What are the signs of aggressive behaviour?
Each individual dog will use aggression in the circumstances that they believe it to be appropriate and they will use the degree of aggression that they believe to be appropriate for each encounter. What they believe to be appropriate will depend on what they have learned previously. Averting or reducing a challenge can be done in many non-aggressive ways. It is only when the dog believes that these will not work, or that aggression will be more effective, that it will be used. Dogs communicate mainly through body language. They have a wide range of non-aggressive signals and postures that they exhibit when they want us to stop doing whatever it is that they do not like. These “threat aversion” or “threat reduction” signals include gestures that show they are uncomfortable, like yawning, lip licking, averting their gaze, turning their head away, dropping ears, crouching, low wagging or tucking their tail under and rolling over on their back. These are sometimes termed “submissive” but
