March 26, 2025 • 18 mins
On this episode, Tony explains how being a pack animal influences canine behavior, and what that means for all dog owners.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation's podcast. I'm your host
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about pack behavior
and why we should try to understand it so we
can understand our dogs better. The thing about animal behavior,
and I include human behavior in this broad sweeping statement,
(00:23):
is that a lot of it is easier to understand
if you look at the evolutionary history of whatever species
you're thinking about. You know, of course, in this case,
we're talking about dogs, and the behavior I want to
talk about kind of all relates to them being pack
animals or what we believe about pack animals. So there's
a lot to unpack here, get it. So I'm going
(00:45):
to get started right freaking now. One of the things
I love about going to the gym, besides finding any
and every reason I can to remind people that I
like to go to the gym, is that when you
work from home and spend most of your day trying
to create stuff out of your dumb head, it's nice
(01:07):
to go where people are not too many people though,
because man, does the general public not do a whole
lot for this guy. But the gym is different, especially
if you go a lot at the same time. Every day.
I see people there every time I go, and some
of them have become my friends. Now that might sound pathetic,
but again, I spend my days with two black labs
(01:28):
in myself, and sometimes it's just nice to see a
few friendly faces. One of those friendly faces is a
giant dude from Georgia who owns a doggy daycare with
his wife. The two topics we talk about are typically
girls basketball since he has three daughters who are really
good at hoops, and dogs for obvious reasons. Now, the
(01:49):
other morning, he was in the steam room chatting it
up with another gym goer when I walked in there
to sweat for fifteen minutes after my workout. He was
explaining to the other fellow about how cool it is
that some of them dogs that come to their boarding
facility have best friends. Certain dogs will wait for certain dogs,
and when they get together, they play all day long
without interacting a whole lot with other dogs. Now, we
(02:12):
have the tendency to look at that like it's human
behavior and also honestly freaking adorable, because it is. But
why would two dogs click and then stick together when
they have dozens of friend options to choose from? Is
there a form of canine chemistry where two dogs are
kind of just on the same wavelength. Maybe maybe it's
nothing more than two dogs with the same level of
(02:34):
energy and enthusiasm, and so it's natural for them to
play together since they are just kind of humming at
the same frequency. Or maybe it's something a little bit
more complex than that, and it is tied to the
fact that domestic dogs are still pack animals and that
hierarchy can exist with certain mutual, beneficial partnerships throughout the
layers of dominance, like being best friends. I guess when
(02:59):
we think of pas animals, we naturally think of wolves.
Why not. There is nothing more iconic on the landscape
than a wolf pack, although these days they don't get
a warm welcome in a lot of places for a
lot of very very good reasons. I'm not going to
get into that other than to say when federal judges
out in DC manage APEX predator populations and states they
(03:20):
probably only visit to ski once a winter. It's not
a great example of wildlife management and conservation. Any huski.
The dominant thought about wolves that there is an alpha
and that dude doesn't take shit from anyone. He's the
tony soprano of the pack, and he rules with an
iron paw. This is what we thought for a long time,
(03:43):
and we thought aggression and violence were the primary tools
the alpha used to keep his top spot. But that
belief is kind of dying on the vine these days,
in no small part due to the work done by
certain biologists. The idea that the alp is the biggest,
toughest wolf in the pack and that he takes what
he wants because he can just isn't really that true. Now.
(04:07):
Through countless hours of observation, biologists have learned that during
lean times, the alpha will actually let the young eat first.
Now this makes sense, particularly if there is a high
likelihood that those wolf pups are carrying his genes, but
they've also realized that the alpha will often hang at
the back of the pack when they're traveling to a
(04:27):
new place instead of being out front as the leader.
According to quite a bit of research, dominant wolves don't
push submission wolves out of prime sleeping spots, and they
rarely pin down wolves to make their point, and a
lot of them. The biologists now have come to believe
that wolves almost exist in family units instead of packs,
(04:52):
with the leaders functioning more as guides than rulers. Now
does this have anything to do with dogs? It does,
There's plenty actually, but also kind of not. I'm going
to get into that. But for a long time, and
certainly still today, there were lines of thinking out there
in the training world that rely heavily on beliefs about
pack animals. The idea that your small monster lander or
(05:16):
your chessi is always jockeying for a position in your family,
which is their pack, is very common. But is that true?
