Category: Common Problems ¤
  Author: Shirley Chong ¤
   Title: Dog and Human Relationship ¤

   Carol Whitney wrote a very interesting response to Margie English's
post. The part I want to address is where Carol says that she avoids the
whole wolf-pack analogy and pack leader stuff.
   Until I started dealing with a lot of people who were having problems
with their dogs, I could see some merit and a lot of what looked to me
like mistakes about the whole pack theory thing. I could see my dogs
doing things and interacting in ways with me that they didn't direct
towards other dogs. I said (and still say) that if a dog is too stupid
not to have noticed that I'm not a dog, he has more problems than a
scruff shake or an alpha wolf rollover (which I never liked) can fix.
   In those days, I felt like I broke all the rules--my dogs sleep on
the bed, they precede me out of doors and down stairs, they get fed from
my dinner plate, and some of them (I won't name names, but there is only
one member of royalty living here) make incredible noises at me. And my
dogs were always (relatively) cooperative, do what I want, cover up
beautifully for Mom's lack of training skills, and were generally easy
to live with. Margie is actually the one who gave me the first clue (as
in so many things!): my fundamental relationship with my dogs is fine,
so I can let my dogs do all the stuff that people are told not to
do--because if it's important to me for them to get off the bed, they do
so and they do it promptly without quibbling (well, okay, the Belgian
Princess sometimes does a little complaining about the unfairness of
life and me in particular--but I have always noticed that she does it
while RAPIDLY exiting the bed).
   Then I got another clue, from a friend who doesn't even own dogs--he
does the next best thing to dog training, teaches junior high school
science. <LOL> Without being a dog trainer OR having any knowledge of
clicker training (he says his rat ended the semester as naive as it
started but a whole lot fatter), he uses OC very successfully in the
classroom. So successfully that in his second year of teaching, he won a
statewide award--the first time a teacher with such little experience
had ever been nominated, let alone won. His observation to me was that
by the time a kid gets to his classroom, they've spent a minimum of
seven years observing teacher behaviour. They are EXPERTS at assessing
their teachers. 
   Well, isn't that true of dogs? They don't have to go out to work,
they don't have to drive anyone to soccer practice or go to church. The
thing they have the time to do is observe their humans. I've come to
appreciate the extreme subtlety and delicacy by which the vast majority
of dogs send out little feelers and testers to new people, reach a
conclusion, and act on it, without the human even noticing.
   So, what does this have to do with anything else? I think that for
one thing, a lot of what I do and did with my dogs is below the
conscious level. For instance, my dogs do not wake me up without a damn
good reason (imminent diarrhea or someone breaking into the house). I
have no idea what I would do if a dog woke me up without a good reason,
but I know it would not be pretty and it would definitely not have
anything to do with clicker training! How did I teach my dogs this? I
haven't the faintest idea. Once they can hold it through the night, they
just do. They don't wake me up, I don't have to come up with some
special strategy when Daylight Savings Time ends in the fall--if I
choose to sleep in another couple hours, they let me. 
   I don't need to use limits that feel artificial to me because I have
no problem at all with being the Queen and Chief Spoilt Being of the
household. My general rule for the dogs is simple: don't do anything
that bothers me and don't keep doing something if I let you know it
bothers me. Every dog I've owned and every dog I've fostered just goes
along with this--no questions.
   Well, I've learned that not everyone can do this. For the people who
can't, letting the dog sleep on the bed leads to dog who threatens
bodily harm if they roll over in the night. Feeding the dog a snack off
their dinner plate leads to a dog that decides who gets to come into the
house and under what conditions. For these people, it really helps to
give them a set of rules which makes sense to the dog.
   I still think that dogs (the vast majority of them, anyway) have
figured out that humans aren't dogs. They figured it out the first time
we walked by the street sign and didn't check the pee-mail, if not
sooner. I don't think that dogs respond to the methods based on dog or
wolf pack interaction because they think we're dogs. I think it works
because it suggests to the dog a relatively clearcut course of action.
   I think that people who have problems with their relationship with
their dog are often giving off mixed messages (by anyone's standards,
not just a dog's frame of reference). They tell the dog yes, no, maybe
and they say it all at once. The dog can't figure out how to respond at
all, so they wing it. For most of those dogs, finally having the humans
acting somewhat coherently is a great relief.
   Or maybe I'm just up too late. <G>

M. Shirley Chong
The Well Mannered Dog