I have a positive dog.

New Topic

I have a positive dog.

Posted : 9/29/2009 6:10:56 PM

This morning at the dog park Kivi was playing with a young staffy. She was all over him and after a while took to just hanging off his cheek wherever he went. Poor dude was not really enjoying it. He was trying to walk away from her and shake her off, but every time he did she'd jump on him again. Nonetheless, he did not "correct" her or punish her. Of course, we did rescue him from the pesky pup, but both me and my partner were quite amazed that he just kept walking away and never did anything more than whine. He is much the same with Erik. Erik gets way too rough with him, but even when he's yelping, the most he will do to Erik is push him off and put a paw on him. Yet, Erik, despite being a pushy, devilish puppy, is still gradually adjusting his behaviour to suit Kivi and has even started leaving Kivi alone all together and pestering me instead when Kivi has had enough.

It has really made me think about the way we interact with our dogs. Dogs don't have many choices when it comes to looking out for themselves. They pretty much only have aggression at their disposal. At least, that's what I thought until I watched Kivi deal with dogs doing things to him that he doesn't like. I guess I would say that Kivi is a submissive dog, but not in the sense that he fawns or is timid or anything like that. He just appeases when things don't go his way. And then they do go his way! He never retaliates when another dog has a go at him, but he doesn't always submit, either. He has a passive way of just ignoring what another dog is doing to him. And pretty soon the dog stops because it's not working and they try it less and less. We do have to intervene on his behalf at times, but it amazes me how far he gets just on ignoring or walking away when he doesn't like how things are going. It's very inspiring for me, who would like to be as positive as Kivi is! I wouldn't like to be as helpless as Kivi is, but I have problem solving skills, forsight, and opposable thumbs, plus access to all the resources in the world. If he can get that far just by ignoring behaviour he doesn't like or walking away, what's my excuse?

poodleOwned

Posted : 10/1/2009 5:35:00 AM

corvus
Dogs don't have many choices when it comes to looking out for themselves. They pretty much only have aggression at their disposal.

I guess that this idea is the outshot of the dominace myth and has passes into our common literature such as sayings like "dog eat dog".

If you observe dogs , the have a rich set of body language that Turid Rugaas calls calming signals. I am not saying that i am an out and out fan of Turid but her points are worth noting.

Evolutionary wise, an underlying understanding is that without human intervention a bite on another dog is quite likely to be fatal. They often abcess. Much dog language could be seen as ritualistic methods of avoiding this incidence. In a human population , other than in fairly deviant parts of the population, dogs that bite are selected against. They often die young via euhtanasia.

If we take the standpoint that genetic diversity is a good measure of a population's ability to sustain itself, then dogs who break the no bite rule and who continue to live will reduce the diversity of the population to behaviours that are incompatible with human companionship..