Kind of? It would be hard to tease out the
motivations of a seven month old dog, but we can
fill in some of the blanks. For starters, they are
usually shitheads who listen very little. This is a sign
(05:37):
of disobedience and often gets connected to the beliefs that
the dog is trying to figure out where it is
in the pack, and furthermore, trying to earn a higher
spot in the pack. Is that right? Who knows? It's
also true that they are the equivalent of teenagers then,
and their motivations are pretty selfish despite being in a
life situation where they are expected to obey and behave correct.
(06:01):
A few training ideas that go along with this line
of thinking include eating before the dog eats, walking through
doors before the dog, and pinning dogs to the floor
to establish dominance when they get on your last nerve. Now,
the fur baby side of the dog equation predictably thinks
that none of those things are necessary, while the old
(06:21):
guard training side probably believes that all of them are necessary.
The truth is, we kind of don't know why dogs
do what they do. They might very well disobey you
in an attempt to jockey into a better position in
the pack, or they might do it because they are
always testing us to see what they can get away with,
because we make up a whole bunch of rules for
(06:41):
them that they generally don't want to follow. Do you
know why I'm so wishy washy on attributing behaviors to
one reason or another, partially because dogs aren't wolves. They
are domestic dogs. So we are taking behavior, in fact,
some behavior that has mostly been debunked these days, from
wild canaans that do live in packs, and applying that
(07:04):
to the behavior of domestic dogs, which really don't live
in packs. We don't do this with African wild dogs
or orcas or cheetahs or lions or bottlenosed dolphins or
hyenas or Harris hawks or chimpanzees or Humboldt squids, and
a whole host of other animals that live in hunt
in packs. We are comfortable with a domestic dog wolf
(07:24):
connection because it's relatively linear in our minds. But your
English cocker is pretty far removed from a gray wolf
living out on the tundra looking to eat a caribou
for breakfast. That said, does it really matter the reasoning
behind our training methods if they work again? Kind of
whatever you believe about dogs in their pack behavior, it's
(07:47):
nice to have a dog that is submissive to you.
I mean, you don't want one that would bite your
throat if it thought you were going to take away
a three day old pizza crust it scrounged up from
the ditch during your walk. A dog that is a
great if to anyone in any way as a dog
that isn't going to be much fun to own. But
what about that seven month old puppy or hell, a
(08:08):
nine week old puppy. One of the things that Tom
Dowkan likes folks to do with their puppies is to
have everyone in the family pick up the dog and
cradle it in their arms. Now this goes for dad, mom,
the kids, and really anyone who's going to have some
level of interaction with the pupp and who might be
in charge of that dog at some point in its life. Now,
imagine holding your arms out and carrying a load of
(08:30):
firewood in them, except the wood is your dog with
its paws straight up towards your face. The idea is
that the puppy is going to struggle against that hold,
which it absolutely will. The holder is instructed to put
mild pressure on the puppy with their arms until the
puppy relents and goes limp and just kind of relaxes. Now,
I've done this with my last two dogs, and it's
(08:52):
pretty incredible how quickly they learn they are in charge
of that pressure. Which is Tom's whole point. Well, scratch
that part of his point. He wants the dog to
know who is in charge in a very subtle, non
threatening way. But he's also doing that to determine the
level of attitude he is going to deal with on
that particular pup because that will inform a lot of
his training choices. So in a way, that's sort of
(09:14):
a dominance pack thing, But it's not like grabbing a
dog by the throat and pinning it down. There is
a lesson for the dog in that and for the
trainer in that move. There's also the reality that some
(09:38):
dogs are more dominant than others, but what we attribute
to them as dominant behavior might not always be. So
that's a broad excuse for some behaviors. But when it
comes to bad dog behavior, a lot of it is
because we did something wrong. Take a dog that just
flat out refuses to do something it doesn't want to do. Now,
(09:59):
this might be a dog that really enjoys laying on
the couch even though you want him on the floor.
Or it might be a dog that just chooses to
disobey one of your commands with you know, like the
recall command is one that is a likely candidate here. Now,
you might think, my freaking dog won't get off the
couch when I tell him to because he's just too dominant.
But do you ever let the dog on the couch?
