I seem to have an extra questioning mind today, for once not asking questions about dogs per say but about dog owners. In my other post called "is dominance real?" a lot of you said no its not real towards a human. That you just need to keep the dog in line and let it know the rules but not by so called "alpha rules". Someone said on occasion they smacked the dog so that she knew she was pushing it. I've always had mixed feelings on the subject of smacking even though I have myself on occasion been a "smacker". I think as a rule you should try everything possible before smacking a dog but some times it seems to be the only thing that works. I don't believe in negative reinforcement for training, like choke chains or smacking the dog for an improper sit. I mean smack for major things like the dog goes and bites someone or something like that. I never have smacked a puppy, taped lightly as a warning yes (not enough to hurt just to interrupt the bad behaviour with a mild force) but never smacked. So basically what I'm asking is now, how many here do still smack their dogs as a form of discipline? Is it ever truly necessary or does it just show a bad temper on our part ( I tend to think it does but admit to doing it, I know not everyone that smacks is mean). I know most modern dog behaviourists say never ever smack a dog.  And if we are not to go by "alpha rules" or smacking,  what is used to tell the dog its just gone too far in your household? As sometimes referring the good and ignoring the bad doesn't always pay off. How do you discipline a dog?

If a dog bit someone, wouldn't the questions you would need to ask be, "how did it come to this?" "why did the dog bite?" and "how can I prevent that from ever happening again"?

Did the dog bite without warning?  Had it previously shown apprehension towards people in this or any other situation?  Did it growl first and what happened when it did?  Has it previously growled at someone and been smacked for it?  Should I have seen this coming?  Should I have managed the situation?  Could I have prevented it from occurring?

Isn't that more productive than asking "Should I smack him/her?"  From which the dog will learn only to start running after it has bitten someone the next time because it has learnt that its owner is then going to whack it.

I was just giving an example off the top of my head. My dogs have never bitten anyone ;)

I know, Becks, I was just replying to a hypothetical situation.  Any of the "major" things people might smack for can be thought about in the same way.

You have to think how you would prefer to be disciplined as a child.  If someone smacked you, however lightly, you wouldn't feel loved, you would be upset.  A dog will either cower and be scared, hurt and distressed if you smack it or bite you and you might well deserve it!  The feminine response is 'hurt', the male response is 'defence'.  To get the best out any living thing, you need to instil confidence in the relationship with encouragement, praise, refirmation and love. If your dog love and respects you, it will do it's utmost to please.  If it oversteps the mark and does something you consider "naughty", think first why the dog might have done it i.e. fear/over-excitement/temptation/defending etc etc.  A dog does not think like us so cannot be expected to know it's been "naughty" - what's naughty?  What they do is by instinct.  If we invite a dog into our lives, we have to respect that they are not like us.  Don't smack your dog if you can possibly help it, although I realise this is a first reaction if it's done something back.  Avoid the situations where the dog might do it again.  Use sounds/words that go up in tone to encourage and down to placate.  Use short monotone words to correct.  If the dog is, what you consider to be naughty, and it is appropriate to do so, walk away or when it's doing it, make a loud noise with your voice to get it's attention.  A rape alarm is too loud for a dog's ears but maybe find something that makes a loudish noise to sound when the dog is misbehaving and. once you've got it's attention, ask for sit in a short, sharp way to express your annoyance.  When a dog errs, get the attention back to you and give it a command.  If it disobeys, turn your back on the dog for 5 seconds then turn round, get the attention and ask again.  But how you get the attention is up to you -just don't make it ear piercingly loud!  Incidentally, none of us have the right to discipline a dog - you can't discipline an animal, you have to train it.  If a horse bucks and rears, you don't beat it up, you find out what's causing the problem and address it, you are gentle and get the animal's trust, you go back to square one and start all over again.  Give an example of when you might want to smack a dog and we'll see how best to deal with it.  You mention a dog going to bite someone... if your dog is likely to do that, you might be advised to first consult a dog behaviourist and then, if that doesn't resolve the issue, you might be better off having the dog put to sleep before it really hurts someone.  If you smack it, you will probably get bitten.  Control your dangerous dog and don't let it near anyone it doesn't like/trust/know.

