“Awww! look how he defends his toy!”
Why is this animal growling at a member of the houshold and then some? Because the dumb custom that pets are just like family members so people be;ieve stuff like this is just quirks like anybody else in the family would have and need to be respected.
That is dangerously wrong
Dogs are not gather in families, they belong to packs which have a strick order. Dogs have trained and maintained as the last ones in the chain of command and make them understand that even a newborn baby of the house outranks them in the pack. Anything less than that and somebody in your household ends up with a visit to the ER and the pooch euthanized.
Wer had big dogs, actually the smalle of the lot were the dobbermans. All of them were trained and accepted to be the borttom of our little pack and did great. We were never mean, with them and we played with them plenty, but we never traded our pack superiority by misunderstanding as just cute pets.
One of the things I trained them on was to remove food from them when they were eating. This came as a hard experince when one of our first dog died because he latched on a poisoned possum and we coud not remove the animal from his jaws. As you can imagine, they wer not very happy initially and a couple of them bared teeth which was corrected with a slap to the snout and the appropiate LOUD commands and threats. Not the Dog Whisperer way? Sure, but got the idea quick and the few times that they ever growled at human of the pack, a simple “what was that?” in a stern tone of voice would refresh what the consequences would be.
Trating dogs like babies is harmful for them and for your family. You can be as loving as you want, but be the Alpha of your pack.
Whoever posted this as if it were a command to protect the toy needs to also demonstrate the opposite behavior if it truly were trained.
In contrast, a defensively trained dog demonstration I saw set in a living room with a dog watching from his bed and owner stood in the opposite corner. A man in a bite suit paced the room back and forth repeatedly snapping a reed stick against furniture while yelling at the owner.
Only when the owner gave command did the dog spring into action and pull the man to the ground.
Even one tiny growl in that situation needs immediate correction. That’s some major resource guarding and the idiots are encouraging it.
My last dog growled at me twice. Once as a pup when he had just been hit by a car and I quickly reached for him, and once as a super old dog while half deaf and blind.
That dobe is warning, next are snapping at air, next making contact with teeth, then doing so with increasing power / severity
There’s a great deal of misunderstanding about the role of the “Omega” in a canine pack; Omega wolves, dogs, and other social animals are subordinate to all others in their community, and are expected by the group to remain submissive to everyone, but they are not ostracized or abused by their community.
They have a role in the functioning of the pack, often being the first to initiate play (which is usually also a hunting training activity for the young), the first to initiate social bonding (like communal grooming or cuddling), and generally act as a sort of “court jester.” Solving in-group social conflicts by cheering everyone up… and if the community or a member of it comes into conflict with an external threat, the Omega fights just as hard as the Alpha to defend the pack. The Omega is quite often one of (if not the) largest, strongest, and most healthy member of the community. Almost always the least stressed as well.
This is exactly the behavior one wants to see in a family pet. You want your dog to be an Omega and be happy about it.
The dog is a trained competitive dog and the handler is showing off the “guard” command for French Ring.
This is not a dog behaving badly, or even aggressively, even though it looks like it. This is a dog performing a task with the expectation of being rewarded for it when he’s told to stop guarding the object. The toy is immaterial here, its usually done with a basket.
It’s section 4.8 of the rulebook: https://www.ringsport.org/index.php?pg=rulebook
This is one of those things where if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking at then it’s easy to misinterpret.
It boggles my mind. Even if you treat your dog like a member of the family, you wouldn’t put up with similar behaviour from one of the human members of it. If your kid bit and picked and kicked you and swore at you when you did anything you’d punish and take corrective actions. Should be no different for a cat, dog, etc.
But then again these are proby the same type of people who comletely hands off parent.
This dog is performing a trick. See my comment above.
Yes, I saw your comment. Thanks for the info. May not actually apply in this example, but the point still stands; we all have seen it in other cases.
Our family had a Pekingese for many years. Pekes have weird and wonderful personalities. Loyal to the pack, territorial, somewhat vocal when strangers approach the den, they can be trained to alert the pack members, then quiet down when the threat is acknowledged. They are totally fearless and willing to charge into hell with a fire extinguisher. They have a strong independent streak and although with training (both the dog and the owners) they will accept and even enjoy their subservient position within the pack. However, they never forget that were bred to be companions for emperors.
Apologies for the lengthy discussion. The point is that each breed, and each individual dog has its own traits and personality and a responsible owner must take the time and put in the effort to learn their dog’s characteristics and train their dogs accordingly.
It’s been 40,000 years since the split between the last common ancestor of Canis familiaris and C. lupus. For forty millennia humanity has been genetically engineering dogs into specific tools to fill specific roles… I find a lot of “bad dogs” are the result of owners who are ignorant of what there dog was genetically engineered to do. You don’t get mad at a screwdriver for being really good at driving screws, don’t get mad at your Jack Russel for digging holes in the garden.
Now, individual dogs are still all unique individuals with unique personalities, but still… A Greyhound is not going to behave like a Chow, a Cairn Terrier isn’t going to behave like a Rottweiler, and so forth.