How dog bites are like Tetris

Here is another great article, this one by Casey Lomonaco, "How Are Dog Bites Like Tetris".  This is a great way to look at trigger stacking, which is at the root of most (if not all) dog bites.

When you take a situation apart, you can see how several triggers (or stressors) accumulate, pushing the dog over his/her bite threshold (the point at which a dog will bite -- and ALL dogs will bite, given the right circumstances).  One trigger on its own probably wouldn't result in a bite, but several triggers together are just too much.

For example, if a dog is made anxious by several things (night-time, children, strange noises, people carrying long stick-like things, events that happen suddenly, and men), and more than one of those things happens at the same time, then the likelihood of a bite substantially increases.  Imagine our example dog, out walking at night past a man shoveling snow and making that scraping noise that shovels often do.  Then from beside a car, a child in a puffy snowsuit carrying a toy shovel suddenly appears.  This situation is a recipe for disaster, because of the accumulation of triggers that make the dog anxious.  Any one trigger, on its own, might have been fine -- the dog would have been anxious, but probably wouldn't have been near his bite threshold.  But all of them together are too much for the dog, and he may snap, snarl or try to bite, depending on where his bite threshold is.  The more triggers there are at once, the more likely a bite becomes.

In her book, The Culture Clash, Jean Donaldson gives a wonderful explanation of how trigger stacking works, complete with diagrams.  It's well worth the read!