Um I don't have a dangerous dog, all i have is a little soft fluffy cheeky pup :) I'm not looking for advise, I was just wondering how people deal with problems. 

"I mean smack for major things like the dog goes and bites someone or something like that".

Sorry for the misunderstanding; your email reads like you actually have a need to know what to do and not that you are writing hypothetically. 

I didn't mean it to sound that way. I don't know many dangerous 16 week old sheltie puppies lol As that's all my boy is ;)

Your mind is working overtime today isn't it :P

Good question.
If the owner has had the dog from a pup, I feel that as the pup grows appropriate socialisation and training should have taken place - ideally, the owner shouldn't *have* to "discipline" as such. For example, if the dog jumps up, it simply needs to be trained not to do it - no point in nagging, smacking etc as it's a dog in an alien world. Once trained, it will be fine and not jump up.

Of course, often owners are not consisent, are confusing (anyone been watching It's Me or the Dog? :P) and sometimes don't understand *how* to train, and that can be a big problem. As the pup grows, it gets unruly and owners are leading busy stressful lives and often just find it easier to smack and hope the dog "learns his lesson".

I think what I am trying to say is, if the owners have trained the dog, it shouldnt need telling off. If it does, then the owners have not trained it, so whose fault is that?

We used to whack a dog with rolled up newspaper it it made a mess, now we know better and there is a joke that we get the rolled up newspaper and whack ourselves with it over tthe head ... that's how i feel.

If a dog seems to disobey a known command - that needs looking into and I still would not discipline by any physical means. It may be necessary to use a sharp "ah!" or give the dog A Look, but to a trained and happy dog with a trusting relationship that is enough, if it doesn't work then back to training!!

I've seen a dog recalled, it looked up but the owner had her head down by then, putting on another dog's lead. The recalled dog thought "oh she doesn't want me" and didn't go to the owner. Sadly the owner, who was at fault, saw fit to scruff the dog. So often the dog will simply misunderstand, or not hear, but be told off. Not fair.

I trained my dog to stop barking at the new cats who moved in next door by taking her out the room if she barked at the patio doors, it was marked with an "ah!" and after a few days she was 90 per cent better! this was all done totally calmy and with no nagging nor fuss, she was kept out for just a few minutes and brought back in. A bit more to it but that's the gist.

I have smacked dogs, but looking back it was because i didn't know what else to do and thoght they had been badly behaved... it was just that they were undertrained. This was years and years ago, I was about 15!

Lindsay
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If you meet aggression with aggression ultimately your outcome will be aggression.
I may get hung drawn & quatered for saying this............. but i have rewarded growling in the past, i would much prefer that my dog gives an active warning as a precurser to a bite, dogs do NOT like to be aggressive & if you actually watch a dogs body language it will give you warnings before a bite happens. It is up to us as dog owners to read these signals & not put our dogs in this situation.
I am aware that there are dogs that do not give warnings & this is far more worrying, there are then many questions that arise from this, was the dog punished for giving a warning ? for example.
growling, giving a hard stare, body stiffening, lip lifting & avoidance.
Were the signals even registered with the person it bit ? Has it got a chemical imbalance, is it unwell ? in pain ? was it being tormented ? was it resource gaurding  .... god the list is endless & i havent even started to think hard about this one :-) 
Or failing every conceivable idea & thought, is it just a predettermined biter ?
There are so many reasons why ......
I hate seeing harsh handling it makes me cringe ! there are many ways to communicate with a dog, they try their best to communicate with us ... maybe we should try harder !

Hi Stanley.  If I'm in a strop and something takes my attention away from my fuming and moaning etc, I forget about it.  Seems like a plan to me!

Is that not PMT though :D lol chocolate is very good for taking my mind away from it, or anything else for that matter lol :D

Stanley!!!!  You're a GIRL!!!!!  LOL.  Yes, PMT.  What gets rid of PMT?  NOTHING!!!  SO DON'T ASK!  Chocolate?  Oooh, I don't mind if I do!

