They have lived with humans for thousands of years; they are engrained into our society and traditions with a deep bond that connects us in a very special way.
Wolves were first attracted to humans through a mutual need for food and protection. Humans benefited from the Wolves sensitive hearing and smell and the Wolf got an easy meal.
Wolves live in family groups (packs) which helped to ignite a mutual appreciation, humans and wolves care for their young and nurture them and looked after other family members.
This relationship is still as strong as ever though humans have less need for the protection of a Dog (wolf) they still have a unique connection with them. They are seen as companions and family members instead of having a specific job to do.
The main problem with this is that the Dog still believes that it has a job to do; they are still living by their instinct, which tells them to look after the family (pack). We forgot to tell the dogs that they don’t need to worry about that anymore.
Domestic dogs have been proven to descend from grey wolves, they are still thinking like a wolf but in dog’s body.
So how do you convince a dog that it doesn’t need to look after a family (pack) and just take life easy living as a dog?
The answer is in the dog. Dogs still believe they live in a pack, all be it a human pack. All dogs believe that there must be a leader of that pack, this stems from their heritage living as wolves. A pack leader makes all the important decisions, when to eat, when to hunt, how to react to danger and how to maintain pack hierarchy with the different the pack members. If a dog is not getting this information from a human pack member it will take on the leadership role its self. This can cause confusion and stress to the dog resulting in many of the common behaviour problems we see today.
#wolf #pack #leadership