We reached out to Damon McCook at Good Citizen K9 to ask a few questions about dog behavior that owners might benefit from. As much as we love them, dogs will misbehave, often without knowing it. Your pet might think it completely reasonable to jump all over the couch or take your food directly from the table. “Punishment doesn’t change behavior, it only suppresses it,” he said. Instead, the owner needs to build a relationship of respect with the dog which helps create clear boundaries.
“Breed standards give you a general idea but all dogs are individuals,” he added. Behavior is as much a reflection of the owner as it is of the dog. “Sleeping in bed with your dog is the worst thing you can do to your dog for behavioral issues.”
The old cliché of not being able to ‘teach an old dog new tricks’ may actually be entirely inaccurate. In fact, Damon McCook believes that it is entirely wrong. “That saying is ridiculous. Last year I trained 10,11,13, and 14 year old dogs.” Dogs are famously intelligent animals and age is not a barrier when it comes to ‘new tricks.’
While the commonly held belief is that we domesticated dogs, there is some evidence that our relationship is more mutual. For example, wolf and dog social structures are closer to ours than those of chimps or apes. Early human hunter-gatherers were possibly more territorial than our ape relatives, something may have learned from dogs. Think about how human-like your fuzzy friends' facial expressions might be. Some dogs have awfully expressive eyebrows, sighs and even mouths.
The first hard evidence of human and dog relations that more resembled a family are from around 14’000AD. Two human skeletons and the mandible of a dog were found, buried in Germany. Researchers discovered that the dog had died young, from Canine distemper and that someone, presumably the pair of buried humans, had been attempting to keep it alive. While sad, it's heartwarming to think about the fact that our ancestors already saw dogs not just as hunting tools, but companions.