I am indeed :D lol long story !
Have to say you lot are leading me astray today .......... not getting anything done & i'm thoroughly enjoying it too, dont tihnk OH will be as overjoyed as me though :D
Mmmmmmmmm chocolate yum yum

Hi becks, me again.

I like enquiring minds and think this should be encouraged as it gives us all the opportunity to examine our methods and motives - and consciences. 
I *try* never to smack but, truth be told, did so only the other week when Zak (GSD) was just not complying with the 'sit quietly and I'll put your lead on and we'll go out' rule but instead was leaping and prancing about the place.  I was doing the 'I'll ignore you until you behave' bit when he leapt virtually into my face and then raked his claws down my legs. No malice or aggression was intended on his part, he was just having one of those days.  But I'm afraid I lost it and smacked him on the rump with my hand.  I've never seen a dog look more shocked...but his backside was on the floor in a nanosecond and stayed there as if glued.  But I wouldn't interpret this as 'hitting dogs gets compliance' but rather him thinking, 'I must *really* have gone too far that time' - I hope so anyway. (The other dog was looking on with a very smug 'I told you so' expression I thought, but perhaps I'm just being anthropomorphic.) 

Keep up the questions - I think they're good for us.

Best, Linda

Thanks Linda :)  That's what I was hoping from this, getting people questioning. I will try to do it more often as its in my nature to pick peoples brains. Just I was too shy and new until now. :D

warm wishes,
Becks

I'm the person who said they smacked. I'm not saying that my dogs are smacked often or regularly. That would destroy the effect of a short, sharp and memorable shock. In the other post I was talking about a very large, dominant (in the dog sense), intelligent, confident dog that was deliberately pushing the boundaries and seeing how far she could go with me. I think a smack in that context is the best way to deal with the dog. Ditto for the vast majority of dogs that dare to growl at a human. People say "Oh, you mustn't smack a dog that growls, you'll just make it more agressive". That may well be true for the genuinely aggressive dog, but those thankfully are rare. Most growling dogs simply doing it because it works and they get away with it. The last dog that growled at me was my IW male when I patted him while he was eating. He again is a confident boy who got a good smack and a serious telling off. He's never done it again. I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who never chastise a defiant/growling dog are actually afraid of their dog.

I think you'd find that modern behaviourists and their followers would consider even tapping a puppy as a bad thing to do. I do roar at pups and give them a slight smack sometimes when they are misbehaving. It's the quickest way to teach them what 'No' means. Obviously you have to adjust the smack to the dog. To hit a sheltie puppy as hard as I hit the adult wolfhound boy would be cruel. To tap the wolfhound as if he was a sheltie puppy would be equally pointless. He'd think he was being patted. There is no need to smack a worried, sensitive dog because he will already be anxious to please.

I completely agree about not smacking or even verbally chastising a dog when you are angry. But I don't find that I do lose my temper with the dogs because they have all been brought up to be well mannered and they simply do not do the things that I consider to be absolutely unacceptable like showing the smallest aggression to people or chasing sheep.

I consider myself a novice dog owner as my dog is still under 2 and she is my first.  I have smacked her once when she had dragged the washing off the line for the umpteenth time and dragged it through mud and poo and torn it with her teeth in pulling it off the line.  I had tried telling her off while showing her the stuff she had yanked off, I had tried waiting around for her to do it so that I could catch her in the actual act so that I could tell her off thre and then but I couldn't catch her doing it.  Then one day when I saw her leaping about with my daughter's brand new white jumper I lost it big time and I smacked her, I am not proud of it because I knew it was wrong and I smacked her in temper which is also wrong. 

The problem as I see it is as people we have rules for what's right and wrong but you can't expect a dog to have the same rules as much of their behaviour is just natural to them.  What do dogs know about new jumpers and clean clothes, only that they swing in the breeze that makes it fun to jump at and catch. So it's not so much that we are disciplining them for being wrong but teaching them what behaviours we accept or don't accept and by keeping that in mind it's easier to curb frustration. 

