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Location: UK
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 23
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Originally Posted by
Gnasher
Still haven't done the reading Wys, but I have got as far as printing the Abstract !! It's a start.
The point you make in your final paragraph is exactly my point, which is why for sure the researchers used dogs from the Rescue Home ... but it doesn't excuse or make up for the fact that this means the research is flawed.
The equivalent analogy would be David Mech ... instead of living for tens of summers on Ellesmere Island with wild wolves ... choosing to live in the enclosure with Shaun Ellis's wolves at Coombe Martin because it was easier and a darn site less hostile.
Gnasher, I've got to admire your persistence in your belief system, but I'll try to explain how I see it anyway...
If I get you right, you think that the research is flawed because of the choice of dog groups, but you can accept that:
a) feral dogs, with no human interaction (ie as close to wolf-like state as a dog could be), didn't have a pack hierarchy,
b) dogs in a rescue centre that were allowed to interact in a group (so not dog-dog aggression cases) over a 6 mth period (ie they weren't up for rehoming for some reason) didn't have a pack hierarchy,
Does that mean these rescue dogs with human-dog interaction issues are exactly the ones not suitable to use CM's techniques on, as they are 'unnatural' (just like those 'unnatural' feral carnivores), in that they are the ones that don't show pack hierarchy behaviour?
... and yet you're still sure that dogs in a real-life 'domestic' environment always have a pack hierarchy which includes humans - and it's not that they're adaptive enough to learn to fit in with you expectations, whatever they might be.
('Open your mind', as that guy said to Luke Skywalker)
By the way, I've never done any dominance/pack thing, we just have fun, but I am consistent and don't reward unwanted behavior, and my dogs seem to have adapted to that just fine too.
I reckon any problem dog punished often enough without it being able to work out why so as to avoid it, would be adaptive enough to give up doing anything that might attract attention to itself... and hey presto the problem behaviour is cured!
And so is the fun of having an actual dog, as it's so afraid of you (I've met and been bitten by one, and will never forget the look in it's eyes), that anyone with sense would have to be afraid of it.
But that's not a cure I would wish on anyone.