Top Ten Tips EVERY Dog Owner Should Know
1.) A dog is a dog.
Some humans assume that their dogs communicate the same way they do and thereforetry to communicate with them the way they would with another person. This is the greatestmisconception of many dog owners. Although domesticated for thousands of years, in thewild dogs have always lived in packs, and dogs still live by the same rules and exhibit many of the samebehavioral patterns as their wild ancestors. Therefore, as dog owners you need to realize dogs have differentneeds and to effectively train your dog, you must first understand its instinctual which pack behavior.
2.) All dogs think in terms of the pack.
In the wild dogs have always lived in packs. They instinctively know that living with others, under the leadershipof a dominant member of the pack, enhances their chances for survival. Therefore, pack animals not only wantto live with others, they are content with having leaders who are strong, consistent and fair. As a dog owner, oneresponsibility is to learn and model these characteristics to be accepted as the pack leader in order for your dogto learn to respect and obey you.
3.) Dogs don’t understand English.
To believe your dog fully understands human-based communications is as unreasonable as thinking you knoweverything your dog is trying to say when it barks. A dog’s communication is limited primarily to barking, growlingand other guttural sounds. Even more so than sounds, dogs communicate what is on their minds by relyingheavily on body language. By understanding how dogs communicate, you will be better prepared to know thatyou may be telling the dog one thing and your body language and sound may be telling them completely differentthing.
4.) Dogs are not spiteful.
Dog owners often say, “My dog chewed the furniture because I left him.” There are a number of reasons whydogs misbehave, but spite is not one of them. As much as many people want to believe dogs think like humans,they can’t. Dogs only have two sections to their brain and therefore have very limited ability to reason, thuscannot disobey out of spite. Knowing the real reasons why dogs misbehave requires understanding how they dothink and learn. Dogs react in a way that makes sense in their environment. When a dog disobeys, it is usuallyfor one of three reasons: 1) it does not understand what you want, 2) it does not consider you its leader, or 3) it issuffering form some kind of stress or fear. By understanding the true nature of dogs, you will be better preparedto diagnose problems or behaviors of your dog.
5.) What makes some dogs aggressive?
One of our favorite sayings is, “You can take the dog out of the wild, but you cannot take the wild out of the dog.”This means simply that the dog’s natural instincts are never far below the surface, and sometimes this behavior manifests itself as aggression as a dog will only do what its natural instincts tell it to do, unless trained otherwise.The most common cause of aggression is fear of the unknown, i.e., whatever the dog cannot understand or doesnot recognize as normal. Fear and a dog’s response are instinctual. When a dog becomes frightened, it will doone of two things: fight or take flight. One breed of dog is not necessarily more aggressive than any other. Thediminutive Chihuahua can be just as aggressive as the larger German Shepard. The only real difference is theamount of fear in us based on the dog’s size and ability to cause harm. As dog owners, one of our responsibilities is to condition our dog daily and reinforce dominance (leadership) over the dog in order toincrease our ability to control it and teach it what is acceptable and what is not.
6.) Body Language is the dog’s primary mode of communication.
Dogs rely most heavily on body language to communicate what is on their minds. A human’s body language canvery easily be misinterpreted by a dog. If a dog jumps on you, and you respond by pushing it down with bothhands, the dog may think you want to play, in much the same way it would play with other dogs. When humansgreet a dog, they often do not consider whether or not the dog actually wants to meet the human.1
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