Dogs in the Red Zone
Dangerous Aggression
Imagine this—you come home to your upscale apartment building
after doing a little grocery shopping. The elevator stops at your floor and the
door slides open. The first, and last, things you see are two snarling 120-pound
Presa Canario/mastiffs breaking away from their owner’s leash and charging
straight toward you.
That’s how life ended for Diane Whipple, a
thirty-three-year-old lacrosse coach in San Francisco, in January of 2001. The
dogs’ owners were both convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served
four-year prison terms. This was perhaps the most notorious dog-attack death in
the United States, but it’s not the only one by far. Eighteen people on average
die each year in this country from dog attacks29.
We spend more than $165 million treating the nearly one million serious dog
bites that occur every year30.
Dog bites result in approximately forty-four thousand facial injuries in U.S.
hospitals31.
And tragically, 60 percent of facial dog-bite victims are children32.
Most of the dogs responsible for these bites will end up as statistics—just part
of the 2.7 million animals put to death in shelters every year33.
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Remember, these animals did not “premeditate” their attacks.
They weren’t “born killers,” nor did they suddenly turn into killing machines.
Unlike a human murderer sentenced to death for his crimes, none of these dogs
had a sense of right or wrong about taking a life—whether human or animal. As
I’ve said before, there is no morality in the animal kingdom; there is only
survival. If dogs lash out in violence, they are acting on their fight-or-flight
survival instincts. Dangerous aggression is not the cause; it’s the outcome of a
dog’s serious behavioral issues. And more often than not, a violent dog’s
aggressive behavior has been deliberately exacerbated—or even nurtured—by the
very human beings who are allegedly its caretakers.
In the wild, dogs are natural predators. They are also
hardwired to physically defend their territories. But aggression against
humans—or other dogs—should never be permitted in the domestic dogs that live
with us. Never. If we are to be our dogs’ pack leaders, the first rule of the
pack should be “No violent aggression!”
I made my reputation as a specialist in dog behavior by
rehabilitating some of the most formidable dog breeds out there—pit bulls,
Rottweilers, boxers, and German shepherds. I love these brawny breeds, but they
are definitely not appropriate for all owners. Unfortunately, when a dog owner
can’t handle his high-energy, powerful breed dog, the owner, the dog, and
sometimes, innocent bystanders suffer.
I believe that more than 90 percent of the time what I call
red-zone aggression is preventable.
The majority of cases where I’m called in to help involve some
kind of aggressive behavior. And in more than twenty years of working with dogs,
I’ve met only two red-zone cases that I believed could not be rehabilitated as
social animals that could live safely with humans. Based on my own experience,
maybe 1 percent of all the dogs who’ve come to me with aggression issues have a
mental imbalance, or are so deeply damaged by humans that they can’t safely be
returned to society. The upshot of this is we’re putting a lot of animals to
death who don’t deserve to die.
The only “crimes” these dogs committed were ending up with the
wrong human caretakers.
Defining the “Red Zone”
I never encountered a dog in
the red zone until I came to the United States. I’d seen rabid dogs and dogs
physically fighting with each other, but once one dog had established dominance
by putting the other to the ground, usually the contest ended right there. In
nature, threatening behavior usually serves to deter outright aggression. Unless
an animal is weak and must be executed by the pack, it is in the pack’s best
interest to keep aggression to a minimum. Before I arrived here, I’d never seen
a dog that didn’t stop his aggressive behavior—pinning another dog to the ground
or chasing or scaring a person away—after getting a warning bite. But the red
zone was something else entirely. The red zone means killing—be it another
animal or a human being.
It’s not a dominant or territorial thing. The intention of
that dog is to assault its target until he exhausts it. Until there is no life
left in it.
A red-zone case won’t listen to you, even if you are holding
on to him. It doesn’t matter if this dog is your lifelong companion who sleeps
in the same bed with you. Once that red light goes on, it’s as if you didn’t
exist. The dog will struggle against you, and would rather die than cease his
attack. You can hit him, yell at him—he won’t hear you, he’s that focused. His
mission to kill overpowers any pain you might inflict, and in fact, striking or
screaming at a dog in the red zone will only accelerate or intensify his lethal
state of mind. He’s a dog with a fixation—but a deadly one.
A red-zone case is never something that happens overnight.
That’s why it is so tragically preventable.
“Ticking Time Bombs”
“I had no
idea that he would ever do anything like that. How could you anticipate
something like that? A totally bizarre event? How can you anticipate that a dog
that you know, that is gentle and loving and affectionate, can do something so
horrible and brutal and disgusting and gruesome?” [34]
Those were the words owner Marjorie Knoller spoke in her own
defense at the Diane Whipple murder trial. Ironically, Knoller and her partner,
Robert Noel, seemed to be the only ones in their San Francisco neighborhood who
hadn’t “anticipated” such a “bizarre” reaction from their Presa Canario/mastiff
mix pair, Bane and Hera. These dogs were already in the red zone by the time the
two lawyers adopted them, and in the words of a veterinarian who sent Knoller
and Noel a warning letter about the dogs, they were “ticking time bombs” just
waiting to go off.