A dog and a child

Your dog bites your child? Try to guess why it happens so. It often happens that all members of the family raise the voice and shout at him ("bark" in terms of dogs), who increasingly threaten by intonation (snarl), spank (bite in term as of dogs) the child. All this is done in the dog's presence and it makes a conclusion that thus should be treated the youngest member of the pack. For a dog it is a good tradition, the rule of conduct and is allowed to all.

The dog bites the child not to eat him. Bite serves to cause pain, in order to make it clear that this behaviour isn't liked by the dog. Besides dogs seldom bite at once, at first they snarl, if they aren't understood, they hit by teeth (this hit is very often taken for a bite), and only then a bite follows.

Why? The dog treats human family as an analogue to a swarm. And, each pack, from the viewpoint of dogs must have a leader and subordinates in order to successfully fulfil joint tasks, i.e., the pack should be structured. The need for hierarchy is in the dog's nature, like it or not. The dog understands very quickly who is who in your family and tries to place itself as close to the leader as possible, and even become a leader. And the first and foremost right of the leader is a right to govern the behaviour of others and punish for insubordination.

Thus, if in the hierarchical structure of the family the dog takes rather a high rank, it begins to govern the behaviour of others, and if they do not obey, to punish them by means of bites.

It also should be added that children, often unconsciously, provoke dog's aggression: especially small children often violate the sacred rules or do not understand the language of their dog. So, if you have both a puppy and a child, bring up both of them equally.

While your puppy is small, it does not represent any special danger, but getting older begins to find out who's boss.

Aggression towards the child may also occur because when a child appears in your house the dog loses its high social status and drops to a lower level in the hierarchical ladder of the family. It may treat a child as a competitor for the right to be closer to the leader and will try to improve the situation.

It should be noted that dogs are too complex animals to behave the same way. Claim that dogs never bite children at all is exaggerated.

Thus beware and exercise vigilance.