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Puppy Growling

It's cute when really tiny puppies growl. It's not cute when the once tiny puppy is now a 75 pound dog that growls. While growling is a perfectly natural behavior for canines, it needs to be trained out of your puppy - except in a few instances where its for play only.

NORMAL, PLAY GROWLING
If your puppy is growling while it plays with its toys, don't worry. This is just play. Test and make sure its play by taking the toy away from your puppy, then giving it back. If your puppy doesn't growl over this, all's well. It's also perfectly normal for puppies who are playing together to play growl. Just keep an eye on them. If they have a history of being good playmates, don't get too concerned about play growling.

Some of us are tempted to play growl back at our dogs (playing tug is a good example of this). Its probably not a good idea to do this - by growling back, we're encouraging the behavior. If you reinforce the behavior enough, your dog might try it out the next time you need to pick up their bone.

ALL OTHER GROWLING IS SERIOUS
Do not ignore it when your puppy growls at you or anyone or anything else. Whether she is growling at you when you sit down on the couch next to her, when you approach her food bowl, when you brush her or clip her toes, or when you reach for one of her toys, you need to act immediately, but appropriately. Here's what you should not do:

    - Shove, hit or shake the puppy
    - Yell at the puppy
    - Growl back

Why shouldn't you do these things? Because a growling puppy is much better than a biting puppy. A growl is dog-speak for "I'm thinking about biting you". Shaking, yelling or abusing your puppy may train her to not growl anymore. She'll just to straight to biting. She will have become a potentially dangerous dog, and you'll have a much more serious problem. By responding to your puppy's growling in these ways, you will just be silencing the communication, not the problem. To say it another way, you'll be treating the symptom, not the problem.

Another reason to avoid any of these aggressive behaviors with you puppy is that aggression breeds aggression. Using force to train dogs never works in the long term.

Finally, yelling, shaking or growling at your puppy may just frighten her. If you scare her, any training message you wanted to give is lost. She won't understand that you don't want her to growl; she'll only understand that you're scary. And if you're scary, she has all the more reason to be on the defensive with you... which makes for more growling.

So what should you do? Use your judgement, of course, and make sure you don't get bit (this is quite unlikely if your puppy has just started to use growling), but any one of the following, or a combination, should get your puppy's attention without outright scaring them. Try these in the exact moment the growling is happening.

    - Say "NO" in a loud but calm voice
    - Move so that you're over the puppy - either stand up or just sit up higher
    - Go ahead and take the food bowl or toy away (if this is what she's growling over)
    - Look the puppy straight in the eye and do not blink or look away for a second. Stare them down for just a moment.

Be careful with #3 in the list. If you have just a small growling issue, you'll be fine, but if your puppy has taken to regular and serious growling, wait until the tense moment has passed, then take the bowl. This brings us to what you should do outside of the exact moment the growling is happening.

    - Take your puppy to a vet to be sure there isn't a physical reason for the growling
    - Review all the behaviors of alpha dogs and start using them. For example, don't let your puppy be on your bed anymore. Don't let her go through doorways first anymore. Don't feed her until after you have eaten. Don't give her attention every time she asks for it.
    - Remove all the objects your puppy is protecting. The favorite toy becomes your property until her behavior improves.
    - Call a certified dog trainer or behavorialist. Aggression is a serious problem, and it is MUCH easier to resolve in its earlier phases when your dog is still young. Its worth the $65-85 cost for a professional to diagnose and treat exactly what is going on with your particular puppy

Some dog owners will accept a certain amount of growling as normal - for instance, when a dog has a bone. If your household has only adults in it, that may be acceptable. But if there are small children around, it may not be. Be aware that dogs have more respect for adults than they do for children. In other words, your dog might only growl at you, but would go ahead and actually bite a child.

Above all, stay calm and don't give in to being afraid of your dog. Many puppies age 9 to 12 weeks old will go through a phase where they're working out their dominance issues, and a little growling may be part of that. Shelter dogs or puppies may be responding to past abuse, which is all the more reason to not scare them. Follow the basic ways to handle growling - saying "NO", maintaining alpha-dog behavoirs. If the growling doesn't subside, call a professional.