Establishing Yourself as Leader

Establishing leadership in a household with dogs doesn't involve dominating them and letting them know that you are boss 24/7. As any mother or father would know, being head of the house means setting forth rules that everyone must follow yet at the same time being kind and benevolent about enforcing them. The following page describes some basic rules that can be layed down for a dog to follow and some things you should not do to help passively enforce your leadership.

Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean being dominant or aggressive (Read the Alpha Theory Page). To establish your leadership one must first begin to act like one. A confident leader is calm and composed, and isn’t constantly squabbling as this ends up undermining his/her status. As a leader you must always remember one thing: Leaders initiate, followers react. For our dogs to look up to us as head of the family they have to be willing to trust us and know that we are there to protect them from anything that might constitute a threat. We must also set clear guidelines or rules which must be enforced without exceptions. 

Leaders Initiate. Followers React

What is meant by the phrase above is that if you plan to be a leader then you must be at the start of most, if not all, interactions. To give a classic example, everyone is sitting at the dinner table and a pooch is down at the owners feet looking up. For a while everyone ignores him but the moment he starts to whine the owner gives him a piece of what you are eating. In this illustration, not only is the begging behavior reinforced but the dog initiated the interaction and the owner followed suit. Same could be said if a dog brings the owner a toy and they start to play a game; the dog initiated and the owner followed.

So how do we go about flipping the situation? Well we begin by ignoring any pleas or demands for attention. Seeing how the begging is getting the dog nowhere eventually he/she will stop. When this happens you may, if you wish to do so, call him/her over and give him attention. This way, by calling the dog over, you have initiated the interaction and the dog has followed. It may be hard not to follow when your dog is the aloof type and rarely asks for attention, but if you ignore those requests for attention the pooch will learn to value your attention when and if you decide to give it.

On many occasions you may have to put up with what is called an extinction burst. Extinguishing a behavior means that you are eliminating all reinforcers for that unacceptable behavior, the extinction burst is when the dog temporarily increases the begging behavior (e.g. barking or whining) in a last attempt to gain what he/she used to be able to get doing that behavior. During the extinction burst one has to be extremely careful not to give in and give the dog what he/she wants simply to make them stop, this is worse than having given the dog what it wanted in the beginning. The reason being is that if you give in while the dog is in the extinction burst ‘phase’ it tells the pooch that all he/she has to do to gain the reinforcer is try as hard as he/she can, this makes the overall behavior harder to ignore and correct.

This way of living also comes with a great responsibility though. Because you are not allowing your dog to initiate games or belly rub sessions, you have to keep in mind that it is your responsibility to actually initiate them. In other words, because you don’t have your dog to remind you to play with him, don’t forget to give him the attention that a social creature such as the dog deserves and needs.

Trust and Bond

To have a bond with your dog you need trust and to have leadership you will need both a strong bond and trust. Now a bond doesn’t necessarily mean that your dog is at your side 24/7 (although some dogs would like this), nor that they are constantly wanting your attention. Each dog has their way of demonstrating that they have a connection with you. Bonding with your dog usually gets stronger with playtime or doing anything your dog likes to do. It also gets stronger when you have demonstrated that you are trustworthy, meaning that your dog can rely on you for protection and knows that you will be a reasonable leader. Now this might sound a little anthropomorphic but it is not so because the reverse is clearly observable; when an owner is unpredictable the dog will become fearful (or cautious) of them, and if the owner doesn’t help their dog when in need, the pooch won’t hesitate to fend for him/herself when the need arises (e.g. snapping or fear biting) instead of looking towards the owner for help.

Setting Rules

One important part of being a leader to which a dog can look up to is placing clear rules and enforcing them at all times. These rules could be anything depending on your circumstance but here are a couple to start with:

Food

Before simply giving the dog their meal, it would be beneficial to have them do a couple tricks so that they can earn their food. They may not have their food until they have done what you wanted, every meal vary the command so that the pooch doesn’t do the action automatically. Another alternative is to reduce the amount that is fed during the pooch’s meals and instead give them that part of the meal during training sessions.  More information on this in the Work to Earn Article

Couches and Beds

Many of us love to have our dogs next to us on beds and couches, however at times the pooch can be somewhat of a hog and leave you with little room yourself. This shouldn’t be the case. A good rule to have for dogs that love hogging is to keep them off the couches and beds if uninvited. This isn’t to say that all dogs should stay off beds and couches, if your particular pooch is polite about being on the couch/bed then it might not be necessary to implement this rule. For bed hoggers it is a good idea to keep the dog’s bed next to yours on the floor and have the “Go to Bed” command well established.

Doors and Passages

A good manner to teach a dog is to wait for everyone to go out through a door first before they go. This helps by preventing accidents such as when getting out of car doors or when small children or elderly people are involved.

Attention

As stated before in the ‘Leaders Initiate. Followers react’ section, your attention is also something that shouldn’t simply be given for free or when the dog wants it. It is you that should determine, when, with what, and how long a play sessions should be.  Never give into requests for pats or a game, simply ignore and wait until your dog is doing something else (or sitting elsewhere) and then initiate the attention. This isn’t to say that you should restrict the amount of attention you give your dog, absolutely not, constant interactions with your dogs help with building a stronger bond.

In Conclusion…

The common misconceptions associated with the guidelines above is that they tell the dog that you are more dominant. Many of these things don’t really have any association with dominance for the majority of dogs, it just teaches them that you set the rules and that you enforce them, this communicates to them that you are a trustworthy and capable leader. The problem with thinking that these guidelines communicate dominance is that some think that by having the dog eat after them, giving the right of way, and keeping them off couches and beds is enough to be the ‘top dog’ of the house. However this way of thinking is wrong, to become a true leader in our canine companion’s eyes we must follow through with all that is outlined above: initiating interactions, setting guidelines, being reasonable, and providing protection…basically everything a good parent would do in a family, what that might mean changes from household to household.

-Steven L.

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