Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I haven't come across "you get what you pet" before, and it's giving me some food for thought. My two dogs have been polar opposites in terms of affection, so I learned to let them lead the way in those interactions. I understand why it is important to consider what behaviour I could be reinforcing if I give them affection, but the dominance theory sounds a bit far-fetched. Are the proponents of that theory concerned about guarding behaviours? My understanding is that guarding behaviours stem from a lack of confidence, not an excess of dominance.
From a personal perspective, I'm very grateful that my dog is a big fan of snuggling and affection. We keep each other warm in the winter, I love her enthusiastic wiggly demands for pets after she wakes up from a nap, and it makes me laugh as I try to dodge her crazy kisses.
I relate SO much to your last paragraph here. That's exactly how I feel about Scout! Just replace crazy kisses with intense snout nosing, anyway 😂 It is the highlight of our days.
In regards to your first paragraph, yeah—I think that often when folks are obsessed with "dominance" they use that line of reasoning to justify everything in the dog-human relationship, and you're spot on about guarding behavior from what I understand. It's so messy because dominance *is* a real thing (and I get kinda bristly when people act like it has been totally debunked in some way, as if it's not even a valid concept) BUT it's historically been sooo misapplied to the dog training space. And that makes talking clearly about it hard sometimes.
I don't know a lot about dominance because it isn't discussed in the training that I follow, but I will admit that I get very frustrated when I'm talking to other dog owners/guardians and they talk about needing to be their dog's 'alpha'. I know from personal experience how detrimental that style of training can be to my relationship with my dog. I'll have to check out the books you mentioned in your post.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I haven't come across "you get what you pet" before, and it's giving me some food for thought. My two dogs have been polar opposites in terms of affection, so I learned to let them lead the way in those interactions. I understand why it is important to consider what behaviour I could be reinforcing if I give them affection, but the dominance theory sounds a bit far-fetched. Are the proponents of that theory concerned about guarding behaviours? My understanding is that guarding behaviours stem from a lack of confidence, not an excess of dominance.
From a personal perspective, I'm very grateful that my dog is a big fan of snuggling and affection. We keep each other warm in the winter, I love her enthusiastic wiggly demands for pets after she wakes up from a nap, and it makes me laugh as I try to dodge her crazy kisses.
I relate SO much to your last paragraph here. That's exactly how I feel about Scout! Just replace crazy kisses with intense snout nosing, anyway 😂 It is the highlight of our days.
In regards to your first paragraph, yeah—I think that often when folks are obsessed with "dominance" they use that line of reasoning to justify everything in the dog-human relationship, and you're spot on about guarding behavior from what I understand. It's so messy because dominance *is* a real thing (and I get kinda bristly when people act like it has been totally debunked in some way, as if it's not even a valid concept) BUT it's historically been sooo misapplied to the dog training space. And that makes talking clearly about it hard sometimes.
I don't know a lot about dominance because it isn't discussed in the training that I follow, but I will admit that I get very frustrated when I'm talking to other dog owners/guardians and they talk about needing to be their dog's 'alpha'. I know from personal experience how detrimental that style of training can be to my relationship with my dog. I'll have to check out the books you mentioned in your post.