were randomly or unpredictably aggressive. Each only
exhibited aggression under certain conditions, and most of these conditions
could be reproduced and modulated in the home environment. For each of
the proposed classes of aggression, the dog could potentially learn the
instrumental or operant contingencies associated with its aggression. For
instance, some problems escalated when the dog learned, over succeeding
trials, that aggression led to people moving or staying away from it. Many
dogs quickly learned to anticipate eliciting stimuli, and aggression often
readily generalized to other related stimuli.
An additional reason for avoiding use of terms such as “learned” aggression
is that well-understood learning processes were effective techniques for
reducing the vast majority of individual problems involving each of the classes
of aggression. One or more techniques, such as habituation, desensitization,
punishment (rarely) and counter-conditioning, were particularly successful.
Note that co-existence of play, affectionate and attachment behavior with
aggressive behavior (discussed above) provides a rich supply of stimuli (other
than the obvious food and water) which are inhibitory or antagonistic to
aggression and can be used in a counter-conditioning program. Sometimes it
was necessary to combine these techniques with castration or synthetic
progestin therapy for the more hormone-related problems (dominance and
intra-specific aggression).
It is proposed that the types of aggressive-behavior problems described in
the present paper represent the naturally-occurring aggressive behaviors which
develop in dogs living with humans. These behavior problems parallel to a
great extent the species-typical sub-systems of aggression exhibited by wolves
(Mech, 1970; Fox, 1971), at least with respect to the sequences of behavior
and general contexts in which they occur. The eliciting stimuli, of course,
differ markedly.
Table V depicts how these problem types might be grouped, and shows
4 links or connections among and between these problem types. The first
link clusters fear-elicited, pain-elicited and punishment-elicited aggression
into a general category called “defensive aggression”. Each of these 3 behavior
problems involves the dog defending itself from some threat or from pain. For
each of these problem types, the dog is likely to display defensive or submissive
signals prior to, or during, the display of aggression.
The second link indicates that punishment-elicited aggression and dominance
aggression are probably more closely related than is indicated by the data from
this paper (Table II). Social threats by the owner (or anyone else), which are
interpreted by the dog as punishment for aggression (and sometimes even nonaggressive
misbehavior), usually elicit escalated aggression rather than submission
from the dominant aggressive dog. Fortunately, few owners of dominant
dogs used punishment techniques frequently. Since punishment was not
likely to be part of a treatment program, not all owners were asked whether
they had used punishment, and the dog’s response to punishment or social
threat was not often directly assessed.