(10:21):
How about your wife or your kids? What's the level
of leniency here? Is it consistent? Is it inconsistent? What's
going on? Almost all dog behavior that's bad can be
attributed to some inconsistency from us, like sort of child
behavior too, I guess if I'm being honest, But what
(10:42):
about the dog that doesn't listen to you when you
give it a command. I had a fellow tell me
the other day that his four month old dog wasn't
listening a whole lot, so he wanted a recommendation for
a shot caller, so, in his words, he could zap
him into shape. What I wanted to say was, why
don't you take that shot collar, turn it up to ten,
(11:03):
strap it to your nutsack, and then hand me the
remote until you learn something about dogs and their ability
to learn when they are the equivalent of kindergarteners. Anyway,
a dog that won't listen to commands is a dog
that probably just hasn't been trained very well. Now, while
it might make us comfortable to say that that dog
is untrainable because it's such a dominant beast, the truth
(11:27):
is that there are a hell of a lot of
headstrong dogs out there that would blow your mind if
you got to watch them work or hunt. Again, the
dominance thing comes into play, But is it a blanket
excuse for the bad behavior we don't want to see,
or a part of a much, much bigger issue that
we as trainers might not be helping if we are
(11:48):
inconsistent with our asks. There are other behaviors, you know,
like pulling on the leash while you walk, mounting other
dogs or people or furniture or stuffed animals, or taking
a leak in the house, guarding food dishes or bones
or treats, those things that get blamed on pack animal tendencies.
But again, there's a whole lot of training to be
(12:10):
had in each one of these issues, and at least
some of them might be tied to just like a
lack of socialization. Now there's another thing we bring to
the table here that kind of ties into the dude
who wanted to light his puppy up with an e collar,
which is that if we see dog behavior through the
lens of packs and dominance, we will lean into the
kinds of corrections that those beliefs kind of warrant. So
(12:33):
in a way, it can be a self fulfilling prophecy.
If we decide a dog won't do something or specifically
chooses to do something because it's fighting for dominance, our
response is often to go alpha on them and get
pretty harsh in the correction territory. While that might feel
justified to some folks, it's undoubtedly going to stress most
(12:54):
dogs out. It's going to open the door for anxiety,
potential aggression, and a list of physiological responses that can
manifest themselves in worse behaviors later. Does that mean harsh
corrections are never needed? Usually not, And a better way
to look at it is to see if there is
a way to get the desired behavior through positive reinforcement
(13:15):
and clear rules. The latter one goes right back to
inconsistency and training. If the rules aren't very clear about
expected behavior, then any deviation might be viewed as a
middle finger to your methods. But it's just the dog
trying to find a lane when the fog is real thick.
Clear rules matter a lot. Positive reinforcement does too, because
(13:37):
you want a dog that wants to work for you,
not a dog that does it out of fear. Think
about it this way. Throughout history, we've tried all kinds
of systems of government, all kinds of tribal distributions of power,
and we have often defaulted to ruling by force. Every
one of those societies eventually crumbled under its own weight,
(13:58):
because eventually the reward for being obedient doesn't outweigh the
punishment of being ruled. This is probably why alpha wolves,
you know, don't rule generally through tons of aggression, because
most animals seem to intuitively understand what a one on
one fight means for them, just as they understand what
a one on more than one fight means for them. Strengthen,
(14:21):
numbers will always eventually beat the strength of one. A
better way to get things done, you know, the things
like staying safe and well fed, is to work together
for a goal. This serves the group and as a byproduct,
serves the individual. So if I have a dog that
is supposed to be a good retriever but they are
struggling to always deliver the bumper to my hand, I
(14:44):
can punish that dog or figure out a new way
to reward the dog. It's kind of that simple. Sometimes.
Think about it this way. Would you rather have a
boss who says, hey, tackle this huge project and you'll
be in serious consideration for a promotion and a raise,
or one that says, hey tackle this project or you're
(15:04):
going to get your ass fired. Both ends are powerful motivators,
but one is just a better move. So is all
this evidence that the pack thing really doesn't matter? Nope,
because it is coded in their genes. You see this
pretty quickly a lot of times when you have more
than one dog. Now this doesn't always happen, but if
they are at least sort of close in age, dogs
(15:26):
seem to sort out who gets the best spot on
the floor and who doesn't. There is a hierarchy at
play with them, and without doubt, with them and our families.
