Anyone care to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding a correction which'll result in a bite?

Is this invidivually subjective? Or could one illicit such a response in most any given working-line dog provided the correction is unfair enough?

What does it mean anyway? What's the main culprit? Are we talking inappropriate timing, severity or both?

I suppose many of ye take such semantics as "unfair" for granted, but I'm just getting into this...so...be patient.

The question comes as a response to the training caveat which seems to come with malinois.

Steven,

I am actually writing on aggression in dogs now. Aggression is a complicated and not so easy to define.

Yet, it is individually subjective and handler aggression often has inappropriate timing and/or severity issues that cause it.

Later the dog becomes even more ‘sharp’ because of conditioning if he feels (his perception) his previous response caused whatever triggered the reaction to change in his favor. Note it is his perception.

One of the topics I talk about is dealing with aggression. I work extensively on the topic and am referred by veterinarians quite often about this topic.

An interesting side bar is how many deal with aggression. Many methods might win the battle between the dog and handler but not the war.

I will post more as I write on this over the next few days because I think it will be useful for some and since I am on this topic for my clients I might as well post it.

I think this is a tough one to address without talking about a specific circumstance. There could be a number of reasons why a dog would bite from an "unfair" correction. It depends on the dog and the circumstance.
I would just try to keep the corrections fair. Only correct for a mistake if the dog understands the command and is intentionally srewing up.
If this is happening with fair corrections then you have a different story.

Dogs don't rate things as fair or unfair. They bite for many different reasons - pain-induced cuz of the pain from the correction; fear motivated (in other words, self-defense); dominance (viewing the handler as lower in status and being unwilling to accept his challenge). You can't elicit handler aggression in all dogs - some simply submit and accept whatever you dish out. Poor timing only indirectly causes the aggression, not cuz the dog sees it as "unfair" but because of one of the above motivations. If he gets corrected when he thought he was correct, he may become afraid cuz he no longer knows how to avoid the pain. Frustration can also cause handler aggression; block the dog from his goal repeatedly, with or without force and some dogs will frustrate sufficiently to vent into the handler. Not necessarily dominance, just frustration. And then there are those have learned the behavior - they showed handler aggression one time and it was very successful for them (backed the handler off, allowed him to achieve his goal), and so they utlize that behavior again in the future even when none of the above motivations are strongly present anymore.