Leader of the Pack?

This is going to be quite a long post and I apologise if I bore you, just hit the back button and ignore me.

I just need to get this off of my chest and could think of no better place to do it. I am interested in your opinions which I value and respect.

As you may know I have recently added Barney, a 9 week old Stafford puppy to my family. My family now consists of me and my Dad who I have moved in with after the death of my Mum last year and his Heart Op so that I can look after him (mainly in the Kitchen).

My Dad needs and loves walking for exercise after the Op and, having owned three Staffords over the years, thought this would give him a focus and a friend on his walks. He agreed.

With my previous dogs, in my younger years, I was quite firm, never violent or physically punish them, but firm and they saw me as the "leader of the pack" I am sure. To the extent that they would react to various looks and grunts I would do/make without me having to say anything. This seemed to make everyone's life easy and happy including the Dogs. Never needed to shout at them or anything.

Now, with the new Puppy, and with me mellowing with age and becoming a complete wimp and softy, and with reading posts on this site, I decided that training be positive reinforcement alone. I have seen many posts here that do not like Cesar Whatshisface's methods of the owner becoming leader of the pack, so I deliberately tried to avoid becoming so.

Ok, Barney is great and very clever, picks things up quite well. Training via positive reinforcement was progressing but very slowly, particularly with biting/pulling trouser legs (especially with Dad) etc. but he is so young this is to be expected.

The other night something happened unintentionally. I had Barney on the Bed playing when he peed. OK, my fault. I did not react, just put him down and tidied up.

Next night, same thing only this time I was a little further away and dived toward Barney shouting no and swearing (more at my own stupidity) and putting him down. Barney then run off to the Bathroom where we have paper that he uses ALL the time and finished his Pee. Again, I said nothing as it was my fault.

However, the dive and swearing appears to have had an effect. He was wary of me for a couple of hours and I had to regain his trust.

However, it now appears that he sees me as leader of the pack and when he is mouthing / nipping me during play or whatever, he has learnt bite inhibition and to stop when I say "enough". He is far more obedient with me without me having to raise my voice in any way, follows me everywhere, and stops when I say no (almost).

However, my Dad is still dancing around the room with Barney hanging off of his Trouser leg ignoring his shouts of "No" and "Leave" and trying to enact all the other methods of stopping this that I had told him to do after reading them here. If I am in the room and say "Barney, enough" he stops almost immediately.

The leader of the pack thing, although quite by accident, really has seemed to make the relationship between Barney and myself very close and we seem to enjoy and understand each other much better.

Should the leader of the pack theory be encouraged? Discuss........lol

Interested to know what you guys think.

Personally I don't like/use CM pack leader techniques. A technique that has been discredited, I think Barney's new found behaviour is out of fear, because of your reaction, he's fearfully trying to please you IMO. It's not something I use nor would I advocate pack leader methods.

Also a personal preference but I don't go in for all that "leader of the pack" stuff. I find consistency, patience and yes, when needed a firm "enough" will do the trick. Barney is still very young, so consistency is going to be the main thing with him.

This is something that comes up quite often, and whilst harsh and aversive methods DO most definitely work and much quicker than more positive methods, as Hayley has mentioned it's through fear, which is a horrible way to learn. In my experience, every dog requires a slightly different way of training. I do not agree with "pure positive" training, I believe that this is just as dangerous as dominance training and that there MUST be consequences for all actions, whether that is "good" or "bad" reaction.

I am going to use a lot of quotes here as I honestly couldn't explain pack theory in a better way myself, these quotes have come from a book written by Patricia McConnell, an applied animal behaviourist and dog trainer who also has a PHd in Zoology and human psychology. She specialises in aggression.

"Forcing dogs into submission and screaming in their face is a great way to elicit defensive aggression. It makes sense that a dog would bite, or at least threaten to, in this context. Within their social framework, you're acting like a lunatic. Not only that, but a mature wolf would never attack a puppy that already had something in his mouth. He might growl at a puppy to warn him off an object lay between them, but once the puppy had it in his mouth, the adult wolf would let him keep it. Mature wolves are amazingly tolerant of puppies. Besides, wolves do a lot of other things that we have no reason to emulate."

