Dominant dog behaviour – is the dog a pack animal? (Naturally Happy Dogs)
my name is Lizzie angel and I’m a dog
behavior psychologist which means that
I’m interested in the psychology of
behavior or what goes on in the dog’s
mind when it is doing a behavior the
Wolf’s strategy of life is very
different from the dog strategy of life
the wolf is a wild animal and the wolf
strategy of life is to stay together and
hunt in packs for the best chance of
survival the dog strategy of life is
slightly different the dog strategy of
life is to stay near humans for the best
chance of survival and that’s because
dogs over the centuries have
domesticated themselves and by staying
near humans and those dogs are the less
fearful and are more brave if you like
to stay near humans have bred and over
the generations what’s happened is
essentially tameness has been bred into
the dogs psyche which is something very
far removed from the wolf’s psyche the
wolf remains a wild animal where is the
dog it’s now a tame animal and this is
why it’s it’s very it’s still easy to
compare Doc’s of course because they
maybe look similar and they do lots of
behaviors that are similar and we have a
very romantic idea that it’s nicer to
live more romantic to live with a wolf
than it is with a dog but not to do dogs
that disservice in this we have to
respect them as dogs and understand that
the reason why they can live with us and
the reason why we can live with then is
this inherent tainless that they have
and a lot of the pack structure that a
wolf a wild wolf would have and it’s
important to realize that a world wolf
pack is actually made up of family
members it’s not made up of unrelated
animals just the experiments that were
done in the 40s of captive wolves where
they were taken from the wild all
unrelated
all wild animals and put together in a
community to see how they would behave
one other that was actually a very
unnatural behavior for a wolf because
that’s not how wolves naturally behave
in the world and wolves naturally behave
in the world as a family unit not as a
pack of unrelated animals if that pack
gets too large then some of the family
members might break off and form their
own pack and then that little pup grows
and that becomes a family but that’s not
what dogs do dogs basically remain
fairly solitary around human communities
and they breeds together and they have
litters and they have puppies and then
those puppies will breed and go on to
have more litters but the family units
don’t stay together and unrelated dogs
don’t tend to form packs there may be
some fairly strong relationships between
maybe two or three individual dogs but
that’s usually how big the actual pack
of dogs naturally feral dogs would
actually reach number wise would maybe a
couple of dogs that get on well together
maybe you know they find a sense of
security from each other but that’s as
big as the numbers go so the dog in your
living room isn’t a wolf the dog in your
living room is a tame animal the wolf is
a wild animal there are many many many
tens of thousands of years separated in
behavior and separated in the psychology
of their behavior
you