They view themselves as part of our family, and we
certainly view them as part of ours. Does that mean
we are all a pack? Kind of? I guess it's
a great thing to ponder anyway, just for the hell
of it, and does have implications for their responses to
(15:48):
our asks and behaviors. But it's also not a blanket
excuse for bad dog behavior or behaviors that we just
can't seem to get a handle on for one reason
or another. I'll never forget the first time I went
to a shrink, I told him that I thought I
had a certain mental condition, which would have been a
great excuse to explain some of my behaviors and the
(16:09):
amount of jim Beam that I was drinking at the time.
He responded to me by saying, it's pretty dangerous to
self diagnose something like that because it'll give you an
excuse to keep doing what you want to because it's
not your fault, although you should be moving away from
those behaviors and figuring it out the right way now.
Getting called out on your bullshit sucks, but it often
(16:30):
is a good springboard for growth. It's also poignant when
it comes to our relationship with dogs, because as soon
as we feel like we can definitively label the reasons
behind their behaviors, we might have an opportunity to not
address them or address them in the short term in
a negative way that might do nothing to help our
dogs become the dogs we actually want them to be.
(16:53):
So let me wrap this up by saying that our
dogs are pack animals sort of, and that matters to
their training and development sort of. It's okay to acknowledge
and learn about and might feed into small parts of training,
especially when it comes to general behaviors around the house
and in everyday settings. But once we use it as
a way to brush away their shortfalls in our training regimen,
(17:14):
we've kind of lost the plot. Look at something to
be aware of, or at the very least kind of
think about. So do think about that and think about
coming back in two weeks, because I'm going to talk
about the dumb ways people injure their puppies or at
least create situations where an injury could happen. That's it.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Foundation's podcast. As always,
(17:37):
Thank you so much for listening and for all of
your support here at meat Eater, We truly appreciate it.
If you guys want more dog content, maybe you want
some turkey hunting content, maybe just want some good storytelling,
head over to the meadeater dot com. We're dropping new
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doing his thing out there, or listen to Brent on
(17:58):
This Country Life. Tons of good content, articles, podcast videos,
you know, the whole drill at the medeater dot com.
Check it out, and once again, thank you so much
for your support
Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation's podcast. I'm your host
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about pack behavior
and why we should try to understand it so we
can understand our dogs better. The thing about animal behavior,
and I include human behavior in this broad sweeping statement,
(00:23):
is that a lot of it is easier to understand
if you look at the evolutionary history of whatever species
you're thinking about. You know, of course, in this case,
we're talking about dogs, and the behavior I want to
talk about kind of all relates to them being pack
animals or what we believe about pack animals. So there's
a lot to unpack here, get it. So I'm going
(00:45):
to get started right freaking now. One of the things
I love about going to the gym, besides finding any
and every reason I can to remind people that I
like to go to the gym, is that when you
work from home and spend most of your day trying
to create stuff out of your dumb head, it's nice
(01:07):
to go where people are not too many people though,
because man, does the general public not do a whole
lot for this guy. But the gym is different, especially
if you go a lot at the same time. Every day.
I see people there every time I go, and some
of them have become my friends. Now that might sound pathetic,
but again, I spend my days with two black labs
(01:28):
in myself, and sometimes it's just nice to see a
few friendly faces. One of those friendly faces is a
giant dude from Georgia who owns a doggy daycare with
his wife. The two topics we talk about are typically
girls basketball since he has three daughters who are really
good at hoops, and dogs for obvious reasons. Now, the
(01:49):
other morning, he was in the steam room chatting it
up with another gym goer when I walked in there
to sweat for fifteen minutes after my workout. He was
explaining to the other fellow about how cool it is
that some of them dogs that come to their boarding
facility have best friends. Certain dogs will wait for certain dogs,
and when they get together, they play all day long
without interacting a whole lot with other dogs. Now, we
(02:12):
have the tendency to look at that like it's human
behavior and also honestly freaking adorable, because it is. But
why would two dogs click and then stick together when
they have dozens of friend options to choose from? Is
there a form of canine chemistry where two dogs are
kind of just on the same wavelength. Maybe maybe it's
nothing more than two dogs with the same level of
(02:34):
energy and enthusiasm, and so it's natural for them to
play together since they are just kind of humming at
the same frequency. Or maybe it's something a little bit
more complex than that, and it is tied to the
fact that domestic dogs are still pack animals and that
hierarchy can exist with certain mutual, beneficial partnerships throughout the
layers of dominance, like being best friends. I guess when
(02:59):
we think of pas animals, we naturally think of wolves.
