TALES OF TWO SPECIES

In some cases, no amount of training, conditioning and skill can make up for an outside environment that clashes with the inside of a dog. That’s why finding the right home for a dog whom you love doesn’t have to be betrayal, and neither is it necessarily a failure

But re-homing a dog whose needs you can’t provide for isn’t abusive, it’s generous and kind

Often, people who should know better focus exclusively on structure and physical health and ignore behavioral tendencies that can come back to bite them in future litters. In this case, I mean that literally. Our fascination with looks is so strong that it deserves its own essay (it seems that our focus on attractiveness is heritable as well!) and it’s not always a bad thing. But we desperately need to reinforce breeders who do breed for good dispositions, and we need to educate dog owners to make choices based not just on looks and overall physical health, but also on behavior.

Ethology is no more about “getting dominance over your dog” than psychology is about using electric shock to influence behavior. Both scientific perspectives provide us with a rich and textured foundation that informs academics and dog-lovers alike. From understanding subtle visual signals that tell us when our dogs are anxious to knowing when to reinforce our dog’s behavior and when to withhold a food treat, ethology and psychology can work hand-in-hand to help us improve our relationships with our dogs. Neither advocate using force or physical punishment as the primary method of training dogs.

Social status is but one of many factors that influence an animal’s behavior, and it only relates to an animal’s behavior in specific circumstances. It’s relevant, I would argue, when dogs are greeting one another, when they are in potential conflict over who gets the bone or who goes out the door first, but it’s irrelevant when a dog is deciding to come (or not) when called. High status wolves don’t bark out a COME! command to subordinates, and they don’t punish young pups for “disobedience” if they don’t do a perfect recall when asked. Status just isn’t relevant in most social interactions

People who argue that ethology supports “getting dominance over your dog” are not only focused on an issue more relevant 50 years ago than today, they are misrepresenting the findings of early researchers on social hierarchy

This most often happens when people with no academic background cite ethology as a justification for “getting dominance over your dog” as a way of solving all behavioral problems. To the collective amazement of many of us in the behavior and training field, methods emphasizing this perspective have recently cropped up again in this country. Does your dog not come when called? Does he urinate on the carpet? Well, then, we’re told, that’s because you haven’t established a clear pack hierarchy.

And so, I return to my earlier statements, “dogs are wolves” and “dogs aren’t wolves,” and the fact that they are equally true. Perhaps one way to look at it is that dogs are baby wolves who have adapted to living with us in our world, and wolves are wild animals who can adapt to letting humans live in theirs

But it’s not just size and structure that’s variable in our domestic dogs, it’s also behavior and temperament. The importance of who’s who in the hierarchy varies tremendously from dog to dog, as do, for example, interests in herding sheep or retrieving game birds.

Many people equate dominance with force and aggression. Being the dominant individual of the group, or being the one with the most social freedom, is a way to avoid aggression, not an excuse to use it. Social status can be obtained with or without force