Taming a Wolf
After companionship, security is the main reason people decide to get a dog.
Defending territory or property is the domestic dog's inheritance from its communal-living wolf ancestors even if there is a trade-off of forest acres and sprawling, open land for a modest family home or car in a parking lot. Depending on the breed and the dog, this protective tendency may range from very intense to completely absent.
When domestic dogs perceive danger and bark out a warning, they are echoing a wolf behavior. Members of a wolf pack sound the alarm together but subordinate wolves, like domestic dogs, typically step back to let the pack leaders handle the active defense. Of course, many dogs bred for their aggressive tendencies, such as the Rottweiler, will actively defend their turf.
Reading Your Dog
Learning to read a dog is much like studying a foreign language. It requires concentration and recognition that communications can have quite different meanings in different cultures and depend on the context within which they are sent. Dogs bark, whine and growl, but mostly they "speak" via a body language designed to be understood dog-to-dog. The meaning may not be intuitively obvious to humans; decoding requires some practice. To understand "dog" successfully, we must stretch beyond ourselves into canine culture. What are the rewards of making this effort? Clearly a better reading of unknown dogs can prevent the occasional nip. But far more importantly, we gain the chance to interact more fully with the dogs that share our lives. We can reach more of an "inter-species" understanding and deepen our bond by our ability to communicate. It seems only fair. Over the centuries, dogs have become very adept at interpreting human body language and even at learning spoken words and hand signals. Now it's our turn.
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