Not sure if anyone recalls the excellent wildlife documentary about the wild dogs of Africa - the Cape Hunting Dogs?

In it, one injured dog was basically looked after by the rest of the group. Not only would they slow their movements for it, but they ensured it was fed, had company and was not left behind for any significant period of time (ie, hardly ever).

In time this dog became well again and the injuries mended. The dog was only able to get back to its strength and survive due to the care of the family group it was with.

As far as I recall, this dog didn't have any special standing in the group either - it was just one of many.



Wys
x

Goodness----the labs still pee as close to the ground like a bitch as they can! They are now 14mths old. They are entire.

We reckon it is partly because they live in a group with two strong males---one very strong confident one who is unneutered and one strong neutered one.

rune

Human communications are pretty blunt. And still we misunderstand each other.
Dgs communicate on levels we have no experience of- including scent, posture, urination, movement and eye contacts. Yet still we insist we know why dogs do what they do!

I challenged this idea that dogs are unpredictable wild and dangerous creatures who would savage a friend for no apparent reason bcause it`s not true.
A dog is an animal. They don`t have Right and Wrong. There are no `Nice` dogs and Bad` dogs. Their behaviour is always explicable. Just not in our terms, by our rules.

Dogs are not hairy humans! If a horse kicked you you wouldn`t say he was `naughty`. You`d take care he couldn`t do it again and resolve not to walk up behind a horse again.
If a dog starts a fight with another dog it`s not because he`s not a `nice, stable` dog. It`s for some reason that seems perfectly reasonable to the dog.

A GSD bitch I fostered once headed purposefully towards another when out on a walk who started to limp. It was pretty obvious she was going to put him out of his misery. There was no animosity, and when he`d had a rest and stopped limping she ignored him. She was not a vicious dog. She was trying to help the progress of the pack by eliminating a problem. In the same way a whelping bitch will kill puppies who aren`t `right` or if threatened. It may not be `nice` but it`s natural.
The question is meaningless IMO.

I ment to say about the gang of dogs going for the ones that were showing signs of submissions
Could it not have been that some of the other dogs where showing some signs of their planned agression the 'submissive dogs' saw these signs and were trying to diffuse the situation by giving calming signals but the agressors were not appeased by them and attacked anyway


That is so funny (and sad) people thinking you were causing the fights.
as a new dog owner I was defering to the older ones and bowing to their experience when they said something about dog behaviour - unfort I am now seeing that the average dog owner really cannot see what is going on! That is so worrying! Guess I will just have to trust my instinct more.

Yes I think I saw that - or something like it
Really the views people have of wolves and wild dogs seems to be totaly flawed but they like to believe that they are living on a constant knife edge to see who is going to battle its way to the top position
When the real life situation seems far removed from that

Interesting topic. I was thinking about this last weekend when we were at a fun show. Lots of dogs milling around, & passing each other. The lady near me had a GSD bitch who if a dog came too close growled & then hid, but all the dogs ignored her. Virtually all the dogs tended to ignore each other or wanted to greet with friendly gestures yet when one short haired pointer came past over half the dogs lunged at her agressively. I saw the same thing happen 3 times, same dog & owner. THen she came by with what I thought was the same dog,Every dog ignored it. When I spoke to her in the ring, as we were in the same class I found it was not the same dog. I'd love to know why the one dog was bullied by so many dogs while a, to my eyes, identical dog doing the same things was ignored. Incidentally the similarity was becajse they were mother & daughter, the younger one being the one bullied.

This is Inka in 1 senario, meets an off lead terrier type, mustv'e been about 10 inches tall, bloomin thing started biting Inka, Inka was calm had a sniff, the dog was literally hanging off Inkas throat, Inka lay down in submission, the dog continued its attack, bite bite bite after bite, now by this time I had had enough and said to the lady could you get your dog please, she replied its ok, I said aye, ok cause its not your dog getting bitten, well at that Inka jumped up and pinned this wee thing to the ground, well I have never seen anyone move so fast, she ran to save her dog Inka didn't do anything, was just making sure the wee bissom couldn't bite him, as I got up to him I said you took your time, you should have done that before the wee beggar bit you !
I think Inka doesn't read dog language at all, he has always been the same, he thinks agressive dogs are playing...
He has been nutered since 11 months, yet believes hes intact especially with younger intact males he will pin them as if to show hes the boss, never bites, just uses his weight to pin them
I tell you he is a hard one to figure out

Out of interest, do you know how old the younger dog was? I just wonder if she was a teenager..other dogs do seem to struggle with teenagers sometimes?

