how to understand your dogs behavior

If you wish to understand your dogs behavior you need to have a basic understanding of dog Psychology.

Taking time to understand how your dog thinks will help you to gain more insight into your dogs behavior. This understanding will come in handy as you learn how to apply it's principals during your dog training sessions

Beginning dog Psychology

Psychology, especially the Psychology of dogs is a fascinating study. Learning to understand why a dog behaves and / or acts in a given way becomes truly remarkable, especially when you stop to consider their wolf ancestry. dogs (being pack animals like the wolf) have adapted their behavior to consider their human family as their pack. dogs live and die by pack order, and it is truly fascinating to consider how they have adapted to life with our families.

Through generations of living with humans as the dogs family pack, they have learned to obey our wishes. Careful dog training on the part of the human pack leader promotes a trusting bond with your dog. It is this bond that creates a sense of cooperation. The dog then learns that a given set of behaviors is desirable and such desirable behavior is rewarded.

Your dog is a descendant of the wolf

In order to understand dog psychology, you must first understand how wolves live in the wild. They live in family packs of two or more animals. They live by a strictly defined dictatorship system consisting of a dominant male and female and a hierarchy of lower ranking animals who all follow their pack leader.

The pack leader is considered the "Alpha member" of this system, and is almost always the biggest male in the pack. All of the other wolves in the family pack show their respect for the alpha leader and eagerly follow the rules he defines. They have the utmost respect for their alpha leader and in turn he is fair with his pack.

How wolf instincts dictate behavior in our dogs

There are many similarities between human social structure and a wolf pack structure. Both wolves and man divide up responsibilities in every day tasks. For example, when a wolf pack hunts the work as one cohesive unit. One animal determines the track while another may stand guard and another picks out the prey for the attack and kill. The alpha leader is always the first animal to feed, then when he is finished he will allow the other pack members to feed on his leftovers. As humans we also define the roles of other "lower ranking" family members, who buys and cooks the food, who clears the table, who washes the dishes and so on.

The hierarchy of the pack

When you bring a new dog into your household, he considers your family as his new pack. Every pack member contributes to the pack hierarchy. Your dog will be watching everyone's body language closely so that he can pick out who the alpha is and then try to figure how he fits in to his new pack.

In his quest to determine his rank within his new family pack, he will be paying careful attention to not only the physical size of each family member but also the tone and quality of their voice. He will also be watching to see how family members interact with each other on a day to day basis.

Becoming the Alpha

It is essential that an adult establish themselves as the pack leader. The sooner you are able to do this, the fewer behavioral problems you will see as time goes on.

You or someone else must be established as the alpha in order for your dog to have a clear understanding that they are ranked at the bottom of your family pack. All other human family members MUST be considered by the dog to hold a higher rank in his pack than he does.

If you introduce a new dog or puppy into your family pack, and they do not clearly recognize you as the leader they may feel the need to take on the pack leader role. This only leads to behavioral problems like aggression, dominance and destructive behavior. Your dog must see you or another adult as the dominant pack leader, and themselves at the bottom of the pack. This means that you must enforce that even the children carry a higher rank than the dog. A dog that believes that he holds a higher rank than the family children, may take it upon themselves to discipline a child... The only way a dog knows to discipline is with a bite, and we do not want our dog biting anyone, especially a child!

dogs may have a difficult time trying to understand how it is that they carry a lower rank than children in the household. They recognize that a child is smaller and not as strong as the adults in the household and notice that they depend on adults for a variety of things. dogs that do not have a clear picture of their family pack structure with them at the bottom of the pack may sometimes show aggression towards children and are capable of biting a child.

Through disciplined and fair training, you establish yourself and other family members as higher ranking members of your dogs pack. Once your dog sees himself as subordinate to every other family member he will be less stressed and calmer. There are many good quality dog training resources that can help you with this process.You can help your dog realize that his position is subordinate to other family members through good quality dog training. There are many quality resources that can help you through this process.