Dominance vs Unruly Behavior: Great Short Resource On Conditioning

cezieg

http://drsophiayin.com/philosophy/dominance/?/dominance.php

I came across this great page and figured I would share it with the rest of you. I know there are a few members out there who have also recently acquired *their* first personal dog. I feel this really helps with making some things sink in with understanding vs knowing the concept, but not completely enough to know how to describe it.

There are a lot of examples for troublesome behaviors that at first glance can be taken as aggressive/"out of control"/"dominant", followed by conditioning methods and why they work.

Also a great page to share with friends or family whose only dog knowledge has come from what they've seen on tv (which is probably The Dog Whisperer).

Losech

What a great page! Thanks for sharing this.

jellyfish

thats such a good read.

I just look at people and think how stupid they are when they say their dog is trying to dominate them by, for example, "bringing a toy over to play ". MY VET TECH TOLD ME THAT. How sad. Toki just wants to play, and that is his way of communicating, of asking me to play with him. If that means my dog is out of control and dominating because he brings a toy to my lap, then so be it. I like it.

(her arguement was the dog was telling me when to play, trying to control what I do, letting me know that he is in charge and is trying to dominate me with the toy. can you believe that bullshit?!)

BradA1878

I'm a huge fan of Dr. Yin's work.

shibamistress

thats such a good read.

I just look at people and think how stupid they are when they say their dog is trying to dominate them by, for example, "bringing a toy over to play ". MY VET TECH TOLD ME THAT. How sad. Toki just wants to play, and that is his way of communicating, of asking me to play with him. If that means my dog is out of control and dominating because he brings a toy to my lap, then so be it. I like it.

(her arguement was the dog was telling me when to play, trying to control what I do, letting me know that he is in charge and is trying to dominate me with the toy. can you believe that bullshit?!)

That sucks! Haven't they ever heard of invitations? Of asking? That's what Toki is doing! So annoying.

I spent the weekend with some friends who do the whole dominance bs and aversive training (prong collars with their dogs--and the 15 year old has a collapsing trachea, which they claim is "just what happens" to old dog, and I thought no, that's what happens to dogs you use a prong collar on for 15 years!) Anyway, their dogs couldn't do anything! The rottie of course adapted to it, and probably doesn't know anything else, but I thought it was pretty sad seeing these dogs who basically are in down stays all the time, except for the their walks, and aren't allowed to do any normal dog behavior, like inviting play....

UGH.

(Sorry, that's a digression, but it was really sad. And one of the guys wants an Akita, and I just said very bluntly, you won't get this kind of slavish behavior--that he calls focus--out of an Akita and you won't be able to use these training methods on an Akita).

So yes, I LOVE the link!

ttddinh

Thanks for sharing!

LoboSpam

A good read! Thanks for posting. Before I got a dog I always thought most of the struggles with a dog was with him trying to "dominate" you. Now that I actually have a dog, dominance has never been an issue (fortunately). I found that it was almost always the dog trying to outsmart me, and/or being bored/restless.

BradnJess

Good read, Dr. Yin explains positive reinforcement very cleary yet simply in her model. Also liked the cautions for inadvertently rewarding undesirable behaviours. Did have to chuckle though, 2-3 pages discussing negative affects of punishment and then she lays out a nice simple model for positive training methods in 2 paragraphs!!

cmpteki

Great little read. Thanks for sharing!

@BradnJess - Based on your profile pic, Argos is looking fantastic!