Yep. Know all this shit. Pedigree is toxic and exploitative and fucked up. Dogs are incredible amazing, emotionally, socially and psychologically complex babies, and the whole dominance/alpha thing is bullshit for people to get power boners.

It's really sad, because I'm sure there are breeders out there with good intentions (like those guys from Germany who breed the 'retro pug', which is a healthier pug line with outcrosses and longer snouts so the animals can breathe) who want to better their breeds in good ways, but if they breed for show money and reputation instead of the health of the dogs, they're probably a rotten apple.
I know when I was younger I always wanted a pedigree dog, but after I got a rescue, I will most likely only have rescues anymore. There are so many dogs sitting in pounds, they all need homes. Unless you need your dog a very specific job to fullfill (as in, working dog), it's probably better to pick one from the pound, even if it means putting in some extra work to rehabilitate them.

It's really annoying how the dominance theory is still so persistand these days despite being debunked so many times. I guess TV stars like Cesar Millan aren't exactly helping the cause, although I have heard that he does use reward-based training now, too.

Anyone who actually really loves an animal is going to look as much into that animal as possible, so ye, I'm already pretty aware of all this stuff.

That's awesome!
I hope more people are looking into documentaries like these, they're really valueable!

This is a pretty awesome little video series~ Only saw the first one but I'll check out more.

Have fun!

I LOVE DOGS.

*watches videos*

DOGS ARE GREAT!

I just want to let you know that thanks to you and these videos I spent 5 hours last night watching dog documentaries. One video would end, and then another would start playing, etc xD

Hahah yeah, youtube does that thing now where it just autoplays another, related video if you don't abort that in time.
I hope you had a good time!

Eh, I prefer cats.

Cats are adoreable, too!
The last video is about reward based training, something you might take out of for your (?) cats, as well!

I have to admit I wasn't expecting to find out as much as I did. I realized many things like my misconceptions of reward vs. dominance training. The pedigree problem i'd never known about today and even my own mother didn't. So I ended up telling and teaching her what i'd found out from these videos which was pretty surprising honestly. The biggest thing for me was really finding out how little i knew despite having been raised up around them and taught by my parents about dogs. And it helped fill in a lot of gaps i didn't quite understand before now.

I appreciate that you took the time to throw all this up in a journal to share all of it around. Really made an impact for me personally.

It's not just you, really. My family have had dogs since I was small, and no matter who you would ask, everyone owning a dog would tell me you 'have to be boss/alpha' when I grew up. So using corrections and even bullshit like the 'alpha roll' to 'put a dog in it's place' were very common and accepted procedures (for some people, they still are up to this day). The part where the guy pushes down the dog in a sitting position is absolutely nothing new to me, it's how I originally was taught to make a dog sit down, too, even though it's really a bad way to teach a dog to sit that way for multiple reasons.

I only learned how screwed the whole dominance theory training basis is and how little I actually knew about dogs when I moved out and finally got a dog of my own. I found that using force and intimidation not only was not very successful and lasting, but also was detrimental to our relationship, since my dog was a rescue and already scared by default. The more intimidation and corrections I used, the less he wanted to actually interact with me.
At the early time of owning him, I was working together with a dog walker, who herself was really big on people like Cesar Millan, and the way she did treat her dogs showed it. Leash janking, 'kicks', snout grabbing and alpha roll were all common things she would use, and when she asked me to alpha roll my dog, I refused, and she got mad at me for not doing it. She said I need to take away his self-confidence and replace it with my own by alpha rolling him, and that made absolutely no sense to me. Shouldn't the goal be to build his self-confidence so he stops being scared of dogs, people, and being outside? It made me realize that she didn't know as much of dogs as she claimed to do, and we parted.
I started to look around online for help, and found the youtube channel of Kikopup. One of the first videos I watched of her was the one about 'calming signals':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgnLgHFRJu4
... and I was surprised to find that I had never ever heard of these, neither actually have 'read' them in dogs before because I never had paid attention to them. From there, I was hooked, and started to watch more and more videos, particulary about how to train dogs with reward based training. It helped me and my pup a lot to get where we are today.

