Quote:
Originally Posted by cuppacoffee  Hi Jason,
I just had one thought here coming at it from the opposite perspective. We HAVE trained/bred some instincts into dogs, so why couldn't we train/bred instincts out of dogs? Coming to mind: herding, hunting, retrieving, tunneling (or whatever you call what terriers do) . These are things that some breeds of dog do instinctively (in a broad generalization)
Thoughts?
Kate |
Kate,
My personal thoughts on this is that these are drives/traites that we are selectively filtering. Instincts are more primal and, as us humans still show, cannot be domesticated even though we've been out of the wild ourselves for thousands of years.
It doesnt take a genius to see that dogs thrive in a pack environment. Anybody that has spent any period of time working at rescuing dogs from shelters can clearly see dogs gravitate towards forming packs. Its a natural design that shows up again and again all across vertebrate species, all over the world. That is because its an efficient design that solves a specific problem - survival.
Whether you're a herder, an attack dog, a hunter, a guardian, a shepard, a pointer.... Is irrelevant. You still need those basic survival mechanisms that nature has perfected in order to fit into a social structure. Thats called a pack. And thats instinct and is seperate from drive (that defines the TYPE of dog).
Even insects, when forming a collective effort, have a queen. Its a necessary part of the structure - leadership. Humans have it. Wolves have it. Bees have it. Lion prides have it. Horse herds have it. And yes, dogs have it. And the dynamics in each one is the same.
Dogs exhibit human qualities, because of domestication. But they're not human. They're dogs. And realising that we need to interact with them in a manner that their species can relate to we will have alot more success with our training endeavours.
But thats just my view, I am open to correction. :)