I believe she was just coming up to two. Interesting I never thought about her age being a factor.

I noticed when we had adolescent pups in the house that other dogs responded to them differently once the hormones started fizzing...and I have especially noticed it with Cosmo for some reason. IT has only been in the last 2/3 months that other dogs have stopped seeing him as a humping target...I am convinced it is an age thing. He will be 2 this month. I suppose with it being a bitch it could also be tied to her seasons? Not very 'up' on bitches though!

Absolutely not! As I explained, the reason for the escalation was because the other dogs weren't taking any notice of the warning. The handler error in this case was in letting the dogs be exposed to 'bad mannered' dogs. It didn't take many instances of a warning getting ignored by the other dog for our girl to simply stop warning.

I've learned my lesson. If my dog growls at another dog just once I take action. That might be avoiding the dog/situation in future, or teaching my dog to let me handle the situation.

A lot of people say that it's fine to let a dog growl but for the reasons explained I think this can be a huge mistake. Your dog is growling because it's unhappy. So protect it rather than leave the poor dog to cope on it's own!!!! Even if your dog is behaving correctly you can't trust other dogs to respond in an appropriate way. And if your dog isn't good at doggy communication there's a very good chance of it getting into trouble.

Yes, this is absolutely true. It was never a real attack, but rather a very serious warning. Typically, I'd be working with my dog and her full attention would be on me. A lab (almost always labs) would come over and I'd see my little dogs eyes dart between me and the lab and then she'd just lunge, snarling and even chasing the lab a short distance. She'd then pin it down snarling. So there were signs if you were watching, but not signs or warnings to the dog that was about to be attacked. I'd call her off and she'd be her normal self instantly. But it worked - it got rid of the lab. It happened half a dozen times in total. My dog never drew blood but occasionally she had a tiny nick.

However, what would have happened had she done this to your Mia? Mia would fight back, and I think my girl would have stood her ground.

The problem with my girl was nothing really, but because of what happened to my friends dog I took it seriously. We consulted a behaviourist. I was quite taken aback by some of her recommendations and didn't take them on board at first. But she did tell us that a lot of problems are a result of well intentioned owners hell bent on socialising. I'm coming around to a lot of her ideas and suggestions. We no longer go to the busy dog-filled park that our dogs loved as puppies. Now that they're adults they simply don't want to be bumping into so many dogs. They've got each other for play and they really are happier just meeting a few dogs now and then. It took me a while to accept that as people bang on about the importance of socialisation so much. I think moderation is the key and if you have a problem then choose your dog's friends carefully.

There were always signs if you were watching closely enough. But when I say no warning I mean the dog didn't growl a warning first or use body language to say "get lost" to the other dog. In fact the other dog was typically taken totally by surprise as they weren't even focussing on their attacker. The dog's intention was to get hold of the other dog (probably as a warning rather than with an intent to kill - but the dog's way of getting rid of the other dog was to physically attack it). If the other dog fought back then you had a big problem.

No, that doesn't really fit. A typical scenario would be that perhaps 8 - 10 dogs would be chilling out. Perhaps one playing fetch with it's owner, one chewing a stick, a couple wandering about. You get the picture. One of the 'victim' dogs that loved to play with the others would start a game of chase with one other dog. The other dogs would ignore. Then occasionally the dogs playing chase would get over excited and the timid dog would start demonstrating a bit of submissive behaviour. This would cause a couple of other dogs to instantly join in the chase. Others would stand around barking like kids in the playground shouting "Fight, fight" (my two were bad for doing this). Within seconds all the dogs that had previously been chilling out were picking on this one dog. Still just play I guess, but all focussed around this poor little timid dog. It was the dog's fear/submissiveness that seemed to provoke the pack behaviour.