 "Dangerous" dog breeds...
|
Feb. 21st, 2011 @ 03:10 pm 
|
|---|
I'm watching The Dog Whisperer. They're showing Cesar Milan's pack at his Dog Psychology Centre.
37 dogs, most of them pit bulls, dogs which have been abused and neglected. Many of them had apparently been "marked for death", but now they're all well-adjusted members of the pack.
It's rather fascinating.
The last episode I watched featured a boxer who'd become problematically aggressive - including having bitten a neighbour - and was scheduled to be put down until the mother (of the small boy whose dog it was) saw an ad about "does your dog have mental problems" that was for the Dog Whisperer.
That one was positively tear-jerking, but it rapidly turned out happily. The parents had been terrified of the dog hurting their children - they'd already taken to keeping him away from any possible encounter with people outside the family.
Fortunately, the dog wasn't vicious at all, just very protective of his family and needing to be trained to calm down.
Cesar Milan seemed more than a little upset that this dog had been slated for death.
It's adjusted my view on the potentially dangerous breeds rather.
See, I like dogs. I like cats around the house, because cats are company without always needing attention the way dogs can, but I like dogs. And my favourite breeds are breeds that can be dangerous - German Shepherds, huskies, Belgian Shepherds... the closer to wolf the breed remains, the more I probably love it.
But I always thought that it was a bad idea to get a dog of any of these breeds that wasn't still a puppy if you had children or weren't physically vigorous (for want of a better phrase), because they could be unpredictable. I'm starting to be convinced otherwise. (Although I think it's still pretty clear that you shouldn't get one if you're not going to be dedicated to looking after it, including taking care of its psychological issues.)
If you don't know the dog's history, you don't know what might be a negative trigger that will make it react violently. But I'm starting to think that that doesn't matter - if the dog is properly placed in its new family, if it feels comfortable and secure but also properly submissive, it'll be okay.
Submissive, in a dog, not being a sign of emotional abuse, obviously. Submissive in the sense that the dog is secure as a pack follower, not a pack leader. They are pack animals and you should always keep that in mind with dogs. (I've always thought that, I'm just finding a lot of things I wouldn't have thought of regarding enforcing it.)
What has yet to stop amazing me is the way dogs react to Cesar Milan. It's like they look at him and instantly recognise them as their king...
|
![[User Picture Icon]](https://v2.dreamwidth.org/87811/111082) |
| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya |
|---|
| Date: |
February 21st, 2011 01:37 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
clearly he's part wolf
...
..okay so write the AU where The Mittani is the King Pack Leader and is training his arctic doomwolf to lead his doomwolf squadron in the fight against Sir Molle and IT Alliance!
My family's had two German Shepard mixes and currently has a Shiloh Shepard which is basically a German Shepard scaled up by about 24% - Beowoof weighs about 90 pounds and her head comes up to my hip (I'm 5'6"). We got all of them as adult dogs, and all of them have been wonderful pets, especially Shepard mix #2.
Shepard mix #1 was a problem around other dogs, because he'd been essentially hand-fed by a human as a puppy and had had very little contact with them. This combined with Shepard protective/territorialness led to some ugly dogfight incidents, such as when a neighbor's dog stuck his head into my sister's baby carriage and Beau no-shit tried his level best to kill him. It apparently took three adult humans to separate them. He was never a problem with humans, though.
Shepard mix #2 was basically the absolute perfect dog in every way. She could be taken off a leash while on a walk and heel perfectly, she never once even growled at a human, she was fine around other dogs and small children (she loved small children, and they loved her), etc. She'd had professional obedience training, and it showed.
Beowoof, the massive Shepard who's my parents' current dog, is mostly well-behaved, except for a tendency to run off when not on a leash, but she's super-protective of the house and yard and has to have every visitor personally introduced to her by one of my parents, after which said visitor is An Okay Person who is Allowed In The House (she presumably takes her cues on this from their body language or something, because she instantly accepted me and my sister as Belonging In The House/With The Pack at first meeting). Unlike Wyleigh (Shepard mix #2) who adored children, Woof doesn't distinguish between strange children and strange adults in terms of potential threat/intruder levels, which isn't always good because children often act in potentially threatening ways from a dog perspective - sudden, abrupt movements, yelling and shrieking, etc. Thus far this hasn't been a problem because she's always kept on a leash outside, but my parents are still trying to convince their neighbors with small children that maybe our property isn't the best location to let their kids run around on unsupervised (in addition to a dog the size of a small cow, they also have a beehive, which is actually their real concern - Woof is unlikely to actually hurt someone on the off chance she's ever running around loose, but bee stings can kill people).
|
|
