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jealous dog
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29-11-2016 9:15pm#1
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Aw look op, you lost your rag... It happens... And you're big enough to recognise that you lost your rag. Gwan out to her and give her some cuddles... You guys will be ok
Right. The problem itself. Just to start, the whole dominance thing has been disproven as an unlikely explanation as to why dogs do what they do. Instead, snarking between dogs is generally an argument over resources. If one dog hugely values a particular resource, she'll generally be prepared to use threatening behaviour to stop the other dog (or human) from taking that resource away. If being a bit of a bully works the first few times a dog tries it, it very quickly becomes the dog's go-to behaviour to resolve not just the initial problem, but more besides.
What resources do I mean? It's usually one or some from the following list: food, edible treats/bones/chews, water, owner attention, sleeping space and comfortable resting spots, toys, their own body and space around it, they've even been known to protect their own vomit
You can see from my non-exhaustive list that at least two are at play here, and both are very much intertwined: she wants to monopolise the attention and contact she's getting from you, and/or doesn't want the Yorkie disturbing her rest or sharing her "bed" (couch space). Does that make sense?
I couldn't figure out from your post, but was she already ensconced on the sofa when the Yorkie tried to jump up?
There needs to be some T+Cs attached to her being allowed up on the sofa. First of all, she should not be allowed use it as a bed unless you're there, and by your invitation only.
If she so much as looks sideways at the Yorkie when he approaches the sofa (and I'm willing to bet that she gives him hard stares, tenses up her body, maybe a low, throaty growl?), then she's off the sofa with a verbal warning. End of.
I'd be inclined to keep a light lead attached to her collar for a few weeks so that you can easily move her off the sofa quickly and without having to manhandle her or negotiate with her. The lead must only be attached when she's being supervised, for safety's sake).
Another option is to keep them both off the sofa for a few weeks, then start letting them back up again by invitation only. Yorkie first, her second, just so that she's not physically in a position to guard the sofa again. Whilst many a Yorkie will convincingly stand up for themselves, your fella is getting on, and there's probably a fair size disparity between them which doesn't help his confidence.
How would you see that panning out?
PS I've just noticed she's a Cocker x... Cockers are little demons for resource guarding, in my experience.0 -
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You defo need some rules... Indeed, before they get up on the sofa, she must be sitting on X spot away from the sofa, to allow himself space and time to jump aboard.
It may also help to do other exercises to teach her a bit more self control... Ask her to sit, tell her she's good, give the nearby Yorkie a second or two of attention, and as long as she stays sitting, come straight back to her with a small treat, praise and attention. If she gets up, stop everything and get her into the sit again on the same spot.
As she cops that you giving him attention results in her getting lots of nice stuff, you can start to stretch out the time you're attending to Yorkie.
A session with a good, qualified behaviourist would do no harm though... There is probably a bit of tweaking to be done to suit your particular dogs as individuals
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Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, dogs don't understand the nuances of fair treatment or not being jealous. It's unlikely this really has anything to do with her upbringing... Resource guarding is a perfectly natural behaviour, but that doesn't always sit well with us (despite the fact that we do it ourselves) 0
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Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, dogs don't understand the nuances of fair treatment or not being jealous. It's unlikely this really has anything to do with her upbringing... Resource guarding is a perfectly natural behaviour, but that doesn't always sit well with us (despite the fact that we do it ourselves)
Honestly she's still sulking, I'm on one couch with the yorkie and she's on another by herself. Every now and then she looks over at me with a guilty / sorry face.
If someone can pm me with a recommendation of a behaviourist instead of dog trainer I'd be grateful. I do love her just bit her bullying of my old man!0 -
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MayoSalmon wrote: »Resource guarding?!! Eh pack animals don't see their pack leader as a resource, it's dominant aggressive possessive behaviour. The fact that the OP has said that this has happened many times before leads me to believe that they should start reading up a little bit about dog behaviour and psychology and especially bits around how packs behaviour towards fellow pack members etc.
