First a question. Do you think this dog is being "dominant"?
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/Video/Al...lkProtest1.mov
Is he being dominant here?
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/Video/Al...efuseWalk2.mov
In the same website we find an article titled 'An alpha dog' about a white shep who bit a child
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/articles/alphadog.htm
I'll just point out some sections of interest to show how this alpha thinking can color our interpretation of behavior so badly that everything, no matter how absurd gets painted with the dominance brush. Eric Goebelbecker at DogStar Daily wrote an article called ‘How Dominance can Make You Dumb. After reading and seeing what went on here also think that Dominance makes you blind.
It reads
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It was a dog who I had seen the night before. He had gone trick-or-treating with Bruno. When we had first headed out for the night the dog had refused to walk with his owner, the dad of the family. The dog had sat down and put up a loud protesting fuss.When the owner had tried to coax the dog to begin walking the dog had bared his teeth at the owner. It was not until the 17 year old son decided to walk along that the dog started to walk, however the dog insisted on being in front of both of his owners during the walk.hrough the walk the dog was whining in a very anxious way.
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Now, I ask myself why force a dog to go out with you when it was telling the owners that it was clearly uncomfortable with the situation? To enforce your 'alpha' status?
The dog sat in a pacifying/appeasement gesture and remained immobile - together these behaviors give a strong indication of the dog's intention. They ignored the dog and used more force. The dog responded with a stronger indication and bared his teeth at them. How many warnings do these fools need?
Once they got him moving (by force no doubt) they see dominance in the dog being in front. I would argue that the dog was motivated to get back home and for that reason was ahead of them. And of course the dog was anxious. Most dogs are during Halloween.
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We new we had to be careful. This is what dog psychologist Cesar Millan (the Dog Whisperer) calls a red zone case, because the dog bit someone drawling blood. We also found out the dog would sometimes growl at the family's own 10 year old child.
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Millan is not a dog psychologist. He is a dog groomer.
I do not consider drawing blood enough to give the dog a label of 'red zone' - doesn't mean it is not serious. Depending on the location of the bite, the sharpness, movement it can be relatively easy to draw blood - specially on a child's soft skin. Given the events on Halloween, it's pretty clear that the people consider communication a one way street.
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Luke was a White German Shepherd who not only believed he owned his family, his home and everything around him, but he had bottled up energy from lack of exercise....He saw all humans as his subordinates. They were all under him and he was their leader.
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Dog's don't have a sense of ownership as far as we can tell. The author is projecting his own beliefs onto the dog. As to what the dog thinks or doesn't, this is pure speculation that the trainer is presenting as fact.
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As soon as someone challenged him, for example asking him to sit when he didn't wish to, he would put up a protest refusing to listen.
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I would say that the dog is untrained. Anything else is speculative and in this case the author is pretending to have some insight into the inner working of the dog's mind. Is he refusing? Or is is possible - even likely - he doesn't know what the word SIT is supposed to mean but gives the impression because when people talk an he sits he doesn't get punished. Either a superstitious or a pacifying behavior.
In the case recounted above, he wasn't being 'dominant', the dog was scared and didn't want to go out.
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The owners got into the rut of allowing him to do as he wished, and when he was corrected it was either done in a passive way or done in an angry way and the dog would pee.
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Submissive Urination. This in my opinion is another nail in the author's thesis that the dog is dominant. It also tells us that the use of aversives in this case is bordering on the extreme. I should point out that the emotion has no bearing on what the dog percieves, it is the action they took that made him piss all over.
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I decided he absolutely needed a muzzle to keep the humans around him safe.
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Because these people are idiots and provoke the dog they need a muzzle for the dog. We'll see why later.
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We knew the best way to get the dog to see humans as his pack leader was to take him for a pack walk. However Luke refused to leave his home. It was very clear Luke owned his human family, especially the lady of the house.
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How do they 'know' that? Because they heard it on TV? Besides there being no empirical evidence (and much against) for pack leaders, there is no reason to believe that walking could possibly achieve this. We also get another clue that this is a case of fear. The dog wants to stay safe in the home. Having fostered dogs like this, I would never recommend the use of aversives.
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We did not want to walk him back to his home because that would be giving the dog what he wanted, making him mentally stronger.
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Because the dominance/punishment trainers see everything as a struggle for status, it is impossible for them to conceive that this dog was simply afraid and wanted the comfort of his home. If someone was hurting you, wouldn't you try to seek the safety by running home?
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We did our best to keep his tail from going between his legs in an attempt to help him snap out of his negative state of mind.
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This makes as much sense as grabbing the corners of your lips, pulling them up and claim that I'm doing it to make you happy
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She was very visibly nervous making it almost impossible to get the dog to move on. We tried food. No go. He was not food motivated at all
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The dog was shutting down under the stress. Of course food would no longer work. Highly stressed animals will not eat.
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He was so loud people were coming out of their houses mistaking his reaction for us abusing the dog.
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I think they had it right.
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We had tried to get him to walk in his own neighborhood for a good hour.
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By pulling him and jerking him around, making it even less likely that he would want to walk.
Let's not forget the
Opposition Reflex which will cause the dog to pull against any force pulling him.
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We knew we had to try harder to get him to walk, however we were drawling a crowd and the people watching had no idea why the dog was acting out. Luke's loud protest had made it appear he was being hurt when in reality he was not. He was telling us what he wanted and what he wanted was to go back to his followers.
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MERDE!
If the trainer is ashamed and embarrassed when their methods draw a crowd, the owner should really question their competence.
You'd think they buy into the clue that they are screwing up with a screaming dog? They could not achieve their goal. Their response, use more force, try harder. And yes, he was being hurt, he was being psychologically tortured. They still see a dominant dog, son instead of a dog looking for a safe harbor, they see a dog trying to "go back to his followers."
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For two hours straight Luke refused, protesting up a storm. Thank goodness for muzzles! We knew if we allowed Luke to win this battle he would be that much stronger, that much harder for this family to get under control.
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Connarde!! Two straight hours of abuse.
This is why dominance trainers get bitten and why she needed a muzzle.
They ignore what the dog is trying to tell them. Stupidly, she sticks to her plan. Dominance p.o.v. has rendered her unable to see what she's doing wrong. The premise of these trainers is based on conflict and they use as much force and violence to make sure they "win"
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After his protest he would lie down and appear to have submitted, however he would still refuse to walk for any length of time. We kept pulling his tail out from under him to help him get into a better state of mind.
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More indication the dog was shutting down. It is also possible he was giving out more pacifying gestures to modify their violent treatment of him - lying down in a well known appeasement/calming signal. And they continue with the stupid tail pull.
After 4 hours of mistreatment, she was able to get the dog to walk.
Imagine, abusing the dog like this
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/Video/Al...efuseWalk3.mov
for four hours of this and then claiming success because she got the dog to walk.
Big effing deal! She's an idiot and if there was justice for dogs she would never be allowed to get near another one again.
I ask myself what the f@## does a dog have to do for this woman to see something other than dominance?