Why not. There is nothing more iconic on the landscape
than a wolf pack, although these days they don't get
a warm welcome in a lot of places for a
lot of very very good reasons. I'm not going to
get into that other than to say when federal judges
out in DC manage APEX predator populations and states they
(03:20):
probably only visit to ski once a winter. It's not
a great example of wildlife management and conservation. Any huski.
The dominant thought about wolves that there is an alpha
and that dude doesn't take shit from anyone. He's the
tony soprano of the pack, and he rules with an
iron paw. This is what we thought for a long time,
(03:43):
and we thought aggression and violence were the primary tools
the alpha used to keep his top spot. But that
belief is kind of dying on the vine these days,
in no small part due to the work done by
certain biologists. The idea that the alp is the biggest,
toughest wolf in the pack and that he takes what
he wants because he can just isn't really that true. Now.
(04:07):
Through countless hours of observation, biologists have learned that during
lean times, the alpha will actually let the young eat first.
Now this makes sense, particularly if there is a high
likelihood that those wolf pups are carrying his genes, but
they've also realized that the alpha will often hang at
the back of the pack when they're traveling to a
(04:27):
new place instead of being out front as the leader.
According to quite a bit of research, dominant wolves don't
push submission wolves out of prime sleeping spots, and they
rarely pin down wolves to make their point, and a
lot of them. The biologists now have come to believe
that wolves almost exist in family units instead of packs,
(04:52):
with the leaders functioning more as guides than rulers. Now
does this have anything to do with dogs? It does,
There's plenty actually, but also kind of not. I'm going
to get into that. But for a long time, and
certainly still today, there were lines of thinking out there
in the training world that rely heavily on beliefs about
pack animals. The idea that your small monster lander or
(05:16):
your chessi is always jockeying for a position in your family,
which is their pack, is very common. But is that true?
Kind of? It would be hard to tease out the
motivations of a seven month old dog, but we can
fill in some of the blanks. For starters, they are
usually shitheads who listen very little. This is a sign
(05:37):
of disobedience and often gets connected to the beliefs that
the dog is trying to figure out where it is
in the pack, and furthermore, trying to earn a higher
spot in the pack. Is that right? Who knows? It's
also true that they are the equivalent of teenagers then,
and their motivations are pretty selfish despite being in a
life situation where they are expected to obey and behave correct.
(06:01):
A few training ideas that go along with this line
of thinking include eating before the dog eats, walking through
doors before the dog, and pinning dogs to the floor
to establish dominance when they get on your last nerve. Now,
the fur baby side of the dog equation predictably thinks
that none of those things are necessary, while the old
(06:21):
guard training side probably believes that all of them are necessary.
The truth is, we kind of don't know why dogs
do what they do. They might very well disobey you
in an attempt to jockey into a better position in
the pack, or they might do it because they are
always testing us to see what they can get away with,
because we make up a whole bunch of rules for
(06:41):
them that they generally don't want to follow. Do you
know why I'm so wishy washy on attributing behaviors to
one reason or another, partially because dogs aren't wolves. They
are domestic dogs. So we are taking behavior, in fact,
some behavior that has mostly been debunked these days, from
wild canaans that do live in packs, and applying that
(07:04):
to the behavior of domestic dogs, which really don't live
in packs. We don't do this with African wild dogs
or orcas or cheetahs or lions or bottlenosed dolphins or
hyenas or Harris hawks or chimpanzees or Humboldt squids, and
a whole host of other animals that live in hunt
in packs. We are comfortable with a domestic dog wolf
(07:24):
connection because it's relatively linear in our minds. But your
English cocker is pretty far removed from a gray wolf
living out on the tundra looking to eat a caribou
for breakfast. That said, does it really matter the reasoning
behind our training methods if they work again? Kind of
whatever you believe about dogs in their pack behavior, it's
(07:47):
nice to have a dog that is submissive to you.