I'm happy to hear that you were able to take something out of these videos for yourself and for those around you! I want people to become aware of this so they too can have a happy and healthy relationship with their dogs based on fun and trust rather than intimidation and fear.

I didn't have time to watch all these videos at the moment but I will later today.

All I can say is that I love dogs. I adoptet my frenchie 3 years ago, I'm his third owner and he is a dream of a dog. I never had a dog myself before (only a family dog as a child) and I train him like my instincts told me so. Without treats, without threats and this dominance bullshit I see in the videos when I skip them through. And well he is one well teached dog that alwys is by my side without a leash and listen most of the time to my body language. So most of the time I don't need to give him any command

Sounds like you have a really great relationship with your dog and like he's really tuned into you!

Thanks, I love the bound between us. I can't deal with the whole "be the alpha" shit. I know there are dogs that needs more rules than others. But my dog is a partner and a friend, not someone subordinate to me. I think with the right signals at the right time there is so much more possible than with forcing the dog down and the alpha bullshit

I think what bothers me most is that those people rooting towards dominance always say people who prefer to work with rewards (which can also be attention, access to some places, brushes, toys, playtime etc) are treating dogs like children... appearently, they don't get either that raising children does not equal setting no rules, routines and not being consistand with those.
I'm not looking at my dog as a wild animal or something I need to keep under my thumb all the time, and neither as an equal who can be responsible for itself and make informed life choices.
I think dogs are a lot like children? They test their boundaries, they want to be kept busy, be fed, be exercised, they want to learn things, and we are the ones looking after them.
I much rather prefer a teacher/student relationships with my dog than a master/slave one.

Agreed. I see nothing wrong in training a dog with treats. There are dogs who love to work for them. Mine just loves to please me and a belly rub is enough for him as reward. Every dog is different and the owner needs to find out what works best.
I think the children thing fits really well, because yes they want and need all this things and want to be by your side as much as possible.

What I have here the most and bothers me are people I don't know I never met or talked to, that mostly have no dog themselfes but need to tell me how I need to train my dog and how they would do this.

And that he is to fat, he isn't he is a french bulldog and they are breed like this and even if he would be to fat, it's nothing of their concern.

Yeah, not all dogs are food-driven! It really varies, some prefer attention, some prefer toys, and some seemingly prefer nothing (those are the hardest dogs to work with imo).

Different dogs, different weights. I have a sighthound mix and he's more on the leaner side of things, some people tell me he looks too thin, but it's just the way he's build. Some dogs naturally have more mass or appear to be more 'rounded'.

ich sehe gerade weiter unten du sprichst deutsch...lol gut dann auf deutsch muss ich mich nicht mit meinem crappy englisch quälen XD

ich werde nie verstehen, wieso Menschen meinen sich in die Hundeerziehung und generell angelegenheiten von fremden einmischen zu müssen. Das nervt mich am meisten an dem ganzen geschehen. Neben der Tatsache, dass mir bis jetzt nur zwei Arten an Hundelosen Menschen untergekommen sind.

Typ1: wechselt am liebsten direkt die Strassenseite wenn der Hund auch nur in sichtweite ist, auch wenn er die keines Blickes würdigt

Typ2: fasst den Hund an ohne zu fragen, ohne irgendwas wenn sie den hund nicht kennen. Nur weil der Hund ohne Leine läuft und zu einer kleinen Rasse gehört, ist das kein Freifahrtschein dafür den Hund ungefragt anzufassen

Haha oh >XD

Hmmm, also ich finde sowas auch blöd, aber ich muss zugeben, ich hab auch schon öfter mal was zu Hundehalter gesagt. Die waren dann aber wirklich eher von der ahnungslosen Sorte, also Welpe/Junghund von der Leine gelassen obwohl der echt null Recall hatte und sowas. Oder solche mit 'Tutnix' Hunden :T die sind mir ja eh die Liebsten. Meiner ist nämlich Angsthund und der mag andere Hunde nicht, und dann wird der leider auch oft wegen seiner ängstlichen Körpersprache belästigt, aber das kapieren manche Beistzer nicht, dass man dann mal den eigenen Fido abruft, damit meiner nicht so viel Stress hat >_>

