What it comes down to is that you are absolutely right about polite people behavior being inappropriate for your pooch. Once I stopped letting her go first through doorways and insisting that she be obedient before she got food, attention, and play from me my whole household changed. Almost overnight. She’s incredibly smart and it didn’t take her long to figure out that Mama was through horsing around.

The main thing I guess I wanted to say is that it’s so important to not give up on your dog, as so many people tend to do. When you take a dog into your home, you are willingly adding to your family. Would you throw your child in a cage, simply because you never taught them social skills and manners? If you’re not in it for the long haul, please do not get a dog. Try a fish.

You bring up an interesting topic of discussion –
“what we see as being “nice”, the dog sees as winning small battles”

This is so interesting that I decided to make a blog post about it 🙂 I included your comment in the blog post. Hope that it ok.

Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. I look forward to hearing your further thoughts on it.

The dog may not be trying to dominate your household, but what we see as being “nice”, the dog sees as winning small battles. A training book I read called “Training the Hard to Train Dog” describes these battles as small points that the dog wins. The more points he wins, the more control he gains over the house. Again, it may not necessarily be a dominance thing, I think it’s more of a survival thing. If this were nature, he would be exploring all of his resources to maximize his chances of survival.

So the point of my rant is, it’s great to be nice to a dog, so long as it’s fulfilling for a dog and not indulging him. Again, being the responsible owner that you are, I’m sure you’re not letting your dogs run wild around the house, but there are certainly owners who make the mistake of being “nice” in human terms, and they’ve lost control of their dog.