Take my dog-a 3 year old female Australian Shepherd (Daisy). Daisy has a nasty habit-she likes to sleep in the bedroom. I don’t want her on the bed, and neither does my wife. Anyway, I put a child gate up in the doorway…and Daisy will whine and cry-until one of us opens the gate! Or if I’m watching TV-Daisy will come and shove her face in my hand-then whine, and jump up onto the sofa (she likes to be scratched). How did the dogs learn to get us (the “Masters” ) to do their bidding? Do mother dogs respond to their puppie’s cries? Or do they ignore them? I must say, Daisy is an expert-she will whine and cry till she gts what she wants! WHO is the servant and who is the master here? 
Quincy does the same thing. My dad, gonzomax, and I are so incredibly beaglewhipped.
As I type, Quincy is barking and looking adorable so he can get log. He goes bonkers over log. A true logophile if I ever saw one. He gets log whenever he wants. He barks at you when you’re sleeping so you’ll sleep-open the covers so he can hop in. Before we got the puppy, Nordberg, he’d pass on his daily walk if he didn’t like the weather. He wouldn’t bother leaving bed.
I’m SO beaglewhipped.
You are actually training your dog through positive reinforcement. When she does a behavior (whining) you respond with a positive stimulus (attention or petting). If you change your response to a negative stimulus (No!) the behavior will change.
However, shepards are intelligent dogs that usually like to have a “job.” Now is a good time to teach your dog some tricks and positive behaviors (sit, down, heel, drop it, etc) to keep her mind active in a good way.
Aren’t you proud of me? I haven’t introduced similar cat behaviors!
Raising a dog and raising a toddler aren’t all that different, or so a trainer once told me. If you give a toddler what it wants every time it cries, you’re going to have a whiny, demanding child. Likewise, if you give in every time your dog cries, she’ll just keep on doing it because it gets results.
Here’s how to stop the whining: When she whines, say “quiet!” or “hush!” in a sharp, commanding tone of voice. If she goes silent, even for a moment, praise and reward her. Gradually lengthen the time she has to remain quiet before you reward her. (This command comes in handy in all sorts of situations.)
It’s natrual for a dog to whine when they’re seperated from their “pack.” I’ve always put the dog’s crate in my bedroom because of this. Most dogs are content if they can see you and hear what you’re doing. Correct her if she tries to hop up on the bed, and at night, lock her in the crate just so she doesn’t jump up there while you’re asleep. After a while, she’ll sleep very happily in her crate and won’t even try to get on the bed.
Whenever she bumps your hand for attention, pull your hand out of her reach and ignore her. if she jumps up beside you, get up and leave. When she’s being a good dog by playing quietly with her toys or just laying peacably on the carpet, call her to you and give her affection.
I buy that dog food but never the log. I’m afraid to try it now.
My dog drove me crazy today because she wanted to go to the dog park. I finally took her and she acted like a little brat and wouldn’t play with the other dogs. They have the dog park separated into under 35 lbs and over. I made the mistake of taking her to the big section a couple times and now she won’t play with the smaller dogs. We got in the small section and she just stood there and barked at me.
I spent the last two days making her a new dog bed. Actually I took her old bed apart and used it as a pattern and made her a new one. I was so thrilled with the way it turned out and she refuses to go in it now.
The cats taught them, secretly of course.
What many people fail to realise is that cats and dogs really are best buddies and all that animosity is just to lull us into a false sense of security.
I predict that within the next 100 years (or less) the world will be ruled by cats.
Dogs will be the new Gestapo…you have been warned!
I saw a special about dogs on the National Geographic channel and they said that the big reason we have domesticated the wild beast that is canine is because they tricked us into it!
Dogs are pretty smart. And cute. The smartest ones figured out that people had all the food, so they’d come around. And be cute for the people. And people gave them food. People let the smart cute ones hang around. The dogs did smart things like watching people’s faces/making eye contact - because the food always ended up there at the face. People found this to be even MORE endearing. People found this utterly delightful and started breeding the smart, cute canines and we ended up with scads of smart, cute domesticated little animals that we can dress up and put into carrier bags. The other dogs, the ones who ate people, they got to stay in the wild and hunt for their OWN food.
