this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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What I don't get are the dogs that like people but are are aggressive towards other dogs. They're not always angry, but they do just hate all other members of their own species?
I am gong to make a broad, sweeping statement that will ignore lots of individual cases.
Main reason is Improper Socialisation. Those dogs have learned to understand and trust humans but had limited, and in the cases where they quickly get aggressive, often negative contact to other dogs.
They have lived their whole life with humans. Humans are safe, predictable and understandable. They learned to read humans. This is in fact the main trait we bred dogs for this last ca. 40.000 years.
But because they have not really learned to interact with other dogs they get insecure, because these unpredictable things are running around. They are sometimes loud, oftentimes hectic. This insecurity can then change to aggression if the dogs see no other way out of the situation.
I am ignoring personality right now, as individual dogs will react differently under the same circumstances, but the first reaction of most dogs will be to get out of a perceived threat. First by signaling via posture, eyes, ears and tail then by running or warning it of. It takes a lot of training, known or unknown by the owner, to get a dog to the point where it reacts violently as a first choice.
My dog is very aggressive/reactive to other dogs.
We got her when she was just a few weeks shy of a year old, from a family friend who rescued her from some random guy on Facebook who basically said "someone come take this dog or I'm gonna put her down"
I don't know much about that first guy except that he was obviously a piece of shit. He was also at least pretty neglectful, she has a pretty low maintenance coat, occasional brushing is about all she needs, but apparently she was filthy and her fur was even a little matted when they rescued her. I also suspect he was kind of abusive, because for a while she was kind of afraid of people holding broomsticks, fishing rods, etc. and I can't think of any good reason for that except that he hit her with something.
Again, she was still a puppy, less than a year old.
So needless to say she probably didn't get any kind of socialization with him.
The people we got her from kind of suspect that he got her as payment for a drug deal or something along those lines.
She's a very high-energy and intelligent breed (a malinois, she's actually pretty lazy for her breed, but that still makes her more energetic than just about any other dog I've ever met) very driven, incredibly mouthy (we've long since trained it out of her, but I can tell that she still sometimes wants to bite me in a playful way)
The people we got her from are very nice, but already had 2 kids, 2 dogs, and a couple cats, not a very big house, and no experience with this sort of high-energy breed, and I am certain that she was an absolute terror.
But things went pretty much fine for a while, she got along with their dogs and even their cats, they thought about keeping her for themselves
But then she started getting into fights with their one other dog. She was getting into sort of her adolescent phase, pushing boundaries, trying to assert dominance, and probably just being a crazy little crackhead.
So she ended up getting bitten pretty badly by their other dog (and maybe kind of deserved it)
And since then she just hasn't been good with other dogs. We've gotten her to a point where she can more-or-less ignore a couple familiar dogs around the neighborhood, but I doubt she'll ever be at a point where she'll ever be friendly with other dogs.
She's been bitten, she doesn't want to get bitten again, and her breed is pretty much all-fight no-flight (as in fleeing, watch a couple videos of military/police malinois jumping out of helicopters and shit and you'll see they clearly don't have a problem with flying, and their jumping game is probably about as close to flight as any dog can manage on their own,) so in her mind the way to stay safe is basically to go on the offensive and get the other dogs before they can get her.
Better early socialization and more experienced owners who knew how to manage her energy and instincts better in that first year or so of her life probably would have made a huge difference for her.
It also doesn't help that she was a covid puppy, not easy to get proper socialization when your humans are stuck quarantining at home.
She loves people though, she rolls over for belly rubs from just about anyone, cuddles right up next to me in bed, and while she does get a bit uncomfortable in bigger crowds, she always wants to at least be near where the people are. I remember taking her on a camping trip with a few friends, some she knew, others she didn't, and she wasn't sure what to make of all of these people hanging out in the same place, so she didn't really insert herself into the group, but she definitely sat nearby watching us, and anytime someone broke off to go to the bathroom, get something from their tent, grab a drink, etc. she was right there with them
We have a very reactive pup and have had a couple sessions with a dog trainer to help us curb that reactivity. She taught us some neat methods to redirect his attention and eventually get him to a point where we treat him (with very high value treats) when he sees another dog and then lets us redirect him.
Over time he’s learning that the emotion he should feel when he sees another dog is excitement! It’s slowly working.