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Pack Order.......... The Basis of Dog Obedience
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John Thomson
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Joined: 07 Apr 2007
Posts: 4780
Location: Cumbernauld

PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:42 pm    Post subject: Pack Order.......... The Basis of Dog Obedience Reply with quote

Hi,

Dogs are pack animals. If your dog does not view you are the leader of his/her pack then you will have an uphill struggle to get them to obey you.
Most obedience and behavior problems will improve if you enforce strict pack order with your dog.

Have a look at these links

John


NILIF [nothing in life is free]
http://www.k9deb.com/nilif.htm

whos in charge
http://www.cowdogz.com/tips/alpha.html

leerburgs ground work
http://www.leerburg.com/groundwork.htm

how to be a good pack leader
http://www.forpaws.org/articles/alpha.htm

http://www.flyingdogpress.com/leadership.html
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Mary
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Joined: 06 Sep 2007
Posts: 237

PostPosted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 10:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, very interesting John - I have collected a lot of additional things to try.
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Stephanie21
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Joined: 11 May 2008
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 10:04 am    Post subject: pack order re-visted Reply with quote

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this site and I have very much enjoyed looking through the forums.

I have a special interest in this topic. I really believe everyone is entitled to thier own opinions and I thought I would share my own.

I see and hear a lot of people referring to dogs as 'pack' animals. That they should be treated as a pack member within the home.

In my opinion, through researching myself and with other behaviourists, I have come to realise that dogs are not pack animals at all. They are actually technically known as semi-solitary animals.

I will summarise roughly how dogs came from wolves so as everyone has a clearier understanding. Wolves took advantage of human settlement by exploiting the dumps. The dumps were a source of food and also a good nursery for pups. As you can imagine a predator is less likely to attack pups in a human village. Only wolves that had the correct genetic make up were able to use dumps like these. The pups from these wolves inherited this trait i.e. have a greater flight distance that enabled them to get closer to strange things without running away .

As time went on pups started to stay and grow up within the village. The turned into scavengers and rooted around the village for food and shelter. Humans accepted this because it gave them a ready source of meet and they also started to select dogs for various tasks e.g. guarding live stock.

These dogs turned into the village dog we see today in places like Africa. Please look up Pemba village dog.

Basically the dog has now evolved so far from the wolf that they are no longer behaviourally the same. For starters the wolf pack has not got a set hierarchical order anyway. There are the breeding pair and the rest of the pack is made up of their children and grand children. All the wolves help each other out and actually the members that get the best of everything are the pups! The whole point of the pack is to look after the pups and make sure they survive. If you observe wild wolves, which I have, you will see that when a kill has been made the youngest wolves get the best bits. Really a pack order here does not exist in the way many people think.

IF there was a pack order as such then the main point would be to get breeding opportunities. Your dog knows that you are not a dog, so really it is not going to compete to have puppies with you! Smile Also we give our dogs all the resources they require - food, water, shelter etc. So a dog will not need anything to compete over. There are many other reasons for pack order not being correct, but these are the main ones. I hope it has made you reconsider things.

Really all dogs are trying to do is get as many rewards (good things) in a day as possible i.e. attention, food, walks. They are extremely complex emotional creatures and I think it is unfair of us to project this idea of them trying to rule the roost. Yes rank reductions programmes have seen to work, but if you look at it with an open mind I think you will see that the dog's behaviour changes because it no longer gets rewards throughout the day. These programmes dont concentrate on any exact problem but change the dog's like completely. I have seen dogs who have actually become depressed and so resigned that they dont do anything any more.

I hope I have given everyone something to think of.

Thanks for reading!
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Janis
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Joined: 18 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 10:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

makes interesting reading however i still believe in pack order and have done for over 30 years and it has always worked for me!

you are of course entitled to your opinion!
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John Thomson
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 10:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very strange first post Chicco..........most would say hello and tell us a little about themselves.

Hmm.......dog are not pack animals?

Most behavior problems that I see are caused by a lack of pack order.
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Janis
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Joined: 18 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 10:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OH AND HI AND WELCOME!

WHO ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU BASED AND WHAT DOGS DO YOU HAVE?

