A dog's behavior is not set in stone, just as we can rehabilitate and retrain a dog with undesirable behavior, so too can it's new human home have an influence on the dog in such a way that it's behavior can change from what appeared to be a calm, sociable dog to one with a quite different personality. I prefer to use the term 'undesirable' over words like 'bad' because 'bad' implies that an animal is that way by choice or of his own making rather than as a result of human interaction. By using 'undesirable' I am talking about behavior that a dog adopts as a result of living with people that we would seek to change, for the good of everyone.

 Why does this happen , people ask, why wouldn't a dog remain the same from one home to the next?

Would my own pack behave in the same way if  placed in the hands of a stranger? Well the truth is they could go either way, try to take over and become unruly, or be even more calm and submissive than they are with me.

   The answer lies in the leadership that a dog gets  in his or her current family or pack. When the stability of this changes, then so too can our dogs behavior. A calm submissive friendly dog in one home, could for example, change into an anxious, challenging and aggressive dog  in another.  How often do we hear people say " he never used to behave that way"  or "she used to be so sweet with other dogs" you could go on and on.

 Why would this happen?  To see how these changes can occur and what we can do to prevent them or reverse them if we have taken on an unfriendly or aggressive dog, let's look at it from a dogs point of view.

 As we know, all dogs are born to live as a pack member, they are not meant to be solitary animals, life is way too hard, food difficult to find and you will never stand a chance of passing on your genes unless you join a pack. So then for a pack to work successfully there has to be a leader, one who sets rules, boundaries, makes decisions such as when to leave the den, when to eat, who is allowed in to the pack, who mates and so on. Leadership is determined within a pack or when an outsider tries to join. A leader is only as good as he is convincing, any chink in the armor would soon be noticed by another dog with dominant traits and a challenge takes place.

 OK , we all know most of this, but how does it directly apply to our own families? Let's keep thinking dog. When a dog joins your family, whether from another family, shelter, pet shop or other means, they are looking to find where they can fit in, they will certainly want to, for all the reasons stated above. How the new dog's arrival will be greeted will depend on the pack leader and his or her ability to show good, calm assertive and trustworthy leadership. The new dog will be looking to accept or challenge the pack leader or pack members, depending on what kind of personality the newcomer is. (submissive or assertive)   The pack leader's ability to keep control in this situation is critical, respect can be won or lost if they are not seen to be dealing with the situation well. If the newcomer walks in and attempts to challenge or become aggressive with existing members, then it's up to the pack leader alone to step in and show authority, remaining calm but assertive. A pack leader who is anxious or loud is clearly not up to the job and won't get the desired response or respect. Equally if another dog in the pack steps in to seek to remove or drive away the newbie with aggression, then the leader is clearly not an effective one, maybe not leader at all, maybe this dog, is in fact pack leader, or is challenging for the role.

 So if we apply this thinking to our own family, we can see that by offering a new dog good leadership while at the same time making sure that our existing dogs know the order of the pack, it doesn't necessarily matter whether we know much of a dog's past, we can help him to be a good calm, submissive family member, whilst ensuring that our own dogs accept him. It's we, the humans, who determine these things, not the dogs.  It's our job to maintain order and decide who is allowed into our family. On this theme it's also our job to be ever watchful of  our dogs behavior changing, even when we've owned them for years and explore why those changes, even subtle ones, are happening.

  If you don't take the role of leader with calm confidence, then one of your dogs will, it's not a dog turning bad, it's a dog's way, his innate way of survival. Who is going to be pack leader is up to you, most dogs would actually rather be followers and even the most dominant, assertive dogs can be shown good leadership, they just need more convincing.  I think we can all see the importance of taking on the task, it's one of responsibility, one of protector, provider and  disciplinarian, it's not fair or right to allow one of our dogs to take on the role.  So to answer the question "how good is that dog" we need to ask "how good is that human".

 

                                        Kim Barnett