I found scruffing (gently that is) very effective and paired this with the words 'bad dog'.  I was told that the mum dog scruffs the pups and this was ok.  It wasn't long before just saying 'bad dog' was enough to make her ears and head drop. However my dog is a quick learner and thrives on praise and I imagine it's not so easy for every dog.

I think the biggest challenge in teaching a dog in a family environment is consistency.  Trying to get everyone to give the same message to the dog in the same way is a nightmare.  i.e. when my dog gets excited she picks up a trainer or shoe and trotts about with it wagging her tail.  I don't mind that because if you don't want her to do it to your trainers then put them away.  Today I caught my daughter telling her off because she had one of her trainers.  I was very cross as this gives mixed messages and is confusing. The dog now doesn't know if it is acceptable or unacceptable. Id' like to scruff my children once in a while.

People say "Oh, you mustn't smack a dog that growls, you'll just make it more agressive". That may well be true for the genuinely aggressive dog, but those thankfully are rare. Most growling dogs simply doing it because it works and they get away with it. The last dog that growled at me was my IW male when I patted him while he was eating.

Agression begets agression. But more importantly, punishing a dog for growling isnt nearly that simple. you are punishing to stop the dog agressing at you, but the dog growled because of the way he was feeling, in the case of your IW, 'thats my food, leave it', so in fact the dog associates the punishment with the noise he made, and not the way he was feeling. Eventually the dog learns that growling gets a wallop, he stops growling. He doesnt stop feeling threatened around his food though, and the chances are, that one day, someone he would dare to bite comes along in a similar situation, and he bites without warning.

Yes they do it because it works, but also, does a dog not have a right to do something like eat his dinner, in peace?

Violence should have no part of training. BUT, somedays, we hit dogs, we are human, and sometimes ignoring a behaviour, booting the dog out of the room etc etc is not enough. The situations im talking about are quite rare, but i have one here, with Dill. Whenever a dog walks past the house, he goes MENTAL barking at it. Normally, he will respond to an off command, and ill make him sit and lie down and reward him for listening to me.
But the other day a dog came into OUR garden, and was weeing up everything, Dill went loony at it, and the pup was sitting next to him. The next minute, Dill is taking his frustration out on the puppy, puppy screaming, dill still going loopy, so i grabbed him and he got a very hard wallop across his backside.
Result, one formerly hysterical dog shocked into stopping, sitting and paying attention to me.

Not something id do every day, but something that served its purpose at the time!

Em

I've seen quite a lot of posts saying that a dog has a right to his dinner in peace or it isn't fair on the dog to leave food where he can get it and expect him not to steal it. I don't buy it. I want my dog to allow me to take his food away if I want to, and I don't want to have my kitchen work surfaces 6' in the air so the dogs are not allowed to guard food and they are not allowed to steal.

Do you leave your front door open and expect not to be burgled?

Where we live, yes. :)

That's what I thought about this area too - until recently when we were burgled.

I too think a dog should let the owner take the food bowl away - BUT, only for a very good reason, such as glass in the bowl. This can be trained for, and should be trained for :) I do not agree with owners taking food away "because they can" or because they are testing the dog and being "assertive" or "alpha".

With smacking, the dog may get worse and far more aggressive - I am thinking of reactive, sensitive breeds in particular.
Possibly too, a laid back dog may accept it's owner who smacked it near it's food, but what of the crawling,visiting toddler?

I feel it's best to train for such eventualities, with planned training sessions, imho :)

Lindsay
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I don't make a practice of taking any of my dogs' food away either but I do want to be able to do it if I need to.

How would you have handled my real life example of a very large dog growling when he was patted while eating?

I wouldnt have bothered the dog whilst it was eating in the first place!

Em

So you can't / don't know if you can take food away from your dogs if you need to?

I train for everything :)

If a dog growled at me (i've been growled at just once in 30 years of dog ownership so must be doing something right ;) ) I'd not react but ask myseld "why" and then train accordingly, and/or take the dog to the vet for a checkup as various health problems may make a dog aggressive.

