Dog training
I expect my dogs to be well behaved.
My responsibility for supporting their good behaviour is founded in three areas of responsibility:-
1) My responsibility as master to orchestrate good behaviour through a respect and willingness to obey what I present as important for our wellbeing. Working as a well-disciplined team brings the pack good results in terms of their daily wellbeing, i.e. establishing a safe home territory, hunting for food, protection against adverse aggression form intruders and predators.
2) My responsibility to provide a suitable natural diet that will promote good health within their physical body. Good food – good health – good behaviour and social integration.
3) My responsibility to the wellbeing of those they meet and relate to as part of their daily living. A well-disciplined pack under good leadership is unlikely to cause undue stress and/or harm to the natural life or those around them. Well-disciplined dogs are also unlikely to stimulate excessive conflict with potential competitors and predators.
MY story
At the age of five my parents moved from suburban Surrey to a quiet village in Hertfordshire. My mother with the help of a local breeder bought a pair of German Shepherds pups that were carefully chosen as a breeding pair of showing standard. When fully grown the dog Rob Roy was a truly magnificent, predominantly black dog with excellent showing potential. To go with his outstanding looks he was also very intelligent and exceptionally strong willed! Indeed so determined by nature that no-one except my mother, not even my father could actually manage any sort of control over his headstrong behaviour when he was outside of our six foot fenced garden. The bitch, Jenny, in contrast to Rob Roy, was so easy going that she always tried to obey but often struggled to understand what we were trying to teach her to do. So as child I concentrated on training Rob Roy and gained the reward of his loyalty companionship. When I was nine years old my mother let me take Rob out with me whenever I wanted to roam over the local country side near our home. Being a particularly small and slight young nine year old motivated me to be very strict with Rob’s training because otherwise his size and strength would have left me unable to monitor his behaviour successfully. He had already pinned the builder against the house wall and it was important that Rob did not take on the role of protecting me unnecessarily when we were out in public. [Just having him along side of me was enough to keep me safe when out on my own at such a young age.] On one occasion I was walking down the pavement not far from our house when a cat ran out across the road. Rob immediately went off in hot pursuit and being on a lead I was dragged at great speed behind him. He was getting closer and closer to the running cat as it ran out across the road. Realising that I had lost control, I was determined to make Rob obey my commands. As we flew past a lamp post I swung around it so that the lead became wrapped around the post and Rob was abruptly jerked to an immediate halt. He never again chased any animal while out with me and from then on he had a new level of respect for my authority over his behaviour; I was now acknowledged as his alpha pack leader.
Leadership issues are key to dog behaviour.
As a puppy the young dog is obedient to its mother who provides milk, warmth and protection. A mother dog can instruct the pups to stay safely hidden in the den even while she goes out to find water and food. Initially the mother will test the pup’s obedience by waiting outside for a while to see if any pup followed her out. If it did she would immediately carry it back into the den and reinstate her command that the pups must stay there until she got back. When the pups are too big to be carried they will be severely reprimand such that they run back into the den and do not dare to move until the mother returns.
Even a young wild dog learns to obey the pack leader. Only one bitch is allowed to breed, and she will be the only mate to the alpha male – pack leader. The pack leader takes responsibility for: good social disciplines within the members of the pack as well as protection from other packs and predatory animals. The pack leader expects and orchestrates that every dog is obedient to his instructions. If the pack leader dies the social structure and the survival of the group’s team work collapses. Each individual dog feels alone and no longer has a sense of wellbeing or safety. In order to rectify this state of vulnerability each dog does its best to take up the responsibilities normally held by the pack leader. Even the weakest will feel that they must try to take up the leader role in order to ensure the survival of the pack as a whole. Thus, in time the strongest of the dogs will become apparent and he will take up the role and responsibilities as the new pack leader.
We as humans give our pet dogs the highest degree of love and protection but we often fail to give them the sense of security and safety offered by a specifically identified pack leader (master). A dog’s master takes on the overall responsibility for their worldly wellbeing and protection. Dogs with a human family as their social pack structure may be given an enormous amount of love and physical care but if someone does not actively take up the role of pack leader, the dog will feel s/he must fill the space him/herself. Thus even a dog with an unsuitable: nervous, timid or weak disposition will attempt to take up the role of pack leader as best they can.
If a nervous, timid or weak dog with an unsuitable leadership temperament tries to take up the role of leader they are prone to unnatural defensive and often adverse responses to the other dogs and the whole of the pack is thereby stressed and confused. The resulting chaos causes the pack to fail to maintain successful survival and protection for the individual members, especially the very young and the old.
If we as human dog owners/carers want to truly love our dogs we must provide them with security of a responsible and strong human pack leader. If we do this well, it releases the dog/s from leadership responsibilities and they relax into enjoying a simple life confident that obedience to their pack leader will provide optimum safety, care, and protection within the complexities of our overcrowded human society.