Also OP you were correct to address your dogs behaviour obviously not in the way you did however, again there are techniques to do this correctly etc
Hmmmm... Pack theory, dominance, and social climbing in dogs is accepted now by qualified behaviourists, who adhere to research-led analysis of behaviour, as being a myth. Ditto for the behavioural scientists, ethologists, geneticists, ecologists.
A bit of reading for yourself ...
http://www.apbc.org.uk/articles/caninedominance
http://www.apbc.org.uk/articles/why-wont-dominance-die
http://www.dogwelfarecampaign.org/why-not-dominance.php
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1558787808001159
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327604jaws0704_7
http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/14_12/features/Alpha-Dogs_20416-1.html
https://apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/dominance/
https://drsophiayin.com/philosophy/dominance/
https://positively.com/dog-training/myths-truths/the-truth-about-dominance/
Also, read Ray Coppinger's books and articles about how dogs actually evolved from wolves inclined to solitary life.
Also a great read which brings the mountains of recent (past 15 years) of scientific analysis into one book, John Bradshaw's "In Defence of Dogs".
Enjoy! 0 -
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MayoSalmon wrote: »Pack animals all display very similar traits not limited to Dominance, submission, and aggression
Dogs aren't pack animals.
They don't understand what an Alpha leader is.
They form loose groups in a feral setting which, the scientists have observed (cf Ray Coppinger, mentioned in my last post), the loose social structures of which are very much based on available resources, particularly access to fertile females.
Again, as per Coppinger's groundbreaking research, which in fairness is 20+ years old at this stage, the domestic dog evolved from wolves which themselves were genetically distinct in a behavioural sense, in that they were not pack/group-forming animals. They no longer needed the group structure required for co-operative hunting due to the ready food supply inadvertently offered to them by early human settlers... And they essentially domesticated themselves.
In any case, as you'll read in those links I posted, wolves themselves don't do dominance hierarchies, and don't have an Alpha leadership as it's widely understood by non-biologists. As a family-orientated species, their social structure is far more akin to a human family's, than it is too a dominance-based hierarchical system as seen in horses, elephants, chimpanzees etc.
So, to put it very simply, if wolves don't do dominance hierarchies, and dogs came from wolves genetically inclined to a more solitary way of life, it stands to reason that the domesticated dog simply doesn't exist within a dominance hierarchy, nor comprehend what pack leadership is. That's not my personal opinion, as you'll see when you take a read of the articles I've posted 0 -
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I'm a bit disappointed, op, that I went to a fair bit of trouble to offer practical help to you with your dogs, in the process explaining to you, and indeed providing numerous links on how interpreting one dog's aggressive behaviour towards another as "dominant" is a mistake, yet you still plough on to post that your last dog was dominant too... I'd have hoped that when someone would take time out of their day to help you, that you'd have at least made an effort to absorb the information and use it to relate to other situations too.
Frankly, I'm kinda sorry I bothered now 0 -
I'm a bit disappointed, op, that I went to a fair bit of trouble to offer practical help to you with your dogs, in the process explaining to you, and indeed providing numerous links on how interpreting one dog's aggressive behaviour towards another as "dominant" is a mistake, yet you still plough on to post that your last dog was dominant too... I'd have hoped that when someone would take time out of their day to help you, that you'd have at least made an effort to absorb the information and use it to relate to other situations too.
Frankly, I'm kinda sorry I bothered now
I'm sorry you feel that way, I have looked into the Links you provided and posted looking for advice which I am very grateful for and will act on. Just because I used the wrong term i.e dominant doesn't mean I'm not listening! It's a lot to take in but I'm doing my best. Thanks for taking the time. I'll bow out now in case I offended anyone else0 -
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MayoSalmon wrote: »Ah your just being pedantic now African wild dogs Canids are highly social carnivores that live in packs as do domesticated dogs but honestly that would be self evident if you had a couple of dogs.