How humans became endeared to the aloof feline, I will never know. Perhaps it was some sort of male posturing - guys wanted to tame lions but it never panned out, so they found smaller cats and told people they had snagged baby lions.
Anyway, if you think your dog is manipulating you and is in charge of you don’t feel bad - it’s how they survive
I’d imagine cats started hanging around humans to catch the mice which fed on our scraps. There might have been selection towards a smaller feline because humans don’t want a tiger hanging around the village and if they were preying on small rodents, they’d need to be smaller, too.
[just guessing here]Didn’t cats begin their domestic relationship with humans as sacred creatures? I don’t remember hearing of domesticated cats until the Egyptians began to worship Bastet (embodied by a cat) in their temples. Since owning a cat would have been restricted to the upper and priestly classes, it probably became a status symbol to own one. [/jgh]
Our dog has four dog beds. One for the house, one for my husband’s work place, one for his car and one for my car. Our dog sleeps in our bed, and usually snags the primo spot between us to optimally possess the ideal quantity of blanket. Our dog has beguiled us into giving her spaghetti, one noodle at a time. (About three, and she’s full.)
It was going to be different, I swear. She was going to be one of those dogs that did not go on the couch, slept in her own bed, and never, ever got people food.
Good intentions are trumped by cute. Easily.
bolding mine.
Well, that’s your first problem. And I only say that half in jest. Aussies need a tremendous amount of time spent getting all that doggie energy out. They aren’t happy unless they have a job.
I have a mini-aussie, twice the energy of a standard, packed into a body half the size! 
I have this very cool toy called a “boomer” (a hard plastic ball originally designed as a horse toy, you can probably look it up online, but I discovered it wore her teeth down so I now use a small sized basketball instead). If you have a yard you’re halfway to solving the “give the aussie a job” problem. Aussies love to play soccer with the ball all by themselves, (the original self-exercising dogs), frisbees and “fly-ball” are other fun activities which will wear your dog out a bit.
Other than that, as almost everyone else has said, we teach them to control us. I’m no better than anyone else. I know how and what to do to discipline mine, I just don’t have the heart.
But keeping her busy does help a lot.
Does your dog do that weird ass "bumping’ thing? Daisy will come up to you, accept an ear scratch, and then turn around and present her ass to you! I’m told this is sheep-herding behavior…we find it funny!
Is she bumping the base of her spine (right above the tail) against you? There are a lot of nerve centers in that spot, and it really feels good to a dog to have that spot rubbed. Is it sexual? Probably. I’ve heard that that spot is stimulated when the male dog climbs on during mating. I don’t think they can actually “get off” on it, but they really seem to enjoy it.
Only one of my female dogs does the “bump.” The other doesn’t seem to be interested. But the one who likes it-- man, she’s intent. She’ll rub against any knee or elbow which is accessible, and she’s not picky with who does it, either. (She’s been known to try to “bump” guests, despite repeated “Bad dog!” comments.) Oddly enough, I’ve never seen her “bump” anything non-animate. She only wants to “bump” people.
Although “tricked us into it” is a bit strong wording, this is similar to my thought as well: natural selection may have played a very big part in dog domestication. The ones who best manipulated human beings were likeliest to survive to reproduce, and whatever genetic traits they had that contributed to their ability to control humans got passed along to the next generation. Sure, at the same time, humans were trying to breed them deliberately for certain features–but that’s only part of the picture. You can just as easily look at it from the other angle, that the dogs who were most successful at getting what they wanted from humans (including the safety and health necessary for reproduction) got what they wanted.
It’d be interesting to know whether dogs influenced human genetics. It seems to me that kids generally like fuzzy creatures that are smaller than them; this behavior is unlike the behavior of, say, juvenile rabbits. If this is true across human cultures, is it possible that humans have evolved to like dogs as well?
Daniel
No, it’s “I want my ass scratched” behavior and it’s common among all breeds.