Any dog left without a human pack leader will take up the responsibilities for him/herself, as best they can. Sadly many dog owners may initially see the dog’s protective and aggressive behaviour as an appealing illustration of their love for the human family members. Thus anti-social and potentially dangerous behaviour is rewarded and the dog feels obligated to take up the leadership role more and more strongly. Notably the dog’s protective behaviour escalates until the complexities of our human society label the dog as an unsuitable/dangerous family companion. Consequently the dog is rejected by the family and confined or abandoned or put to sleep!
| The famous dog trainer Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, has dedicated his working life to helping dogs and their owners who have got caught up in these strong issues related to an absence of appropriate pack leadership. In his work he focuses on re-educating the owners with successful techniques for establishing and maintaining an appropriate leadership position within the dog’s everyday life. Ceser also works to release the dog from his responsibility as leader of his human family (pack). For most dogs the leadership role is taken up from a disposition of desperation and insecurity. They are feeling they must take on the position of pack leader because it is left vacant and this seems more unsafe than trying to do the job as best they can for themselves. If a dog is not of a natural born leader disposition his efforts may be little better than not having any leader at all. However, a dog that has a leadership disposition may compete with the human master for the alpha leader position especially when the human master has poor leadership skills and fails to take on the position of authority required as pack leader. [How to raise the PERFECT DOG and Cesar’s Way by Cesar Millan.] |
In wild dogs the qualities that initiate a good pack leader are born to only a few pups within each generation. The wild dog does not learn to become the alpha pack leader or earn her position as his mate – the alpha breeding bitch. These qualities are predestined in their inborn personality and physical strength. Dogs without this inborn leader (alpha) disposition do not make good leaders because they tend to either over react or miss important circumstantial clues. Also they may fail to respond until the situation has reached critical levels of stress and/or danger.
Good leadership has a quality of authenticity and unique presentation. This authenticity will prevent preconceived formulas of behaviour that become dogmatic and narrow. The qualities of good leadership can embrace a situation from the best perspective rather than as a ridged formulated structure of control.
Dogs can be great as family pets but we must be careful to look after their needs as priority above our own if the relationship is to be truly beneficial to all concerned.
The dynamics associated with the leadership role between man and his dog can give a simple illustration the complexity of issues faced by families that do not have a suitable father figure as head of the family or the complimentary care and discipline presented by the natural mother. Sadly family disruptions can create issues related to feeling unloved and many pets especially dogs are looked upon to give their owners compensatory comforts. The dog’s natural loyalty to the pack is equated to human love and devotion. This delusion has supported the dog breeding industry and the popular inclusion of dogs as part of the family. Fortunately most pet dogs enter their new human family as a young puppy. Thus the puppy will attach itself to one of the humans as a substitute mother. Fortunately this substitution automatically gives this person a lifelong position over the young pup as its alpha female; i.e. the pup retains a lifelong and unquestioned desire to please and obey its human foster mother.
In wild dogs the alpha female (only mate to the alpha male dog) is mother to all the younger pack members and this automatically instates her with unquestioned authority over all the dogs that are born into the pack. This leadership and control gives the alpha bitch an especially powerful and unchallenged communication of discipline with all the young dogs born into the pack. When out hunting the male and female alpha pair often split the pack into two groups so that they can work from different directions to corner their prey. Once the prey has been killed all the subordinate pack dogs wait until the leading pair have finished eating and left the carcass free for the other dogs to finish. The authority of the alpha bitch is unquestioned even by the biggest and strongest pack members because they have already learnt as pups not to try and take milk or food from their mother without her permission. As the only breeding bitch the alpha bitch would normally have two litters every year of her life, she needs her position of leadership and control over the other dogs in order to get enough food to meet the care of herself and her pups.
An example of this level of control was witnessed by the author as follows……
| A wild dog came to our area and managed to mate my elderly German Shepherd, my friends young retriever after her first season and a bitch living on the farm next door. All three bitches produced a litter of pups on the very same day. Our two dogs had 17 pups in total and many children and their adults came to play with the puppies then living in our farm kitchen and sleeping in front of the Rayburn. Ten weeks later we were desperate to find homes for the pups. However, when a lovely young couple came to choose a Shepherd pup, their mother Jesse was not willing to let them see her puppies. When Jesse was not allowed to stop the couple from entering the kitchen, she somehow told her pups to return to their bed, every one of her nine pups remain attentively sitting there without moving….. while Jesse kept guard over the unwanted visitors. The retriever pups wandered around the kitchen in a state of quiet bewilderment. I was astounded to see this outstanding illustration of a mother dog’s authority over her pups’ behaviour; all the German Shepherd pups were on the bed in front of the Rayburn until the visitors left and their mother returned to release them from the discipline she had subtlety enforced upon them. Jesse was a rescue GSD with a dramatically stressful first two years. It had taken a considerable amount of time and patience trains her out of her excessive over protective alpha (pack leader) behaviour. |
Books
125 True Stories of Amazing Animals pub by National Geographic Kids)
The Divinity of Dogs by Jennifer Skiff pub by Hay House, 2012
Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson; Vintage Books
How to raise the PERFECT DOG and Cesar’s Way by Cesar Millan.