Dog Myths—Debunked!
Should you yelp when your puppy nips you? What does it mean when your dog sits on your foot? If you give your dog table scraps, are you teaching him to beg? And are dogs really wolves? The Dog Trainer debunks 4 popular myths.
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA
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Dog Myths—Debunked!
How I wish there were a Snopes.com just for dog-related rumors and myths. But since there isn’t one, I do my best to reality-check and debunk myths whenever they come up. This week, four myths or part-myths, ranging from the laughable to “Well, I can kind of see why this seems reasonable, but …” Just to kill the suspense, the world won’t end if your dog sits on your foot.
(correction_with_script).
1. To Teach Your Puppy Not to Nip, Yelp When He Does It
Some dog myths are eye-rollingly stupid, but this is not among them. Watch littermates at play; if one nips hard or otherwise gets too rough, his play partner may yelp and briefly break off the interaction. It seems reasonable and natural to try to communicate with our puppies in the same way – the yelp is familiar and they’ll understand it.
Except that for a significant percentage of our Puppalinis, the human yelp seems to have exactly the wrong effect. You yelp, and Puppy Excitable reacts by making a big thought balloon of YAY and nipping you again. Harder, because apparently that squeal was just such a thrill.
Why is this so? It’s been suggested that human yelps sound like prey, but as far as I know nobody has ever done a sound analysis comparing human yelps with the cries of animals that dogs might actually eat. As long as we’re guessing, my guess is that among puppies, the yelp is part of a whole communicative package that includes body posture and facial expression. A yelp on its own might be like a single syllable without the rest of the long word it belongs to. As for replicating the rest of your puppy’s body language, go look at yourself and him in a mirror to see why this is a lost cause.
Some canine signals do translate – direct eye contact, for instance, is a threat behavior between dogs. Most pet dogs appear to have learned that human stares are not a threat, but plenty of skittish dogs will bark and lunge if your gaze lingers on theirs. For your nippy Puppalini, though, try a calm “Oops” and immediately fold your arms, go still, and look away for a few seconds. And preempt nips by offering her a legal chew toy to mouth whenever you play with her.
2. If a Dog Sits on Your Foot, He’s Dominating You
Really, there is no end to the number of dog behaviors that human beings have decided are signs of a palace coup: barking, sleeping on the sofa, rushing out the door, chewing the remote, licking your face … Don’t these all strike you as kind of, oh, indirect? Like, if the dog wanted to dominate you, why not just go for the throat? But no, instead he sticks with symbolic gestures. “I choose comfortable places to sleep, therefore I rule.” Are your eyes rolling in your head yet? I hope so.
Anyway, a houseguest mentioned the foot-sitting business last week: news to me! My dog was sitting on her foot at the time, grinning his fool head off while she scratched behind his ears. Bless my guest, she didn’t buy the dominance notion for a single second. She knows a lap dog when she sees one, and she knows that when the dog weighs 75 pounds “lap” is defined very broadly, to include any part of the human body he can get next to.
Even dogs who don’t care for petting often seek proximity and contact. They lean on us, they sleep in our laps, they sit or sleep on our feet. There is such a thing as a socially anxious dog who will seek contact and then aggress if you reciprocate, but mainly, our dogs like us and like to be near us. Often they like to be right in amongst us. Relax, and remember to scratch behind the ears.
3. If You Give Your Dog Table Scraps, He’ll Beg at the Table
This one’s only partly a myth, because, yes, if you give your dog table scraps while he’s pawing at your fork hand, he will learn to paw at your fork hand. He will also learn to paw at your hand if you give him dog food when he paws at your hand; your scraps have no magical power, except that they’re probably more appealing than his dry chow.
Of course, you can choose simply to ignore your dog’s attention-seeking and food-getting behavior while you eat. If they never ever work, he’ll give them up. After the meal, you can give him a bit of the leftovers in full confidence that this will not teach him to beg during the meal. Alternatively, you can take the sucker’s way out, which is what I do. I know perfectly well that my dog would like some of my supper ASAP, and I think he’s too adorable for words, so I have taught him a way to get scraps right now without being a pest. If you are also a sucker, see my article on how to teach dogs to beg by lying down quietly.
Nutritional caution: If you feed your dog table scraps at all, give small amounts and choose them wisely. Onions, garlic, and grapes are just a few of the human foods that are toxic to dogs. Don’t load Dogalini up with fatty, salty, heavily processed foods (for that matter, why are you loading yourself up with them?). And you might save the most tempting bits for training lifesaving behaviors such as coming when called.
4. Dogs Are Wolves
One traditional definition of a species is “a group of organisms whose members can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.” By that definition, dogs and wolves are indeed the same species. Wolves are Canis lupus; depending on which taxonomist is talking, dogs are either Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris, that is, a subspecies of the wolf. (For more about interspecies breeding, check out my colleague Ask Science.
But there’s more to “species” than who can breed with whom. Dogs and wolves differ anatomically and behaviorally in many ways. A dog weighing the same as an adult wolf (about 100 pounds) will have a brain 20 percent smaller. Dogs’ teeth are smaller and less robust than those of wolves, even allowing for size differences. Wolves get most of their food by hunting; free-living dogs get most of their food by scavenging. Wolves go into estrus once a year; dogs generally go into heat twice a year. Breeding wolves usually form monogamous long-term pair bonds; the breeding behavior of dogs would make Rick Santorum’s hair stand on end. (Just for starters, a litter may have more than one puppy daddy.) Wolf pups and dog pups have different rates of behavioral development. And on, and on, and on.
The message for you? Wolf behavior is fascinating. If you’re interested in learning about it, knock yourself out. Sometimes your dog’s wolf ancestry will be apparent – in body language and communication, for example. (Even then: Adult wolves don’t bark …) Remember, though: Close relatives are just that – relatives. They’re not identical twins. Your best guide for assessing your dog’s behavior is solid, scientifically grounded information about, yes, dogs.
That’s all for this week. For lots more doggy advice, check out my book, The Dog Trainer’s Complete Guide to a Happy, Well-Behaved Pet.You can follow me on Twitter, where I’m Dogalini. I’m The Dog Trainer on Facebook, and you can also write to me at dogtrainer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. I welcome your comments and suggestions, and though I can’t reply individually, I may use them as the basis for future articles. Thanks for reading!
About the Author
Jolanta holds professional certifications in both training and behavior counseling and belongs to the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She also volunteered with Pet Help Partners, a program of the Humane Society of the United States that works to prevent pet relinquishment. Her approach is generally behaviorist (Pavlovian, Skinnerian and post-Skinnerian learning theory) with a big helping of ethology (animal behavior as observed in non-experimental settings).