As Cesar has pointed out many times a fear based dog doesn’t just charge and attack without warning like a truly aggressive or “red zone” dog would. A dog with pure aggression is not going to wait for you to do something he doesn’t like, he’s just going to attack.
I recently had an experience with a dog that had dug himself under a fence and was stuck on the other side of his fence on 5 inches of a tie-out. When I came up to him to try to help him he was barking at me. Most people would have been terrified thinking the dog was aggressive. To me it was obvious that he wasn’t aggressive, he was simply territorial. However since I really couldn’t help the dog since I can’t just open someones fence and put their dog back in their yard I called animal control and they grabbed him. He did not bite the officer, he did not try to do anything to her at all. In fact he lowered his head when she approached him and let her put the leash lead on him.
I told her when she got here that he didn’t seem aggressive just territorial.
As much as you might think you can’t “read” a dog, you certainly can. Which is why Cesar’s idea of DOG psychology works so well. I personally don’t think I’m the god of training dogs now, but what I have taken away from the show is how to interpert dog’s queues a lot better.
