He Loved His Dog. He Never Heard the Warnings.
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What if the dog isn’t the mystery?
“The mystery was no longer why Buddy was biting. The mystery was why Tim couldn’t see the warnings.”
What if the person who loves him most is?
I’ve worked with thousands of dogs over the years, but every once in a while a case comes along that stays with me. This is one of those cases.
The details have been changed to protect my clients’ privacy, but this is a true story. It happened many years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.
I’ll call him Tim.
Tim was one of the kindest clients I’ve ever worked with. He and his wife lived in a modest but well-maintained home. They were in their sixties and had no children. Their world revolved around a 45-pound mixed-breed rescue dog named Buddy. And Tim loved Buddy. I don’t mean he merely owned him. I mean he genuinely loved him. That’s what made the case so confusing.
By the time I met them, Buddy had bitten Tim four separate times, for no apparent reason. Every bite had broken the skin, and the injuries were primarily to Tim’s hands and arms. This wasn’t a minor nuisance. This was a serious aggression case. Yet something about it didn’t make sense.
Buddy wasn’t biting Tim’s wife. He wasn’t biting visitors. He wasn’t biting strangers. He was biting the one person who loved him most. And I couldn’t figure out why. The more I got to know Tim, the stranger the case became.
Tim worked as a controller for a large public company. He was highly intelligent, analytical, successful, thoughtful, and remarkably warm. Some clients you respect. Some clients you like. Tim was both. Which only deepened the mystery.
Eventually, I diagnosed Buddy with a common form of family-directed aggression known as control-related aggression.
Despite the intimidating name, this type of aggression is actually much more common than most people realize. In simple terms, a dog learns to use aggression as a tool to influence the behavior of the people around him. He discovers that growling, snapping, or biting can be effective ways to get what he wants. Sometimes it’s possession of a favorite toy. Sometimes it’s access to a preferred spot on the sofa. Sometimes it’s food. Sometimes it’s simply getting someone to move away. Like a spoiled child who learns that tantrums work, the behavior becomes reinforced because it achieves a desired outcome.
The encouraging news is that control-related aggression often has one of the best prognoses of any aggression diagnosis when treated properly. Cases like these are usually fairly straightforward. But this case wasn’t. I understood Buddy, but I didn’t really understand Tim, and that bothered me.
The treatment exercises I was giving Tim weren’t especially complicated. Yet despite his intelligence, he didn’t seem to understand what Buddy was communicating during the exercises. Tim wasn’t being resistant, stubborn, or unwilling to follow instructions. Quite the opposite. He was trying hard to do exactly what I was asking him to do.
But it was almost as though he and Buddy were participating in two completely different conversations. The more I watched them interact, the more convinced I became that I was missing something important.
[This article is original content created by USA Dog Behavior (https://www.USADogBehavior.com) and is intended for our readers.]
Then one day, Tim’s wife quietly told me something she had never mentioned before. I’ll never forget it.
“My husband has Asperger’s Syndrome.”
Suddenly, a hundred little observations I’d made over the previous weeks began to rearrange themselves in my mind.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Asperger’s Syndrome, it’s a condition that’s generally considered part of the autism spectrum. Many people with it are highly intelligent and exceptionally capable, but they may have difficulty interpreting subtle social cues and body language in humans…
…and canines.
Suddenly, the entire case made sense. For weeks, I had been trying to understand Buddy. Now I realized I needed to understand Tim.
Dogs communicate primarily through body language. A hard stare, a stiff posture, a freeze, a lip lift, or a growl aren’t random behaviors. They’re communication. And Buddy had been communicating all along.
The bites weren’t appearing out of nowhere. They were happening at the end of a communication process that Tim couldn’t see, and for the first time, I understood why the treatment exercises weren’t working.
Control-related aggression is often one of the more straightforward forms of aggression to treat. Once we identify the problem, the path forward is usually fairly clear. But Tim wasn’t missing motivation, intelligence, or effort. He was missing information. More specifically, he was missing the ability to consistently recognize the subtle body language signals Buddy was using to communicate.
The mystery was no longer why Buddy was biting. The mystery was why Tim couldn’t see the warnings. And now, for the first time, I finally had the answer. Tim loved Buddy, and Buddy loved Tim. The problem was that Tim couldn’t understand what Buddy was trying to tell him.
Buddy had been communicating for a long time using the language dogs know best: body language. When those signals repeatedly failed to achieve their purpose, he eventually resorted to the dog equivalent of a scream.
He bit.
Of course, there was a reason for the bites. There always is. The good news was that we had finally found the missing piece of the puzzle. The bad news was that Buddy still had a biting problem. But for the first time since the case began, I felt optimistic. The mystery had been unraveled, and once we understood the mystery, the path forward became surprisingly clear.
I realized I couldn’t build a treatment plan that depended on Tim consistently recognizing subtle canine body language in real time. That would’ve been asking him to do something that was inherently difficult for him. Instead, I needed to build a plan around the reality of the situation—a plan that worked for Tim, a plan that worked for Buddy, and a plan that reduced misunderstandings and increased clarity. In short, I needed a Buddy-Tim program.
For weeks, I had been approaching the case as though I was solving a dog problem. In reality, I was solving a communication problem, and those are two very different things. As the weeks passed, Tim began to understand situations that had previously confused him. Buddy became more predictable. The tension in the home began to decrease, and the relationship improved.
Most importantly, there was hope. I remember thinking how unfair the situation had been for both of them. Tim loved Buddy deeply, and Buddy wasn’t trying to hurt Tim for the sake of hurting him. The real tragedy was that neither one understood why the relationship had become so difficult. Now they did, and once they did, progress became possible.
The reason I still think about this case all these years later isn’t because of the aggression. I’ve worked many aggression cases. It’s because of Tim. Despite being highly intelligent, successful, and accomplished, he was willing to admit that something wasn’t working and seek professional guidance. Many people would’ve blamed the dog. Tim didn’t. He wanted to understand what was happening, and that required both humility and courage. Because he wanted to understand, Buddy finally had a chance to be understood too.
And that’s when my job became clear. I wasn’t there to change Buddy. I wasn’t there to change Tim. I was there to create a special Buddy-Tim program designed just for the two of them. And what a privilege it was.
And it worked…I love my job.
Want to learn more?
I’ve created a free video titled Understanding Dog Body Language that walks you through some of the most important canine communication signals every dog owner should know. In 49 minutes, you’ll learn how to recognize common signs of stress, anxiety, discomfort, playfulness, relaxation, etc. in your dog.
Click here to watch Understanding Dog Body Language.
Prefer listening? This post is also available as an episode on the USA Dog Behavior Podcast—don't forget to subscribe while you're there if you haven't already.
© 2026 Scott Sheaffer. All rights reserved. Original content. Reproduction prohibited.
