I’m not sure I want to see my cat under the influence of energy drinks.
I believe that’s pretty much exactly how they think (if you can call their instinctual pack behavior “thinking”). FWIW, it seems clear that Cesar Milan concurs (link).
All the more reason for me to continue believing it’s wrong.
Never had a dog challenge you for your position in the pecking order, I take it? It’s pretty significantly not fun and one of the reason I have never had much interest in having a dog as a pet.
Cats though, have nothing but disdain for human pretenders to the throne.
Dogs do not view humans as members of their pack in terms of hierarchy. Read some stuff by Jean Donaldson or Patricia McConnell (?sp - she wrote The Other End of the Leash). These are people that have degrees in animal behaviour. Milan has no formal training as far as I know. They will all say the same thing.
That’s not to say that one shouldn’t establish dominance over their dog. However, dominance does not mean what most people think it means when it comes to dogs and dog training. Dominance is, simply put, ‘controlling access to resources’. Resources to dogs are food, treats, going outside, even attention from their owner. It does not have to do with the the classic “alpha” - that does not translate cross-species - pecking order thing.
One can also establish that dominance without raising their voice, without punishing a dog, without any negative training whatsoever.
Thank you, Mauvaise. It sounds like we take very similar attitudes toward our dogs and training them.
I’ve had several cats who would eat veggies as an occasional thing. A couple of them were mad for avocado, I have one now who loves asparagus and all sorts of melon, and my husband’s kitten will eat just about everything that Daddy is eating. While we’ve had cats in the past, my daughter and I have been the primary humans doing the care and feeding. This time, however, my husband picked out a kitten at the Humane Society, declared that his (the kitten’s) name was Charlie, and that Charlie was HIS kitten. I have been trying to break my husband of allowing Charlie to eat off his plate with him. It was cute, though, to see my husband taking a bite of a combo burrito, and then offering the burrito to the kitten, who would solemnly take a teensy bite and then try to chew it. I am of the opinion that Charlie’s farts stink bad enough as it is, and he doesn’t need any burritos, and he ESPECIALLY doesn’t need to be in the habit of sharing my husband’s dinner with Bill. I think that cats should get their own plates, with a spoonful of this or that, and not eat off the humans’ plates.
I only give cats about a teaspoonful of people food at any one time. Almost all of their intake is of proper cat food, either as dry kibble or canned food.
I note that you supply nothing that bears on the question at hand: how dogs “think” about their relation to their owner.
Googling this produces huge numbers of hits, among which there is certainly no consensus that the “human as alpha” idea is wrong (or indeed anything other than mainstream). I am, of course, quite willing to concede that Googling is a poor substitute for genuine research.
Any time - we Phoenicians (and animal lovers) have to stick together!
I don’t actually currently have a dog though (gone too many hours a day during the week), but I work with a local animal rescue group and I have taken my first step to getting my degree in Animal Behaviour.
Those of you who have you cats sleep with you, that’s fine; I just don’t want people to get the idea that a cat HAS to sleep with you, and it’s never ending mewling if they don’t. We both trained our cats to not sleep in the bedroom from a young age; it isn’t an issue now. Plus my husband is allergic to cats (hence the joke that we only have two 
) ; we keep the bedroom as cathair-free as possible.
And you can train cats; you have to find the right method for the individual cat. Our cats aren’t allowed on the coffee table or kitchen counters. It’s not perfect, but it keeps our dinners from being eaten when we go back in the kitchen for a drink.
Watch Animal Planet sometime. Dogs in herds, in their natural habitat, are not always nice to each other, and they certainly use different levels of volume to communicate with each other.
That is not to say that positive-only training is doomed to failure - each dog is different. But I seriously get tired of hearing the positive-only reinforcement zealots making it seem like yelling a sharp ‘NO!’ when the dog does something incorrect as being the wrong way to train.
That being said, I wouldn’t bring the dog to the door and yell no - because he was lead to the door by the alpha and did nothing wrong. OTOH, if he runs out the door without permission, then he gets a ‘NO!’.
Works for my current dog. Works real well.
“NO!” will make a dog stop what it is doing immediately - I use it for when I absentmindedly leave food lying around in a vunerable location to get up to go to the bathroom or something and come back to see my dog sniffing or eating it, which is totally my fault, not hers - but it is not a useful training tool. If it seems effective, you’ve probably scared them sufficiently to make them stop, in which case the bad behavior will manifest in some other way, or you’ve just trained them not to do it in front of you. I have an elderly family member who potty trained her dog using “NO!” She thinks it’s so cute and ladylike that the dog won’t go to the bathroom if she’s looking at her. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s because the dog is scared to.
I’ll trust the animal behavior PhDs over an entertainment channel 100 times out of 100.
I’ll believe how dogs interact with one another 100 times out of 100, as opposed to a humans interpretation (although, admittedly, there is inherently always some degree of human interpretation).
If my training style seems effective, it is probably because it is - regardless of what someone on a message board tells me.
Look - I’m not here to criticize the way someone decides to train their dog. Some people want to use positive-only reinforcement, and that is their choice. I only bring up the fact that there are other ways. With absolutely no knowledge of the history of a pets behavior or tendencies, no one else has a right to tell me I’m in the wrong. See your own OP for an example of what it is like having someone else tell you how to train a dog. I’m actually in complete agreement of your original frustration.
What is this, a “friend of a friend” story as it relates to doggie discipline? I can’t imagine a dog was accidentally ‘trained’ to stick his nose in his own fecies. (Yes I realize they sniff fecies that they find in the yard, but the idea that he wouuld seek out his previous mess and put his nose in it seems a little off)
E3
My Siamese mix, Diego is polydactyl. He has 2 extra toes on each front paw and 1 extra toe on each back paw. A coworker meeting him for the first time asked me when I was going to have the extra toes removed!
See post #17. I had it first hand from my grandfather, about his own dog.
As I only have one dog, I’m more interested in how she interacts with humans and her environment. Don’t really care how she interacts with other dogs (though she happens to get along great with them.)
Maybe your style does work; I’ve never used it but it’s been around for a long time so it must produce results. Where I’m coming from, though, is that if there are two styles - one where I have to dominate, choke, and yell at my dog, and one where I show her patience and understanding - and they produce the same results (that’s key here; I wouldn’t use positive training if it didn’t work, and I’m even giving disciplinary methods the benefit of the doubt of working just as well), I’m going to go with the latter. It’s how I would want to be treated, and that’s how I attempt to treat other living things in my life (though I am far from perfect; it’s just an ideal I strive for.)
So I’m right for me, and you’re right for you, and we can argue all day about what’s right for the dog but it can’t talk (and would probably lie like a dog if it could ;)) so we’ll never know for 100% sure.