I have never taken the stance "no dog's gonna growl at me" because I prefer to understand the "why" I suppose :).  I have always been able to take not only bowls but bones from my dogs, but this is because i set up training sessions for exactly this :) which is why presumably I dont get the growl in the first place. If a dog was a rescue or adult and a stranger to me and growled, I'd vet check and then set about a training programme :).

Re large dogs in particular, some are placid and some tend to be more reactive - ethics aside, you have to be careful.

What if a dog had been rescued from the streets and had been known to be starving, and desperate for food, and then that dog growled if approached whilst eating - is it fair to smack, or more fair to train? I go for the latter.

Yes but you haven't really answered the question. This is a well fed dog that came to me as a young adult and who growled because he was guarding his food. What training programme would you use?

Personally I'd try the multi-bowl trick. Put loads of empty food bowls around a large area and go from one to another putting a tiny amount of food in each, so that the dog associates you with the arrival of food, not its removal. After a while you can cut down the number of bowls until you're putting a little food into one bowl, waiting till he's eaten it, then adding some more. Again, you're the good guy who brings food, not the bad guy who might take it away.

That might have worked with food guarding but it would not have taught the dog that growling at a person is absolutely unacceptable. If I had not reacted to the growl he would actually have learned that growling worked and scared me off. Say your plan had worked with the food guarding but the dog later took exception to me - or worse the vet - examining an injury? (Obviously I'm not talking about an injury so serious that the dog is out of its mind with shock and pain where it has to be muzzled for everyone's benefit)

The thing is, I don't think growling at a person is completely unacceptable. I'd rather a dog showed that it was unhappy in a situation (so that I could rectify it) by growling rather than having to go to the next stage, which is biting.

The dog in question weighs more than I do and imo if I allow him to chase me away with a growl he is far MORE likely to bite if I later fail do what he is telling me to do with the growl. I don't expect many absolutes from my dogs but not showing aggression/threatening behaviour to people is one of them.

So, Jas, how would you deal with it, if your dog DID growl at you?

Margot

The dog did growl at me - that's what the discussion is about. The moment he growled I yelled at him and smacked him hard, then took his dinner away. I couldn't cause a dog this size any significant pain with an open handed slap, but like my other dogs he is not used to being smacked or yelled at so it gave him a shock. He has never growled at me again

So what are you saying here?

A dog should accept every single thing that may well prove to be unpleasant, without uttering a sound?

Food guarding is food guarding, train the dog that people near food = more food, and not less food or a wallop round the head problem solved.

Being scared (and growling in that situation would mean fear), of being handled by a vet or owner when injured is an entirely different situation. I wouldnt EXPECT for a second that training a dog to accept humans near his food would do anything to improve that situation.

The only way a dog is not going to growl out of fear when handled when its injured imo, is if it TRUSTS the people who are handling it. And it will do so, if those people are well known and firm but kind..

Obviously if you wallop your dog when its scared and injured then that trust is going to be hard to come by, ditto if you let your vet do the same. (not saying YOU personally do, just saying 'you' in general).

Em

I don't believe for a moment that the dog was frightened when he growled at me because I patted him while he was eating. He was threatening me. As I said I never bought into the human as pack leader theory but I do think that the human has to be in control, and the owner who backs off when a dog growls at him/her is not in control.

Again as I said I would not expect a dog that, say, had been hit by a car and seriously injured not to growl or even bite. I'd accept that he was out of his mind with pain, shock and fear and would muzzle him. I carry a stretchy bandage in the car so that I can make an emergency muzzle if I ever come across a dog like this.

But I do not accept that a dog with a cut pad or one that is having a blood sample taken should growl or bite. It can whine, wriggle or nose the hand away and I'll sympathise and gently restrain it but it may not threaten.

I clearly, was not talking about a dog being frightened regarding food. I WAS talking about  your 'injured dog' situation!

Em

I do know i can take food away from all of my dogs whilst they are eating.

I dont, however, go and do unecessary things to them whilst they are eating, like patting them!

Ditto JG..... multibowl trick, swapping boring food for nicer food, teaching leave with first toys, and then boring foods etc.