I mean, you don't want one that would bite your
throat if it thought you were going to take away
a three day old pizza crust it scrounged up from
the ditch during your walk. A dog that is a
great if to anyone in any way as a dog
that isn't going to be much fun to own. But
what about that seven month old puppy or hell, a
(08:08):
nine week old puppy. One of the things that Tom
Dowkan likes folks to do with their puppies is to
have everyone in the family pick up the dog and
cradle it in their arms. Now this goes for dad, mom,
the kids, and really anyone who's going to have some
level of interaction with the pupp and who might be
in charge of that dog at some point in its life. Now,
imagine holding your arms out and carrying a load of
(08:30):
firewood in them, except the wood is your dog with
its paws straight up towards your face. The idea is
that the puppy is going to struggle against that hold,
which it absolutely will. The holder is instructed to put
mild pressure on the puppy with their arms until the
puppy relents and goes limp and just kind of relaxes. Now,
I've done this with my last two dogs, and it's
(08:52):
pretty incredible how quickly they learn they are in charge
of that pressure. Which is Tom's whole point. Well, scratch
that part of his point. He wants the dog to
know who is in charge in a very subtle, non
threatening way. But he's also doing that to determine the
level of attitude he is going to deal with on
that particular pup because that will inform a lot of
his training choices. So in a way, that's sort of
(09:14):
a dominance pack thing, But it's not like grabbing a
dog by the throat and pinning it down. There is
a lesson for the dog in that and for the
trainer in that move. There's also the reality that some
(09:38):
dogs are more dominant than others, but what we attribute
to them as dominant behavior might not always be. So
that's a broad excuse for some behaviors. But when it
comes to bad dog behavior, a lot of it is
because we did something wrong. Take a dog that just
flat out refuses to do something it doesn't want to do. Now,
(09:59):
this might be a dog that really enjoys laying on
the couch even though you want him on the floor.
Or it might be a dog that just chooses to
disobey one of your commands with you know, like the
recall command is one that is a likely candidate here. Now,
you might think, my freaking dog won't get off the
couch when I tell him to because he's just too dominant.
But do you ever let the dog on the couch?
(10:21):
How about your wife or your kids? What's the level
of leniency here? Is it consistent? Is it inconsistent? What's
going on? Almost all dog behavior that's bad can be
attributed to some inconsistency from us, like sort of child
behavior too, I guess if I'm being honest, But what
(10:42):
about the dog that doesn't listen to you when you
give it a command. I had a fellow tell me
the other day that his four month old dog wasn't
listening a whole lot, so he wanted a recommendation for
a shot caller, so, in his words, he could zap
him into shape. What I wanted to say was, why
don't you take that shot collar, turn it up to ten,
(11:03):
strap it to your nutsack, and then hand me the
remote until you learn something about dogs and their ability
to learn when they are the equivalent of kindergarteners. Anyway,
a dog that won't listen to commands is a dog
that probably just hasn't been trained very well. Now, while
it might make us comfortable to say that that dog
is untrainable because it's such a dominant beast, the truth
(11:27):
is that there are a hell of a lot of
headstrong dogs out there that would blow your mind if
you got to watch them work or hunt. Again, the
dominance thing comes into play, But is it a blanket
excuse for the bad behavior we don't want to see,
or a part of a much, much bigger issue that
we as trainers might not be helping if we are
(11:48):
inconsistent with our asks. There are other behaviors, you know,
like pulling on the leash while you walk, mounting other
dogs or people or furniture or stuffed animals, or taking
a leak in the house, guarding food dishes or bones
or treats, those things that get blamed on pack animal tendencies.
But again, there's a whole lot of training to be
(12:10):
had in each one of these issues, and at least
some of them might be tied to just like a
lack of socialization. Now there's another thing we bring to
the table here that kind of ties into the dude
who wanted to light his puppy up with an e collar,
which is that if we see dog behavior through the
lens of packs and dominance, we will lean into the
kinds of corrections that those beliefs kind of warrant. So
(12:33):
in a way, it can be a self fulfilling prophecy.
If we decide a dog won't do something or specifically
chooses to do something because it's fighting for dominance, our
response is often to go alpha on them and get
pretty harsh in the correction territory. While that might feel
justified to some folks, it's undoubtedly going to stress most
(12:54):
dogs out. It's going to open the door for anxiety,
potential aggression, and a list of physiological responses that can
manifest themselves in worse behaviors later. Does that mean harsh
corrections are never needed? Usually not, And a better way
to look at it is to see if there is
a way to get the desired behavior through positive reinforcement
(13:15):
and clear rules. The latter one goes right back to
inconsistency and training. If the rules aren't very clear about
expected behavior, then any deviation might be viewed as a
middle finger to your methods. But it's just the dog
trying to find a lane when the fog is real thick.