MY DAUGHTER AND I HAVE TWO COCKAPOOS WHO DOG GENERAL DOG OBEDIENCE AND ONE OF THE DOES AGILITY!
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geri carroll
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i think it is interesting to read other views and will take info that i see as useful for my dogs from any source. i however still believe in pack order-it makes sense and i have seen it working and not working on many ocassions.
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Magz
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Joined: 28 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 10:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Welcome to the forum Chico, Made for very interesting reading, I do agree with some of your points on the wolves but of what i have read and seen on documentaries of wolves there is still a clear defined pack order there is always an alpha male and female and yes they are the only ones who mate but there is also a clear pack structure too which may change in balance from time to time. But as far as I am aware on the food front alpha's always eat first then betas it goes down the pack that way to the omegas.
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kendal
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Joined: 17 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 11:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

hey welcome

im Kendal my mum has already introduced our girls.

can i ask if your user name is your name or one of your dogs, we prefer it if forum members to use there own name,

if you could tell us a wee bit more about yourself that would be great. ie
where are you from?
do you have dogs, What Kind?
how long have you looked into the social behavior of dogs, ?
is it part of a course you are doing. ?

its good to hear other opinions, as something that works for one person may not work of another, but it would have been nice to have given a proper introduction in the 'say hello' forum.

hope to hear more about you soon
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Stephanie21
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 6:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi again everyone,

My name is Stephanie and I have a 2 year old Newfoundland called Luna. Chicco used to be a rabbit I had when I was younger.

I have taken Luna to classes since she was a few months old. I have studied companion animal behaviour for nearly 2 years. I will be fully qualified by November this year Smile

I am not trying to force my opinions down anyone's throat at all. I am very passionate about this subject and after studying it, researching and viewing wolves and learning from some very well known behaviourists I am 100% confident that in our domestic dogs there is no such thing as dominance or pack order.

Yes wolves live in packs, but it is very complicated. The actually pack theory (it has only every been a theory, never proven) came about by a study that was conducted on captive wolves. The main problem with this study is the fact that it was carried out on captive wolves. Captive wolves do not have the same behaviours as feral wolves. In the wild wolves are far less aggressive with each other as wolves are in captivity. This is because packs of wolves in the wild are commonly made up of families and also because they are under far less stress in comparison with captive wolves. For example – if two wolves do not get along then they are able to avoid each other. Whereas, if they were in captivity they would constantly be around each other. Captive wolves are generally more aggressive due to the fact that the pack is all made up of strangers and have no choice but to live together. There is also the fact that at some stage in their life many wolves will leave their natal pack to find a mate in order to start their own pack. This process stops any tension developing within the pack. Captive wolves are not able to do this. As you can see the basis for the theory is actually very flawed.

The other major fact to be taken into consideration is simply that dogs are not wolves. They are dogs and they are far far different from wolves. The dogs you have at home are emotionally equal to that of a juvenile wolf. If you like they have arrested at this point in their development. Even if wolves were dominant and dogs were the same, at this stage of their emotional and physical development they do not have the capacity to assert 'dominance'.

Yet another reason for dogs not to view humans as their pack is that packs are conspecific - dogs do not sees us as dogs and therefore cannot treat us like a pack.

The reason dogs are really not seen as pack animals is because the original dog (the village dog) was and still is a scavenger. They do not hunt together to bring down prey. Wolves do this, but not dogs. Dogs form very loose social packs. If you observe any village dog population you will see that there is not a set pack order. Dogs pretty much mate as and when they want. Whereas only the alpha male and female mate with each other in a wolf pack. As dogs scavenge for food it is pretty much every dog for themself, whereas wolves will work together and from loose social structures with regards to food.

Every behaviour blamed on ‘dominance’ is normal and can be explained by simple motivation and reinforcement. It’s quite simple, dogs want as many good things as they can get. If you saw a £50 note lying in the street would you not pick it up? Why then is a dog helping itself to your dinner “dominant”, when they are scavengers by nature? It’s not a “dominant” dog that takes your food, it’s a normal dog doing what comes naturally to its species.

Once again I hope this has given you food for thought. I would recommend looking at your dog in a different way. Look at it as a animal that has emotions like fear, happiness, sadness, anger etc and how it reacts to these emotions within the house. What does your dog like and enjoy doing and how does it go about seeking these rewards? I think you might be surprised.

