Assessing Aggression (an excerpt)

The real breakdowns in aggressive behavior always involve communication breakdowns. Again, the problem here is commonly addressed by the feeling that we have not taught our dog well enough, we didn’t teach them right from wrong, etc.. This is another ignorant assessment of the situation. The real problem is that humans communicate, for the most part, audibly - with minimal body language, and an extensively large vocabulary ( in multiple languages no less ). Our canine counterparts communicate as a whole unit - a dogs entire body speaks…..they will use tone, movements, gestures, and they will demonstrate strength in unity as well as alone.
In other words, the aggressive act is usually not as unwarranted as we may think. It is usually the result of a given environmental stimulus that the dog will not, or cannot deal with or control. It is also almost always the final attempt to alleviate the problem, not the first. When trying to figure out what exactly the given cause of an aggressive tendency may be, we have to first understand the tendencies of the dog. Once you have a successful working knowledge of the dogs tendencies you can then begin to test the patterns in multiple scenarios - looking for breaks in the patterns you have built, then investigating differences and testing individual stimuli.