Pack Mentality and Shock Training

When I sat down at my computer today to write this blog I did not have an idea in my head of what it was I wished to speak about. My phone rang as I was sitting here pondering my lack of subject. (In order for this to make sense you must understand that I run my own business. I am a dog whisperer. I take dogs and turn them into good canine citizens. I may not be as good as Cesar Milan, but I get the job done just the same.)

So anyway I answered the phone, it was a prospective client with a dog problem. I get these calls all the time, after all it is my profession. What was different about this call was the dog owners attitude. She wanted my help, but she wanted it done her way. Let me say this up front I DO NOT nor will I ever advocate the use of torture devices to train animals. I do not believe in the use of shock collars for any reason. Sure if you consistently shock an animal every time it behaves badly the bad behaviour will stop. What you will get as an end result however is an animal that obeys out of fear. This is never a good outcome. The majority of dogs that turn on their owners are dogs that were raised to fear punishment. A dog like this may obey but it will be waiting for the tables to turn. Some day when you least expect it the dog will become aggressive.

We as a society have been raised to believe that dogs are just dumb animals. If we study the social structure of a dog pack we realize that dogs are far from stupid. Each member of a dog pack has his place in the pack. The most mentally balanced dog will always lead the pack. As dogs are naturally pack animals, any group of dogs that lives together will eventually form a pack structure. If there are no other dogs in the home the pack structure is formed with the humans that live with the dog. If the dogs owners do not understand pack mentality problems will arise. When problems arise owners usually do one of two things, they either rehome the animal and pass the problems, on or they resort to training methods that only make the problem worse, such as the use of shock collars to correct unwanted behaviour.

As previously stated these methods appear to work, but do they really solve the problem? In my experience the answer is no they do not.

We have touched on the subject of pack mentality, now lets examine it in a little more depth. The alpha dog in any pack is always the most mentally balanced dog. In most cases the alpha is male. People always seem to think the pack leader is the strongest most aggressive dog in the pack. This is not the case. A dog pack will not follow an unstable leader, and an aggressive dog is definitely unstable. The pack leader is always the most calm assertive dog in the pack.

We as humans bring dogs into our homes and expect them to act like humans. We expect them to follow our rules despite the fact that they don't speak our language. Most of us never bother to sit down and figure out how our canine companions view the world we just automatically expect them to behave according to our wishes. Just as you can not take a foreigner (someone not native to your home country who does not speak the language) and expect them to understand your instructions in a language they do not understand, you can not expect a dog to know what you want from it unless you make your wishes clear.

When we choose to share our lives with dogs we must become the pack leader. We must lead them into proper behaviour. A dog that has no pack leader will try to become the pack leader themselves. What you have on your hands then is a dog that thinks it is in charge. When this happens no amount of screaming or yelling, no use of shock collars and other torturous devices will change the behaviour of the dog. The only solution is to step up to the plate and become the calm assertive pack leader your dog is searching for.

While use of shock collars and other inhumane methods may get the behaviour you are striving for the behaviour will be born out of fear and the animals spirit will be broken. What you will create is an unpredictable, unbalanced canine.

If you were a smoker and I said to you "you have to quit" and every time you think of lighting a cigarette this collar I am going to put around your neck will shock you, you would quit smoking, but you will have quit out of fear and not desire to end a bad habit. If the collar is removed so is the deterant. So it is with dogs.

If your dog keeps leaving your yard and you decide to use a shock collar to make him stop, you will never be able to remove that collar. There will never come a time when you can remove the shock collar and have the animal stay in your yard. Dogs are not stupid they figure out very quickly that the thing you put around their neck is responsible for the pain. That fact will keep them in the yard when the collar is in place. Remove the collar and you remove the deterant. The dog will go back to the previous behaviour of leaving the yard.

Torture does not create a permanent solution, calm assertive pack leadership will solve the problem indefinitely.If you are going to share your home and life with a dog the ability to be calm and assertive is essential to happily living with your pet. Understanding pack mentality goes a long way towards living harmoniously with your dog. Your dog has needs too, if you ignore those needs you get an unbalanced dog. An unbalanced dog will develop issues. How you deal with those issues determines the quality of life you have with your dog.

When a human being is expecting their first child they read everything they can get their hands on about pregnancy childbirth and parenting. It is after all a major milestone in life and we want to be armed with as much information as possible. When considering adding a pet to the family however, most people do no research at all. This seems odd considering that a committment to an animal can span eighteen years or more. We will research what we can expect to deal with when having a child, a committment that will last a lifetime, but we do no research on what to expect from the breed of dog we have chosen to share our life and home with, a committment that should last for the life of the animal. This tells me that as a society we have values we put on human life. We research parenting because we don't want to make any mistakes that cause our child harm. It also tells me we as a society do not value all life the same way. We view pets as dumb animals. We make no lifetime committments to our pets, if they do not act as we believe they should we pass them on or use methods we would never dream of using on a human being in order to train them.You wouldn't torture your children to make them act the way you wish so why is this a feasible way of training an animal?