Not EVER do i just approach a dog i havent trained and remove food from it, nor do i make a point of approaching my dogs and messing with them whilst they are eating, that teaches them nothing useful at all!

Em

The day I can't give my dogs a friendly pat while they are eating or doing anything else is the day I stop having dogs.

Jas, I must be missing something, as I thought i had answered the question. As I said, if a dog growled at me, I would first of all think about *why* that may have happened.

Bearing in mind health issues such as, for instance hypothyroid which is not always apparent. So I would have a vet check up first.

Next i'd work on the problem - I'd specifically set up training sessions to work on that problem and to solve it - my preferred way is clicker training. If my dog ever started growling at me in the situation you have described, I know I could turn it around. As it happens, she is fine being touched whilst feeding, but i agree with  others that there's no need to bother a dog whilst its eating. As i said, I *can* "bother" my dog whilst she's eating, but don't choose to do it on purpose nor everyday. I can brush past her, pat her, stroke her etc and in fact when I give her her meal, as i move away she gets a small stroke which is part of our "ritual".

Out of interest, what would you do with the situation I described, of  a dog who had previously been starving and was aggressive over food and would growl in that situation if you patted him?

Lindsay
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I feel this is actually quite interesting in relation to how peeps think in relation to their dogs and how they train and why.
In answer to JG, you mention that her reply, which would solve a good guarding problem, would not teach the dog that it is unacceptable to growl at a human.

Firstly, in my view, if the dog is "cured" of the Cause of the food guarding - which can often be fear but not always - then it will not growl any more and, if it only normally ever growled in that situation, it's unlikely to do it elsewhere if the cause has been addressed. Dogs can be gorgeous but still be growly at food time. Such dogs may never growl in any other situation.

So, why not just work on the food guarding, it's problem solved :)

I feel that dogs communicate in different ways - i would much prefer a dog that growled than one that went straight for the jugular :P as an example. The growling is a dog showign it's not comfortable with something - it's up to us to find out what that is and work with the problem.

I also feel that, telling off a growling dog *may* mean that it does stop growling but that it may bite nexttime.

We had a GSD at our local club - long story but it was growly at people.
It had bean bags thrown and it was checked, and shouted at when it growled. It stopped growling and seemed to accept people.

Sadly, this dog went on to attack a waitress whilst the club were on a beach walk and had stopped at a cafe :(
If he had been allowed to growl, and the growling had been worked on from a perspective of, getting him to *like* people, the ending may have been a lot happier.

So I would never prevent  a dog from growling but would always work on the problem so tht the dog itself voluntarily stopped growling.

Lindsay
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Sorry but I still don't think you have answered the question. You say you would use clicker training with a dog that growled when patted while feeding but you don't say how. My concern with this dog was not solely to stop him food guarding. It was also to let him know that threatening behaviour is not on.

As to 'bothering' dogs while they are eating, I often give mine a pat as I'm walking about. They (including the IW who growled) don't seem to be a bit bothered as they wag their tails and keep on eating. Most of my dogs get different amounts and some of them get different foods. Sometimes I get mixed up and put the wrong dish in front of a dog. So while I don't make a habit of it for no reason, I do occassionally take a dog's food away and give it something else without protest.

I have had rescue dogs come in starved and in poor condition but none of them have ever growled at me while eating. If one did I imagine I'd react as I did with the IW but I wouldn't take their dinner away afterwards as I did with him.

You don't feel that, by taking his dinner away after he growled at you, you've reinforced the idea that you're someone who can't be trusted and who needs to be kept away from his food?

In practice that didn't happen. Ever since that one incident (and he was not ill, injured or unwell in any way) he has reacted to a pat while eating with a wag of his tail and sometimes a quick nuzzle.