Clear rules matter a lot. Positive reinforcement does too, because
(13:37):
you want a dog that wants to work for you,
not a dog that does it out of fear. Think
about it this way. Throughout history, we've tried all kinds
of systems of government, all kinds of tribal distributions of power,
and we have often defaulted to ruling by force. Every
one of those societies eventually crumbled under its own weight,
(13:58):
because eventually the reward for being obedient doesn't outweigh the
punishment of being ruled. This is probably why alpha wolves,
you know, don't rule generally through tons of aggression, because
most animals seem to intuitively understand what a one on
one fight means for them, just as they understand what
a one on more than one fight means for them. Strengthen,
(14:21):
numbers will always eventually beat the strength of one. A
better way to get things done, you know, the things
like staying safe and well fed, is to work together
for a goal. This serves the group and as a byproduct,
serves the individual. So if I have a dog that
is supposed to be a good retriever but they are
struggling to always deliver the bumper to my hand, I
(14:44):
can punish that dog or figure out a new way
to reward the dog. It's kind of that simple. Sometimes.
Think about it this way. Would you rather have a
boss who says, hey, tackle this huge project and you'll
be in serious consideration for a promotion and a raise,
or one that says, hey tackle this project or you're
(15:04):
going to get your ass fired. Both ends are powerful motivators,
but one is just a better move. So is all
this evidence that the pack thing really doesn't matter? Nope,
because it is coded in their genes. You see this
pretty quickly a lot of times when you have more
than one dog. Now this doesn't always happen, but if
they are at least sort of close in age, dogs
(15:26):
seem to sort out who gets the best spot on
the floor and who doesn't. There is a hierarchy at
play with them, and without doubt, with them and our families.
They view themselves as part of our family, and we
certainly view them as part of ours. Does that mean
we are all a pack? Kind of? I guess it's
a great thing to ponder anyway, just for the hell
of it, and does have implications for their responses to
(15:48):
our asks and behaviors. But it's also not a blanket
excuse for bad dog behavior or behaviors that we just
can't seem to get a handle on for one reason
or another. I'll never forget the first time I went
to a shrink, I told him that I thought I
had a certain mental condition, which would have been a
great excuse to explain some of my behaviors and the
(16:09):
amount of jim Beam that I was drinking at the time.
He responded to me by saying, it's pretty dangerous to
self diagnose something like that because it'll give you an
excuse to keep doing what you want to because it's
not your fault, although you should be moving away from
those behaviors and figuring it out the right way now.
Getting called out on your bullshit sucks, but it often
(16:30):
is a good springboard for growth. It's also poignant when
it comes to our relationship with dogs, because as soon
as we feel like we can definitively label the reasons
behind their behaviors, we might have an opportunity to not
address them or address them in the short term in
a negative way that might do nothing to help our
dogs become the dogs we actually want them to be.
(16:53):
So let me wrap this up by saying that our
dogs are pack animals sort of, and that matters to
their training and development sort of. It's okay to acknowledge
and learn about and might feed into small parts of training,
especially when it comes to general behaviors around the house
and in everyday settings. But once we use it as
a way to brush away their shortfalls in our training regimen,
(17:14):
we've kind of lost the plot. Look at something to
be aware of, or at the very least kind of
think about. So do think about that and think about
coming back in two weeks, because I'm going to talk
about the dumb ways people injure their puppies or at
least create situations where an injury could happen. That's it.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Foundation's podcast. As always,
(17:37):
Thank you so much for listening and for all of
your support here at meat Eater, We truly appreciate it.
If you guys want more dog content, maybe you want
some turkey hunting content, maybe just want some good storytelling,
head over to the meadeater dot com. We're dropping new
films all the time. You can see Clay Hunt and
spring Bears with his son. You can see Brent Reeves
doing his thing out there, or listen to Brent on
(17:58):
This Country Life. Tons of good content, articles, podcast videos,
you know, the whole drill at the medeater dot com.
Check it out, and once again, thank you so much
for your support
Host
Cal Callaghan
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