"I have to be dominant with my dog to show him who's the "ALPHA", right?"
On one of our all-time favorite episodes of The Family Pupz Podcast, the owner and head trainer of From Dusk Till Dog, Erika Gonzalez, explains whether she thinks we need to exhibit dominant behavior towards our dog, in order to show him/her who's the "ALPHA", for fear that they might dominate us first.
Her answer was just...(CHEF'S KISS)!
To listen to the rest of the conversation with Erika, check out the podcast episode below:
[TRANSCRIPT FOR THE VIDEO BELOW]
Erika Gonzalez: You know, I, I, this is what I would say to the, ‘I got to show my dog who's boss and dominate them’ and this bit.
This is my story. I say, go back to what I was saying. Your dog didn't decide to come in. You made the decision. You get to decide what kind of toys they play with, when they play with it, where they get put, where they sleep, when they go in certain rooms, you get to decide when they use the bathroom.
You are deciding what they're going to consume in their body every moment of the day. What they’re going to eat and consume. You control the water resource. You control access to everything the dog would like, or to get to, or get away from. On, and on, and on, and on, and on. Yet we're still concerned about who's the boss. Who's the boss?
Family Pupz: Yeah.
Erika Gonzalez: Really? I'm like stunned. You know, again, I don't blame people because we're just, they're not dog trainers. Of course, I didn't know this crap. But, but now looking at it that way, and I tell people exactly what I just said to you guys. And we all chuckle and go, ‘yeah, that's pretty crazy’.
You know, the one, then the one second, the dog does something A) completely natural for dogs to do most of the time and B) something that's usually not very egregious anyway, like pulling, then we go, ‘Dominance! They’re taking over! They don't know I'm the boss!’, and I'm like, ‘oh geez’, you know, and you know, it's just, that's my story, and people usually, that sums it up for me. It's like the dogs have very little say in what they're doing day to day. I mean, I try to give my dogs the most choice as possible, but at the end of the day, they're just here and they really don't have a choice in much. So we don't need to worry about that.
It's a non-existent issue.
It's not dominance when your dog's pulling or doing whatever.
It's your dog, either not trained on that thing, or not trained enough, or well. Maybe we need to take a different approach. But it's not that your dog's trying to take over.
In fact, please do take over, because I love a world where dogs are in charge.
Family Pupz: Dogs start paying our bills. You're like, ‘Thanks man!’
Erika Gonzalez: Take over the mortgage, dude. I'm fine. Like, do that!