Ravenwolf Posted June 26, 2012 Report Share Posted June 26, 2012 If dogs have such short attention spans, why would my Lab hang his head when I got home from ripping into the trash before lunch? He knew what he did was wrong, and remembered it from 4 hours ago. It's because - as I mentioned above - your dog is reacting to your behaviour upon seeing the destruction. You come home, see trash everywhere, get upset. Your dog notices even the most minor changes in your body language and disposition and reacts accordingly. He cringes and offers submission/avoidance at your displeasure, not out of a guilty conscience cuz he knows he done wrong. Your dog wasn't thinking about the repercussions of tearing into the garbage 4 hours ago when he did it - if physical punishment was a good solution and a deterrent he wouldn't have done it. You give him credit for remembering "oh shit, I tore into the garbage 4 hours ago and now Boss is home and is going to be mad! Time to slink about in a guilty fashion!", but don't think he's smart enough to figure out "if I tear into the garbage now I'm going to get a beat down and a toss outside come lunch, better stay away..." Where is the sense in that? As for the rest, I would just be repeating what I wrote yesterday. Dogs communicate physically, yes, but hitting as punishment is our human way of feeling like we got the point across, not successfully communicating, correcting and training. Any creature will go to great lengths to avoid pain. In my experience, most people who hit as punishment - be it a tap on the nose, a swift kick, a smack, whatever - do so regardless of their dog's reaction. They were bad, they get spanked. Simple. But again, as I said above (and especially if you're all about respecting a dog's instincts and natural behaviours), this is not normal or predictable communication to a dog. If you verbally discipline your dog and he reacts in an appropriate fashion, hitting him then truly becomes pointless abuse to make YOU feel better. He responded appropriately to your body language and vocalizations (human growling), but you still escalated to hitting (biting). That makes a person - in the dogs eyes - an unpredictable bully. Now, if a person wants their dog to obey out of fear of being hit and construes fearful submission as respect, well, of course you can't argue results. You're going to get what you're looking for. Personally, I prefer to outline expected behaviour and stop bad behaviours before they escalate into problems that require discipline. For example, I have never once hit my dogs for going upstairs (where they aren't allowed), and yet they respect the top step as a boundary not to be crossed, even when there is tempting food in the kitchen (like the cat's fresh, smelly wet food in a dish on the floor 8 feet away), even when there are no humans present. My dogs didn't learn the lesson "don't get caught or you get hit," they learned "dogs don't go upstairs." It's not about fear of punishment. As far as they're concerned, that's just the world as they know it so they accept it as such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted June 26, 2012 Report Share Posted June 26, 2012 I certainly don't like the tone of this entire thread-especially certain people attacking @HuskyHijinx-shame on you! Attila out! Excuse me, there was very good reason for things said in this post by me. If you have a problem with things I have said please feel free to message me directly rather than bringing up things that happened over a week ago. This topic is now closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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