years now, within the dog, it is very fashionable to talk about the dominance of the dogs. Whatever a dog face that people do not love us or we fail to understand is explained by saying that the dog does it because is dominant and want to rule over us!
Consequently, men have invented a whole series of rules to be applied to dogs to teach us the undisputed leader of our flock / family.
model rules that the dog has to eat after us, because is the dominant male in a pack to eat before all the others, or that we must not let the dog go in high places (like the sofa or the bed), that position because it is lifted from the ground only to dominant dog and so on ...
Me too, during my training as an educator dog has been taught that dogs tend to be dominant in humans, because what they want to do is drive!
In fact, to me these ideas but I have always played a little 'strange. I never got the impression that my dogs would like to try to dominate me, but sometimes seemed to me that just wanted their head and do not listen to what I asked him to do!
But tant 'is, as people who claim expertise, taught me I tried to put this theory into practice as possible, but without much conviction! Then, fortunately, thanks to Turid Rugaas , the Norwegian teacher who discovered the signs of quiet, I realized how this theory is wrong! So now I no longer have to be careful if my dog \u200b\u200bgets on the bed or eat before or after me, and so on. etc. ..
In fact, these ideas were based on studies done to understand how behaved dogs in a natural environment. For several years ethnologists and scholars have made to observe and study the behavior of the wolf packs in nature, since the wolf is the closest to the dog, still in the wild. The problem is that schools that were studied were not natural packs, but still packs assembled by man or herds in which the man had intervened in some way. Of course in these schools are not natural, because the dogs have nothing to do with each other, because had been joined by the man, you were to create countless tensions that resulted in ongoing power struggles and supremacy, just as happens between us humans.
At one point, fortunately, a noted ethologist American David Mech , has seen fit to go and study the only schools that still exist in the natural world, where man has never intervened in Alaska! And you know what you discovered? That natural packs are nothing more than the families of dogs consisting of two parents and a number of children of different ages, depending on the litter. There is no kind of hierarchy within these flocks natural than that of a normal family. Parents are guides and examples for their puppy, and when a dog reaches the age of majority and decide you want to create a family does not enter his pack- absolutely competition in with their parents to remove their supremacy, but simply off from the herd and goes to look for a female to form a new family. Inside, the relationships are only based on respect, the 'attachment and collaboration.
Other than the theory of dominance!
is why, taking into account these new findings, very well explained in the book Dominance: Fact or myth? , instead of focusing to understand the dog who is boss, we should instead worry be a good guide and a good example for him, teaching him in a positive way as it is better to act to live happily in our world, which is a bit 'different from them in kind.
Many times we assume that dogs should behave exactly like us, in our society, and we do not realize that for them is not so easy to get used to so many strange things that are normal for us, such as traffic, chaos, noise, people, lots of other dogs, and the limitation of space.
We then sample from the dogs in their role as parents, to try to teach so many positive things to our dog as a child, armandoci a lot of patience and good will! Only then will we get from him the proper respect and we will listen to us whenever you ask him to do something!
