Promoting dog’s decision making
If we are approaching dog training from the point of view of having a conversation with a sentient being, who learns and grows in a very similar cognitive way to humans in the early years of life. Have feeling and a sense of emotion.Then we need to consider how we communicate effectively. What a dog will gain from our engagement in a positive way to enable learning.
All dogs are individual who develop preferences for what they like and dislike. This is combined with hardwired animalistic behaviours born out of pure survival instinct. Dogs are 100% instinctual, compared to humans being intellectual.
One of the interesting factors about dogs is that they will override innate survival instinct to literally put their own safety and sense of wellbeing secondary at times to go to the aid of others. There are well documented accounts of dogs putting themselves in harm’s way to protect and shield others from imminent danger. They are experts in reading and feeling emotional energy, detecting minute changes in body language, and even sensing hormonal changes from other beings in their environment. They make choices beyond survival instinct, beyond themselves. Dogs make choices in everything they do based on what they internalise in the moment.
Some breeds will be more dominant partly due to our selective breeding for certain traits. This is not exclusive though, there are lots of breeds we would expect to be dominant, but an individual dog might be naturally anxious and find coping with daily life difficult for various reasons.
Other breeds are typically submissive, but this is still a generalisation, and we need to look at every individual dog for their character and preference.
If we allow dogs to have choice, then our conversation and training with them will be more responsive and learning enjoyable, because we are tapping into yet another canine superpower – Dogs love to have a job, and employment often means learning new skill sets, employment often gives a sense of wellbeing. Humans enjoy having a sense of direction in life, so do dogs!
Fair leadership in training includes coaching and guidance, providing room for others to make the correct choice, and shaping knowledge for building skillsets.
This is no different for dogs, an invaluable part of any team and pack.
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