"Four reasons not to alpha roll your dogs; dogs aren't wolf replicates in the first place (they evolved from village/street dogs who didn't even live in packs,) wolves don't use alpha rollovers themselves, the action elicits defensiveness and aggression and it also teaches your dog to mistrust you."

"A good hypothesis is that although social status is highly relevant to dogs, it's much less of an obsession with them than it is with wolves. Dogs are more like juvenile wolves than adult ones, and young wolves are less interested in social hierarchies than adults are."

"Even within the category of our house dogs, I suspect that when we finally get around to doing some good, rigorous research on their social system, we'll find different levels of importance put on status depending on how the dogs lived. So we need to be careful when we talk about the social behaviour of dogs, because the same dog can act differently depending on her environment."

"Understanding social status is particularly important because misunderstanding what "dominance" means has led to appallingly abusive behaviour. (Dominance is often mistaken for aggression.) So much old-fashioned obedience training could be summarised as, "Do it because I told you to, and if you don't, I'll hurt you.""

"If dominance is not the same as aggression, then what is it? As first used in the study of animal behaviour decades ago, the term dominance described a relationship between two animals. Dominance was referred to as "priority access to preferred, limited resources." nothing less, nothing more."

"The aspect of dominance that's important to dog owners is the social freedom that comes with it. Dogs who are status-seeking and who see themselves as high up in the social order feel the freedom to touch you and solicit petting when they feel like it but will warn you off for taking such social liberties yourself. (But be careful about assuming that social status always explains this behaviour. Some dogs behave this way when they are in pain.)

"Social status isn't always just about the most powerful individual's taking charge, for hierarchies are more complicated than that. High-status individuals are often dependent on the support of others in the group and can't maintain their position without it. As we all know. even high-status humans can forget themselves and lose their power by overreaching their boundaries."

I don't use threats with Biscuit. I do use short, firm corrections such as no, leave, off, go to bed etc. But also sing song, happy commands such as come, sit, stay, lie down etc etc. Biscuit was a very mixed up dog when she first came to me and didn't have a clue about life. She's a bossy, fiery dog with complete lack of socialisation. I was informed by a trainer to assert myself over her to reign in her aggression and it terrified her, it didn't work, she took all of her hard, repressed feelings out (from me being too firm with her) on everybody else but me because she was scared of me. I don't want that from my dog. We have a lot of respect for eachother and more importantly she trusts me to lead her through a very complicated world. She is very obedient through choice, and is now a much more confident and settled dog.

Rachel33 wrote:This is something that comes up quite often, and whilst harsh and aversive methods DO most definitely work and much quicker than more positive methods, as Hayley has mentioned it's through fear, which is a horrible way to learn. In my experience, every dog requires a slightly different way of training. I do not agree with "pure positive" training, I believe that this is just as dangerous as dominance training and that there MUST be consequences for all actions, whether that is "good" or "bad" reaction.

I am going to use a lot of quotes here as I honestly couldn't explain pack theory in a better way myself, these quotes have come from a book written by Patricia McConnell, an applied animal behaviourist and dog trainer who also has a PHd in Zoology and human psychology. She specialises in aggression.

"Forcing dogs into submission and screaming in their face is a great way to elicit defensive aggression. It makes sense that a dog would bite, or at least threaten to, in this context. Within their social framework, you're acting like a lunatic. Not only that, but a mature wolf would never attack a puppy that already had something in his mouth. He might growl at a puppy to warn him off an object lay between them, but once the puppy had it in his mouth, the adult wolf would let him keep it. Mature wolves are amazingly tolerant of puppies. Besides, wolves do a lot of other things that we have no reason to emulate."

"Four reasons not to alpha roll your dogs; dogs aren't wolf replicates in the first place (they evolved from village/street dogs who didn't even live in packs,) wolves don't use alpha rollovers themselves, the action elicits defensiveness and aggression and it also teaches your dog to mistrust you."

"A good hypothesis is that although social status is highly relevant to dogs, it's much less of an obsession with them than it is with wolves. Dogs are more like juvenile wolves than adult ones, and young wolves are less interested in social hierarchies than adults are."