A dog that sleeps on your bed enjoys sleeping on your bed. A dog that takes food enjoys eating the food. We do things because we want to and so do dogs Smile
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Emma*
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Stephanie and welcome to the forum Very Happy
I have Lady and Skye 2 Great Danes......your comments make for interesting reading. Thank you for taking the time to post Smile


One question regarding this comment and it is not an attack, just curiosity as to what you think

think wrote:

A dog that sleeps on your bed enjoys sleeping on your bed. A dog that takes food enjoys eating the food. We do things because we want to and so do dogs Smile


What happens when your dog enjoys doing these things and becomes aggressive when you try to stop them or remove them. I.E sleeping on your bed when they are not supposed to be. If say they growled or even snapped at being removed from your bed, Would this not be a dominance issue?
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Stephanie21
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 6:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well like I said look at it from an emotional point of view. The dog is frustrated because it is being told to get off the bed. The dog obviously likes sleeping on the bed, otherwise it wouldnt do it. If you were doing something you really liked and someone kept bugging you to stop it then I am sure you would get angry. Obviously some dogs have a much lower threshold for displaying aggression. What you need to do is look out for body language. The growl in itself is a warning. Safety it the most important thing. Do not keep trying to remove the dog if it growls - it will bite. There could be a couple of issues with this dog. Perhaps it has a guarding issue. Perhaps it simply has a low tolerance of difficult situations, which might indicate a diet related issue i.e. low serotonin levels, or maybe the dog is over confident and easily becomes aggressive when confronted. Without finding out more about the dog and its environment it is impossible to say. But with each issue a behaviour modification programme and can introduced to tackle it. Especially with aggressive does punishment should never be used as this simply makes the problem worse. Positive reinforcement techniques can be used and are extremely effective. Hope this all makes sense Smile
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John Thomson
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 7:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Stephanie21 wrote:

I have taken Luna to classes since she was a few months old. I have studied companion animal behaviour for nearly 2 years. I will be fully qualified by November this year Smile


Thanks for introducing yourself
and thanks for changing your user name..........lots of us meet up on a daily basis to walk our dogs hence the use of 'real ' names

Stephanie21 wrote:
I am 100% confident that in our domestic dogs there is no such thing as dominance or pack order.

Our group walk daily with our 'pack' ( the largest number of off leash dogs together is 34)...we watch pack order and structure unfold in front of us. In our group there is a definite pack structure.........new dogs to the group are left in no doubt who the leaders are


Stephanie21 wrote:
The dogs you have at home are emotionally equal to that of a juvenile wolf. If you like they have arrested at this point in their development. Even if wolves were dominant and dogs were the same, at this stage of their emotional and physical development they do not have the capacity to assert 'dominance'.

Puppies at 8 weeks old are perfectly capable of being dominant......the dominant one will rule with aggression and brute strength..............


Stephanie21 wrote:

A dog that sleeps on your bed enjoys sleeping on your bed. A dog that takes food enjoys eating the food. We do things because we want to and so do dogs Smile


I disagree 100% with this............dogs do these things to elevate themselves in the pack....not because they want to.

you will find many owners here who have been on the verge of giving up with their dogs.........but after applying pack order their previous monsters who refused to have any boundaries or limitations the dog settles down and accepts its new rank in the pack.

We have a couple of 'companion' dog training classes in the area........on the first page of the website it clearly states that "only sociable well adjusted dogs will be allowed into classes" ,in fact we have several dogs, now happy and well adjusted, who were refuse entry into companion dog classes because of their behavioral problems.
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Janis
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Joined: 18 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I AM SORRY STEPHANIE BUT I DON'T AGREE WITH ANY OF YOUR VIEWS AND IN MY OPINION YOU HAVE WASTED 2 YEARS AND BEEN BRAINWASHED!......OF WHICH YOU ARE ENTITLED!

SHOULD A DOG GROWL OR SNARL AT ME WHEN IN A POSITION WHERE IT SHOULDN'T BE ,(BED OR COUCH), I WILL PERSIST AND LET THEM KNOW THAT I AM BOSS/PACK LEADER.

IT WORKS FOR ME ALWAYS HAS DONE AND ALWAYS WILL DO...............SO FORGIVE ME BUT I REALLY WON'T BE READING ANY MORE OF YOUR POSTS!
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Allan Campbell
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PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

where exactly are you studying this stephanie ?.. I'm interested t o know exactly who is teaching this drivel after many years of dog behavior and study of my own ... names places etc would be good to have a contact detail
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