Who is really in charge?
Dominance is a word that animal behaviourists talk about all the time and I’ve seen a few weird, funny and some really scary examples over the years of dominance gone wrong.
Romaine was dragged in to the middle of a very busy waiting room in Essex England one afternoon with one of her two large German shepherds. What a disaster — nurses quickly appearing from every doorway to restrain all the other dogs.
A very vocal and aggressive ‘‘Buba’’ (his name was always a clue) was trying to eat all the other dogs and Romaine was pretty much a ragdoll on the end of a very taut retractable lead. With luck, we managed to manoeuvre Buba in to a spare room and gradually the chaos subsided and everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief.
He was just in for his annual warrant of fitness and vaccination, but during the chat Romaine related the details of their sleeping arrangements.
She was sleeping on a camp stretcher in the lounge while the two dogs slept on the double bed because they wouldn’t let her in the bed. I tried to recommend a few ideas and maybe someone to help, but amazingly, Romaine was happy to carry on as usual.
Another not so funny example was poor old Mrs Mercer, who was trapped in her bath for over three hours by her two jack russells until her daughter happened to visit.
The dogs were on big time guard patrol and wouldn’t let Mrs Mercer step out of the bath for some bizarre reason. They had previously guarded various items of clothing or doorways but this was a new level of intimidation.
Cats aren’t exempt from unsociable behaviour either and some cats are certainly alpha cats. You know the ones, they sit on your lap, then their eyes change and they sink their claws into you for no reason.
But the two species are fundamentally different in that dogs are a pack animal and cats are inherently solitary.
The other important point is that certain breeds have certain traits and individuals within those breeds will have different personalities.
One big tip: Choose your animals breed carefully – some are pets, some are not. That said, a lot of other behaviours are learnt.
The principles are the same as for people. Children are happier when they know the acceptable boundaries of behaviour and feel confident, comfortable and safe within their family environment. Dogs are the same.
When a dog comes to live with you then your family becomes the pack. This is where dominance comes in. The furry friend needs to feel safe and comfortable – obviously.
But they also need to know where they stand in the hierarchy and that it isn’t about to change — consistency required. Most of their learnt behaviour is done between 8 and 16 weeks, which is called their socialisation period.
This is when you need to set aside some serious time and effort to get all those behaviours sorted out, teach them lots of things and expose them to lots of people, other pets and other environments.
In the early stages, another important point is that dogs like pleasing you because that is when they get praise or rewards. So they generally love obedience tasks or learning new tricks. Apart from the fact that a well-trained dog is such a huge pleasure to have, they love doing all those little tricks.
If you don’t give them some direction, they will just sort out some little behaviours of their own which may not be very desirable.
So the word dominance doesn’t need to be interchangeable with oppressive or dictatorial. It is just the hierarchy that is important
Your dog sleeping in or on the bed with you is your own choice, but one day, the tables may turn.