Jas, I haven't got time to go into what I'd do which is why I mentioned clicker training as that is my preferred method. Clicker training is, in behavioural terms Operant conditioning - I would use this, plus classical conditioning. I dislike using such terms but sometimes can't avoid them.  If  are genuinely interested :)  then you can read more of  in 2 of Jean Donaldson's books, Mine! and The Culture Clash. It's all there but she as an author and highly respected trainer and behaviourist is probably better at putting herself across than me :P I don't seem to be doing very well <g>

I'll be honest, 25 years ago I may have smacked a dog, in the same situation and thought the same as you, and that's the honest truth. I would never do it now but it's not coming across from me why not!

Do you have any comments on the GSD situation? in that situation, would you yourself not have smacked the dog? The result of that (a more reactive dog in this instance) was very sad. Just one incident like this one is one too many, and it's a very good example of why never to stop a dog from growling as a non-growling dog that is still not happy is far worse. This dog was made  unsafe.

Lindsay
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I read Jean Donaldson's .Culture Clash' when it came out and wasn't terribly impressed. This review - http://www.kateconnick.com/library/donaldsonclash.html -  more or less sums up my own feelings about the book. I've not read 'Mine!'

I'm sorry that you haven't time to explain how you could have clicker trained in this situation because I can't imagine how it might be done without obeying the dog's growls so rewarding him for growling.

Afraid I don't know what the GSD situation is. Is it a post on the forum?

I think Lindsay means the GSD mentioned earlier in this very thread. ;)

I do, it's in my reply above to you, Jas  :)

I think we think so differently Jas, it's difficult to find common ground. I'm not sure therefore that i can explain any more.

I think, if I'm corrrect, you feel that if a dog growls, and you don't smack it, then it will learn it can growl and may get worse, is that correct?

But if you train the dog to accept humans nearby, and for example, de-sensitise it and counter condition for it to enjoy having humans patting it whilst it's eating, what's the problem? As, the dog is ultimately not "getting away" with growling, nor has the growling been successful, nor has it "won", because at the end of the day, the human has got what they want anyway....and the dog is no longer growling.

I discussed on another site a while ago, a case of a rescue doberman. This was terrible  - the dog had been physically abused (s***ally) by previous owners and was very growly at its new owner who was very patient and eventually was able to overcome the growling problems by basically ignoring any threats. IMO it would have been the nail in the coffin to have smacked such a dog who was clearly very frightened - yet, it was still growling seriously and meant it.

Lindsay
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I don't know that we think so differently. :) I was using treats, praise and an excited voice to teach behaviours I wanted when training books still recommended stepping on the lead to teach 'down'. I'm all for positive methods for most things because they work and are far more enjoyable for all concerned. But I think the absolute rejection of firm negatives is a step backward. Like it or not an occassional punishment delivered in cold blood does work. Contrary to modern theory, in my experience, it does not make the dog aggressive / nervous / hand shy. Obviously the punishment has to be calibrated to the individual dog. As I said before to smack a sheltie puppy as hard as I smacked the adult IW would be wrong and the incident of the police dog you cited was anger, if not outright cruelty. I do not make a practice of smacking or yelling at my dogs. There is no need to do it, it might end up in really making them nervous of me - and the shock effect when it IS used for major infractions would be lost.

De-sensitising and counter conditioning for a pat while eating might work, but all the dog would have learned is to accept a pat when he is at his dinner. He would not have learned that growling at people is wrong. In fact he would have learned that it works. I'd have backed off at the first growl and presumably at subsequent growls during the de-sensitising and counter conditioning. As someone said a growl is a threat and I cannot believe that people here are seeing it as a good thing in a general sense. (Agreed there are dogs and breeds so reactive that they may go straight for an attack without the preliminary body language and growls, and that makes them more difficult to manage.) But I don't believe that extinguishing the threat (the growl) makes the average dog more likely to go straight for the bite. For most dogs growling and body language are the first step in a continuum that ends with an attack. The dog in question is heavier than I am, faster, and much better equipped for unarmed combat, so I'd sooner sort out his threatening behaviour before he decides that a wee bite might work even better than a growl!

An abused dog is a completely different situation from my example of a confident, well socialised, normally affectionate and obedient, young adult IW. Presumably the dobe was growling in an attempt to stop people abusing it and there I would agree with ignoring the threats as they were being made from fear.