My view on Dog Training
In my opinion human and dog should always be team. Just think of all those great human-dog teams out there in the world, may it a Law Enforcement K9 Team, a Search&Rescue K9 Team, a Shepherd and his herding dog or a visually impaired person with a guide dog, they are all great teams!
But how does one become such a great team? Through clear communication! Unfortunately we have to face the fact that humans and dogs are two absolutely different species with no mutual language. Dogs talk to each other mainly through body language and facial expressions whereas humans use words and verbal expressions. |
Side note: Wolves have around 60 different facial expressions, a German Shepherd has only 12!!! Scientist believe that with the loss of so many facial expressions dogs developed barking to communicate with each other in certain situations since Wolves don't bark.
- D.U.Feddersen-Peterssen, "Hundepsychologie" |
I know , I know, many will say now that they communicate and talk all day long with their dog and that their dog understands them but honestly we all sound just like the teacher of the Peanuts to our dogs except the little bit of vocabulary we have taught them.
Confronted with these communication issues and no one on both sides understands what the other one is trying say many dog-human relationships suffer and the dog kind of goes his own way and does what his genetic blueprint tells him to do. Very often these decisions by the dog are on a direct collision course with our human world. Dogs live in the now, they don't chew over what happened yesterday, this morning, an hour ago and for sure not about what the two-legged one just said! Since it was our decision to bring this dog into our house and daily lives, we are responsible for a clear, fair communication. So how in the world can we communicate with our dog if he doesn't understand our language? We take a leaf out of mother nature's book, more specific, we copycat a bit the pack behavior of wolf families in the wild because that is a language our dog understands.
In a family pack of wolves in the wilderness, it is always the parents who make the decisions. The mother chooses the den to whelp her young and the father decides which prey to hunt -sounds a bit familiar, right- and they are still very loving but also strict and fair parents. They would never allow any big brawl among their pups but they let them explore different things and test their boundaries so the pups can make their own experiences. If the situation requires it, they correct their young by using their mouth in a fair and well timed way to let them know what is right and what is wrong.
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Side note: Wolf parents let their young get away with a lot of things only until they are about 6 weeks old, then they begin to show the little ones that life is serious and that everything has it's limits and they have to respect those limits.
-G.Bloch, "Der Wolf im Hundepelz" |
The parents feed their young, protect them, and make sure they get the best possible guidance to get along in the life in the wild until the young wolves are 2-3 years old and ready to start their own family pack. When we bring a dog into our house, we take on these duties to guide our dogs through the human world and protect them, this also means that we show them and let them know when they do something right but we also correct them when they do something wrong. Dogs need this guidance so they know how to fit in and do their part of the Team.