Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
Would it be possible to use "лаются" and "кусаются" in this context to emphasize that you're talking about a general tendency? As in Собака кусает меня за руку ("The dog is biting my hand") vs. Осторожно, эта собака кусается ("Beware, this dog has a habit of biting").
Кусаются is OK here, but лаются is not. You can make reflexive only of transitive verbs, i.e. verbs that can have direct objects. In Russian direct objects are those in Accusative. You can not say лаять кого-то (and then лаять себя = лаяться), correct is лаять на кого-то.

There is another colloquial\vernacular meaning of лаять (to abuse). In this sense it is transitive verb and so лаяться means "to abuse each other" = to quarrel or "to abuse as a general tendency" in vernacular.