"Even within the category of our house dogs, I suspect that when we finally get around to doing some good, rigorous research on their social system, we'll find different levels of importance put on status depending on how the dogs lived. So we need to be careful when we talk about the social behaviour of dogs, because the same dog can act differently depending on her environment."

"Understanding social status is particularly important because misunderstanding what "dominance" means has led to appallingly abusive behaviour. (Dominance is often mistaken for aggression.) So much old-fashioned obedience training could be summarised as, "Do it because I told you to, and if you don't, I'll hurt you.""

"If dominance is not the same as aggression, then what is it? As first used in the study of animal behaviour decades ago, the term dominance described a relationship between two animals. Dominance was referred to as "priority access to preferred, limited resources." nothing less, nothing more."

"The aspect of dominance that's important to dog owners is the social freedom that comes with it. Dogs who are status-seeking and who see themselves as high up in the social order feel the freedom to touch you and solicit petting when they feel like it but will warn you off for taking such social liberties yourself. (But be careful about assuming that social status always explains this behaviour. Some dogs behave this way when they are in pain.)

"Social status isn't always just about the most powerful individual's taking charge, for hierarchies are more complicated than that. High-status individuals are often dependent on the support of others in the group and can't maintain their position without it. As we all know. even high-status humans can forget themselves and lose their power by overreaching their boundaries."

I don't use threats with Biscuit. I do use short, firm corrections such as no, leave, off, go to bed etc. But also sing song, happy commands such as come, sit, stay, lie down etc etc. Biscuit was a very mixed up dog when she first came to me and didn't have a clue about life. She's a bossy, fiery dog with complete lack of socialisation. I was informed by a trainer to assert myself over her to reign in her aggression and it terrified her, it didn't work, she took all of her hard, repressed feelings out (from me being too firm with her) on everybody else but me because she was scared of me. I don't want that from my dog. We have a lot of respect for eachother and more importantly she trusts me to lead her through a very complicated world. She is very obedient through choice, and is now a much more confident and settled dog.

Very well put. I don't agree with leading by fear or the pack mentality either. It may be a faster method but Suki is our companion and we don't want her to listed out of fear but to do so out of respect and trust. Took us a longer time but it was well worth it.

Well said Rachel
Lula is a member of the family and i would not want her to fear any of us. some methods just take longer to work and you have to figure out what works best for you.

Dogs don't see us as part of 'the pack' so you can never be leader, and these kind of theorys just train and control through fear which can never be a good thing!

Positive reinforcement for me all the way   

Well answered, as usual, Rachel

Interesting replies as I expected.

I think I should re-iterate I did not shout directly at Barney. The situation arose unexpectedly and I did not berate him in any way whatsoever.

I did not intend to impose the "leader of the pack" theory and do not agree with Cesar whateverhisname is. (Only saw a program once and switched off because I did not like it or him).

I am very pleased to report that Barney is far from scared of me as I would not want this. His behaviour since the incident confirms without doubt that he does not fear me (little git lol).

Please do not get me wrong, I just tried to be honest and explain the situation exactly as it happened. If I believed in training by fear I do not believe that I would have posted this.

I regretted the event, even though it really wasn't as bad as it seems to have come across and that is probably why I had to get it off my chest.

I knew you people here would be fair and hope you do not misconstrue what I was saying and judge me wrongly.

I am all for positive reinforcement but when you say no, you have to FEEL no as well.

I remember when R peed in my living room one too many times when I was housetraining him and I became very angry. He noticed. He never peed in the living room again. I've never been violent but, yes, very occasionally I do get cross because some of the things he does for "fun" are not that funny for me.

I think positive training, with a stern zero tolerance for repetitive bad behaviour. I do think dogs need to know what is not allowed, sometimes. That includes running into traffic, chewing up the house, jumping up on people - all things that could have big repercussions for the dog.

This is what I think Barney's improved behaviour is based on Rupert. He seemed to understand that I was angry even though nothing was really directed at him.

He is still pushing all the boundaries that he should be pushing which assures me he does not fear me, but seems to appreciate that I have feelings too lol and that there are limits beyond which I get upset. He hates it when I sulk with him lol.

They absolutely need to know when no means no, I don't like to use it very often as I feel it invalidates it but it is reserved for something very naughty or dangerous! I try and use leave, wait, oi!! etc, the rest of the time