When the court asked whether one can read a dog’s mind to anticipate a bite, it rightly observed that prevention is better than cure. We agree. However, prevention must be scientific, not reactive. Knee-jerk responses driven by fear or assumption often aggravate the very risks they claim to address.
No, we cannot read a dog’s mind — just as we cannot read a human’s. But conflict is not prevented by mind reading. Whether it involves pet dogs, free-living dogs, wild animals, or even conflicts among humans, prevention works by understanding the conditions that create risk and systematically reducing those conditions. That is what prevention actually means.
Dogs Do Not Bite Without Context
Unlike humans, dogs do not act out of malice or hidden intent. Decades of behavioural science show that defensive behaviours such as biting occur in specific, identifiable situations, not at random.
The most common conditions associated with bite incidents include:
- Resource insecurity (hunger or competition for food)
- Health issues (pain, injury, disease)
- Chronic stress or dysregulation
- Fear-based defensive responses
- A history of abuse or repeated negative interactions with humans
These factors are observable, predictable, and manageable. Importantly, they arise from environmental and social conditions, not from any inherent aggression in free-living dogs.
What Prevention Actually Looks Like
Because dog behaviour is context-driven, prevention focuses on modifying conditions, not removing animals.
For free-living dogs, simple, evidence-based measures can significantly reduce stress and conflict:
- Ensure resource abundance through regular feeding
- Feed in quiet, predictable locations
- Sterilise dogs to reduce hormonal stress and dysregulation
- Provide resting spaces (gunny sacks, rags, bori beds) away from heavy footfall
- Prevent and discourage animal abuse
- Feed in small, dispersed groups to reduce competition
- Provide medical care when dogs are injured or unwell
- Vaccinate to prevent disease-related behavioural changes
- Gradual socialisation for dogs with a history of trauma
- Promote safe human practices, such as avoiding animals that are eating, sleeping, unwell, or lactating mothers.
Vehicle Chasing Is Predictable — and Preventable
Dogs chasing vehicles is often cited as evidence of aggression, but this behaviour usually arises from two well-understood causes:
- Defensive learning, where dogs associate vehicles with past harm either to themselves or to other dogs. Dogs are social learners and learn by observation.
- Territorial response, as dogs evolved alongside humans as community sentinels and fast movement is often associated with theft or burglary.
Effective prevention includes:
- Feeding dogs away from roads
- Providing resting areas away from vehicular movement
- Installing speed bumps and traffic-calming measures, improving safety for pedestrians and children
- Scheduling at least one night-time meal to promote rest
- Educating public to drive slower in residential areas with community animals, pedestrians and children
A well-fed, well-rested dog is far less likely to display restless or defensive behaviour.
Why Removal Makes Things Worse
Removing dogs does not prevent conflict; it amplifies it.
During catching operations, it is usually the friendlier, more social dogs who are caught first. The dogs left behind are more fearful and often witness violence, learning to associate humans with danger. Dogs are social learners.
Removal also triggers the rebound effect. Evidence shows that vacated territories are soon occupied by new dogs — typically unvaccinated, unsocialised, and often higher in number — increasing stress, instability, competition and confusion among the new dogs and thus, bite risk.
Discouraging feeding or forcing many dogs to feed at a single location similarly increases competition and dysregulation. Hunger does not create safety. Stability does.
A Clarifying Comparison: Responsibility Without Mind Reading
A useful comparative example helps clarify what scientific prevention looks like. In Nepal, accidents involving animals on roads are not assessed by asking whether an animal “suddenly appeared.” Instead, authorities examine human responsibility.
Courts and traffic departments assess speed, braking distance, lane discipline, visibility, and vehicle control. If even one of these standards is violated, responsibility rests with the driver. The mere presence of a dog, cow, or cat on the road does not absolve a motorist of liability.
The principle is simple: drivers are required to anticipate foreseeable obstacles, including animals. Prevention lies in responsible behaviour and system design — not in removing animals from shared spaces.
Why Feeding and Rest Reduce Conflict
A dog with a full belly is not restless. Adequate nutrition promotes sleep, and sleep supports nervous system regulation. Dogs require 12–16 hours of sleep per day and are crepuscular, meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk (Coppinger & Coppinger, 2001).
As ethologist Raymond Coppinger observed, while wolves evolved to travel long distances in search of prey, dogs evolved to stay in one place and wait for food to arrive. Dogs are not predators; they are preferential scavengers and opportunistic beggars.
Providing them food and places to rest helps reduce restlessness, decompress from stressful situations and calms them down, thus decreasing bite risk. A safe spot to sleep in at night, reduces night-time barking and chasing of vehicles. Food and rest are simple, yet powerful tools in reducing conflict, increasing safety and comfort for the people co-existing with dogs in the community.
By occupying neighbourhoods, free-living dogs also compete with other scavengers such as rodents, indirectly contributing to public hygiene and disease control.
Prevention Through Understanding, Not Fear
Preventing dog bites does not require reading minds. It requires understanding behaviour.
When policy responds with fear, removal, or punishment, it destabilises environments and increases risk. When it responds with vaccination, sterilisation, education, feeding routines, rest, and humane coexistence, it reduces conflict.
Stable, healthy, and socially integrated dog populations are safer populations — for humans and animals alike.
Prevention is indeed better than cure. But only when prevention is rooted in evidence, not assumption. Understanding dog behaviour helps us not only prevent conflict, but also utilise their services to the betterment of the community.
About The Authors
Sindhoor is a canine behaviour consultant, a canine myotherapist, an anthrozoologist and an engineer by qualification. She researches free living dogs in Bangalore, India. She has presented her findings at major international conferences in the US, UK and has conducted seminars in Europe, UK and South America. She has been invited as an expert on several podcasts, including a few on NPR radio. She maintained a weekly column on dog behaviour, in The Bangalore Mirror for two years. She is a TEDx speaker, the author of the book, Dog Knows. National Geographic calls hers a ‘Genius Mind’ in the bookazine, Genius of Dogs. She is currently the principal and director of BHARCS. BHARCS offers a unique, UK-accredited level 4 diploma on canine biosociopsychology and applied ethology.
References
- Bhadra, A., et al. (2016). Free-ranging dogs are capable of social learning and human cue recognition. Scientific Reports.
- Bonanni, R., et al. (2011). Effects of human disturbance on the social behaviour of free-ranging dogs. Behavioural Ecology.
- Coppinger, R., & Coppinger, L. (2001). Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution. University of Chicago Press.
- Hiby, E. (2013). Dog population management. In Dogs, Zoonoses and Public Health. CAB International.
- Overall, K. L. (2013). Manual of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Dogs and Cats. Elsevier.
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