The things we just do not know about our dogs. To understand your dog think about our ancestors who had to fight their ancestors for food. We were at one time rivals for life, it must have been a strange meeting for man and dog to come together. One can only guess how that happened, whatever happened the union between man and dog was made.

Can you just imagine having been the first human to have had a wild dog take meat from your hand, it must have been incredible.

To think that the dog that lays at the back door, the sofa or the master's bed, once hunted our kind. It must have been by accident, possibly by raising young pups. The strength of the human pack must have been similar to that of the dog. The wolf is known to be the forbearer of the domestic dog, in the northern part of the world. If we were to examine the wolf family we would see the levels of dominance therein, the dominant male is just that - dominant. The things your dog does to you are the natural way of the dog, and he or she will try to dominate you.

Let's take a look at the things your dog will do that its kind have been doing since the meeting between man and dog first took place. There are lots of good books on the market today about dogs in general, and at least one book on just about every breed. Let's break it down - dogs, is dogs, is dogs, from the littlest to the biggest. We are not going to talk about a breed of dog, we are going to talk dogs.

Your dog can maybe do tricks other dogs cannot do, or is more protective, shy, happy or goofy, pick a word that best discribes your dog. Dogs look different than their ancestors did, just like us. The dog must have been raised as a pup, for the only way to dominate a pup is to use its ways of the pack. The young dog is the easiest to dominate, and let's not kid ourselves into believing that this doesn't happen. When a dog is dependent on you for its place in the pack it'll do one of two things, it will submit to you if it is shown it must, or it will dominate you.

The one thing that kept man and dog together was that a young dog depends on the pack to feed it, and to the young dog who has not yet learned to hunt, this means survival. In its pack it soon starts to learn who the boss is. The boss is the pup who can physically overpower any other pup. Once that is in order the pups soon start to understand the order within the pack as a whole.

The dog has some basic instincts, and this applies to all domestic dogs. Its genetics have been altered by man to meet different needs. The instinct remains the same. The pack's instinct, which goes back how many years no one really knows, is part of your dog's day to day life. You know your dog is happy to see you at the end of the day. You also know how your dog wants your attention. Before you get the keys out of your pocket, he is bumping into your legs, he doesn't care if your arms are full of groceries, he's just glad your home. Everything is normal. As long as you're there, he'll just keep bugging you for attention. One of two things can happen at this point. You can put up with it and let the dog turn it into a game, after all he's been alone all day, or put him in his place. The second you demand your dog stop, and mean what you say, he will stop. Now your saying, " I've tried that and it didn't work." Well, have you tried taking your dog by the scruff of the neck, pin him to the ground and say "NO"? Because if you haven't, you should. Your dog will understand that. "Now isn't that cruel" you might say. I don't think so, after all that's what would happen in the pack. When a dominant member of the pack returns, that animal receives the same type of greeting you do, that's the way it is. To communicate with your dog, it's a lot easier to train if you are in control. My advice to anyone training a dog is think like a dog does, understand the way the pack works, after that it's easy.

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