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ALPHA IS OUT! |
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Many of us grew up with the
idea that it was mandatory to be “alpha” to our dogs
and two moves were particularly important in order to maintain that
role: scruff shakes and alpha
rolls. In the process many a gentle
canine friend was frightened beyond words and a whole lot of people got
bitten by dogs that felt things had gotten out of control and the dog needed
to fight for its life. A scruff shake, for those
who never learned such heinous training procedures, means to grab a dog on
either side of the neck, lift her until her front feet are barely (if at
all!) touching the ground, lean over her and read her the riot act. Alpha rolls meant to slam a dog down on his
side or back and pin him there. People
were misguided in believing that these procedures mimicked how canines
maintain order in the pack.
Wrong! It doesn’t happen that
way at all. Dogs often demonstrate
submissiveness and maybe even respect to a higher ranking individual by
putting themselves on their side,
tails often tucked between the legs and they may even urinate. A higher ranking dog will often stand over
the dog with an attitude of: You got
THAT right! And that ends it. The kinds of things that
people believed (And
most trainers still teach this way!) justified such abusive treatments
included not obeying a command, resource guarding, food stealing, etc. Complete obedience and total compliance was
the way to go. New, humane methods include
changing how we think about the dogs.
Rather than saying we want them to obey a command we give cues for the
behaviors we have carefully taught and reward their successes. We are leaders – not dictators. In a “real” pack situation dogs follow a
leader. The leader is not a despot. That puts some responsibility on us to
understand how the dogs see the world.
For example, a dog that has only been taught to sit, lie down, and
stay on cue in the house is not likely to understand the cues for those
exercises outside of the house!
True. So, if you have only worked
in the house or garden, step out onto the street and say: Rover, sit!, and Rover does not do it that is not insubordination. We learn differently than dogs do. We could pull that off. Dogs have to be taught to sit under different conditions and the more
distracting the situation the longer it takes to get the behavior on
cue. The bright side is that the more
you teach and the more varied the conditions the better the dog gets at
generalizing. Never will be at our
level but it can get pretty good. Punishing a dog for
something it has not learned how to do is cruel, to say the least. Be a teacher. Be a leader. Learn how to understand your dog and forget
the alpha nonsense. B |