Help! My Dog Growls at Kids…What Do I Do?

By Karen DiCostanzo, CPDT-KA, Certified Professional Dog Trainer

Today I got a call from a pet parent concerned about her dog barking and growling at other dogs and people–especially young children–while on daily walks through their neighborhood. Understandably, she found this behavior embarrassing and perplexing.

As a full-time dog trainer, I get many requests for help for behaviors like growling, barking, lunging, and biting. I explained to the caller that her dog is frightened and is trying to warn away perceived threats. From the dog’s point of view, this behavior is effective, because eventually the other dogs and people go away–they don’t understand that it wasn’t necessarily the direct result of their barking and growling.

Addressing this behavior usually involves a process called desensitization and counter-conditioning which means that we work to change the dog’s negative emotional response to certain things to one that’s neutral or even positive. Before we start training, though, I discuss with my clients the importance of managing the dog’s access to things in the environment that may prompt unwanted behaviors.

For example, if a dog growls at strangers, it’s important to keep him far enough away from others that he doesn’t feel imminently threatened. In other words, we prevent the dog from practicing unwanted behavior. This is a very important component of the behavior modification training process. When done consistently, the dog begins to relax a bit and trust the human handler to keep him out of scary situations.

Next, we teach the dog that when a scary “monster” like a small child appears (at a sufficient distance to keep the dog’s stress level fairly low), something good appears immediately, like a small tidbit of stinky cheese. Given enough repetition and consistency, the dog will begin to see the appearance of kids as predictors of delicious treats, which will then begin to change his emotional response from negative to positive. Throughout this process, we make sure the dog is set up for success, meaning that we don’t put him in situations that will scare him, like allowing little kids to be too close.

Another factor that will help this process along is the ability of the pet parent to see and correctly interpret their dog’s body language. Prior to growling, dogs almost always display stress signals, such as lip licking, stiffening, and turning away. The more we learn about this, the better we are able to keep our dogs out of stressful situations and intervene quickly, before they feel the need to engage in defensive aggression like growling, barking, charging, and snapping. A wonderful resource for learning dog body language is the Dog Decoder app by trainer Jill Breitner.

Once we understand that a dog growls at kids because he’s afraid, we can help him overcome his fear with patience, compassion, and modern, humane (i.e. rewards-based) training. To find a fear-free trainer in your area, visit The Pet Professional Guild member search page here.