Canids are highly social carnivores?
Really?
What about foxes?
Seriously, African Wild Dogs are a completely different species and their common ancestor with the domestic dog is a long, long, long way further back than the common ancestor of the wolf and dog. Trying to compare the social structure of the African Wild Dog to the domestic dog is pretty near to comparing the social structure of lions (a sociable, group-living cat) to tigers (a largely solitary cat).
I'm going to say this one more time as it seems you're ignoring the scientific evidence I have presented to you... Dogs evolved from wolves that themselves had evolved into non-pack animals. Dogs are not pack animals.Ask any Sheep farming about the local dogs forming packs when chasing down their flock.
I posted about this elsewhere last week, and if you'll permit me to once again use research-led evidence rather than supposition, DEFRA in the UK carried out an extensive survey of the facts and stats behind attacks on sheep. The majority of dog attacks on flocks is by single dogs acting alone. Of the remainder where there is more than one dog, the vast majority of attacks is by two dogs. Interestingly, it also found that most attacks were carried out by dogs that themselves belong to farmers.
Anyway. I digress. Even if you get a group of dogs in a big field with, say, a hare... What you get is a group of dogs running like eejits after the hare. There is no co-ordination, no planning, no team roles assigned between dogs. When two greyhounds are coursing a hare, do you think they're working together as a team? Of course not. It's me, me, me... All they're interested in is catching (turning) that hare for themselves.
Contrast that to a wolf hunt, and no doubt you've seen the documentaries... Highly organised, each family member with a role to play (blockers, chasers, ambushes etc), they deliberately move the herd of prey animals along so that they can pick out a weak one, and co-ordinate themselves to effectively bring it down.
The only evidence I've seen is that presented by Ray Coppinger and team (sorry for bringing him up again... It's just that he's the Charles Darwin of dog social behaviourThere is ample evidence of dogs forming social groups) whereby he describes temporary, unstable groups formed amongst feral dogs (he has studied feral "dump dogs" and village dogs all over the world... It's likely the way such dogs live mimics very closely how those ancestral solitary wolves lived) around mating time. There's nothing particularly co-ordinated or close about them. He'll tell you himself... The domestic dog and their ancestors are not pack animals. There is a tendency for non-biologists to see a group of animals together and to call this a "pack", but in the biological sense of the word, being a pack suggests a close-knit, co-ordinated, often family group which carries out every action they need to survive in a deliberate, considered way, from hunting to reproduction to self-preservation. As I've touched on above, these words do not describe what happens when you put a bunch of domestic dogs together. 0 -
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OP, please keep us updated. I have a 'pack'
of dogs here, 12 of my own, 1 foster and at the moment one paying guest for training/behaviourial issues. One of my dogs is a young eejit, jumps on the other dogs, wants to play all the time, sometimes goes too far with them. Usually I'll just remove him from the situation if it is getting out of hand, and no stress, but I also have an old, ill dog, he snapped at her the other night and whilst I reacted the same as I do with the other dogs, put him out of the room, inside I was livid because she's old and sick, its not fair. Thats my human reaction, just as yours was, and there's nothing wrong with that, if I see someone being treated unfairly, I react.
Mayosalmon, wolves actually live in family groups, so there is a hierarchy, but it is a parent/offspring one. The scientist that came up with the alpha theory has retracted it completely, it was done while he studied captive wolves, so would be similar to a human prison population being studied, and then that society being used as an example of the way that the whole of humanity lives.
As above, I have 12 dogs of my own living in the house, along with a long term foster dog, so yep lots and lots of experience of dogs interacting with each other. No alpha here, not even me sometimes one dog takes the lead in something, other times a different dog will. They are all working or retired working sled dogs, so they are used to working together as part of a team, some of them are definitely better at being lead dogs in harness, not all of them have the confidence to do that, I love watching how they all interact and they have taught me a huge amount about dogs and how they view the world. 0 -
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