Uff ja, das mag ich auch nicht, wenn Leute immer gleich anfassen wollen :(
Ich sag dann meistens sowas wie: "Na, schonmal nackt in einem Raum voller Leute gewesen, die nicht deine Sprache sprechen und dich alle anfassen wollen? So gehts nämlich den meisten Hunden!" - das kann schon helfen den Leuten auf kecke Art zu verstehen zu geben, dass Hunde auch ein Recht auf die 'Personal Bubble' haben.

Oh Tutnix hunde habe ich hier auch einige in der Gegend. Meiner macht um unbekannte Hunde meistens von sich aus schon nen großen Bogen. Er ist verträglich mit allen aber er hat einfach kein großes Interesse an anderen Hunden. Warum? keine Ahnung, vielleicht ist er einfach so, oder seine früheren Besitzer haben was damit zu tun.
Ich hab aber einen der hier auch mit einem sehr unsicheren Hund rumläuft und seinen Hund ständig den kontakt zu anderen aufzwingen will. Der hört aber auch nicht als ich mal meinte "Sieht nicht so aus als wäre ihr Hund begeistert davon" Seine meinung "Doch doch der taut schon noch auf" Das ist so argh...da werd ich aggressiv wenn ich so einen Unsinn höre

Ich bin bei sowas ja froh, dass mein Hund wirklich verträglich ist mit allen Hunden und Menschen aller Art (wenn die zwei Vorbesitzer ihm sonst schon nichts beigebracht haben, scheinen sie ihn wenigstens gut sozialisiert zu haben). Aber das wissen fremde ja nicht. ich frag mich auch immer wieso andere denken, dass ein knuffig aussehender Hund ein Freifahrtschein zum anfassen ist.
Während wahrscheinlich ein großer, der gut erzogen Leinenlos laufen würde direkt als wilde bestie verschrien werden würde

Super chill Dokus! Dankeschön.
Die ersten 4 kannte ich und guck sie auch wieder gerne, die letzte Doku war recht interessant.
Ich hab niemals genauer über verschiedene Trainingsmethoden nachgedacht ^^.
Also Klicker-Training und positive Belohnung kannte ich halt, diese Würge-Halsbänder auch, aber ich wusste nicht, dass es da so verschiedene Schulen gibt.
(Lol der Ausschnitt wo Cesar Milan einen kleinen Hund aggro macht und ihn dann würgt. LOL WTF?? Ich fand dem seine Sendung immer etwas weird, aber WTF?)

Ach, nix zu danken :D sowas teile ich doch gerne!

Lol, Cesar Milan, dieser kleine, schreckliche Typ mit dem Napoleon-Complex. Der is echt furchtbar. Idk wieso der überall so einschlägt wie ne Bombe, ich finde den schrecklich, vor allem sein Blend-A-Med Lächeln und wie er mit den Tieren umspringt. Null Respekt vor anderen Lebewesen :( und sich dann aber als Kenner und Könner im Hundetraining verkaufen, bäh!

Dogs are amazing. Animals are amazing. Hell, life itself in any form is pretty damn amazing. I think dogs might get somewhat disproportionate credit for awesomeness, not because they're not awesome (they are!) but because they're so entrenched in human life. People in general are just more familiar with them than other animals. You got a little taste of non-dog awesomeness with your fox friend Surrey, for instance. Or look at people who've developed strong relationships with horses or dolphins. But this is getting a bit tangential.

I like your last link especially; it addresses some of the outdated info from the first Secret Life vid. The second one's been taken down, btw. I was also raised around dominance/alpha theory training and was all I knew for many years--it was actually working with other animals I had no training preconceptions about which got me thinking in less coercive directions. Probably because I was learning directly from the animals in that case.

Couldn't watch the pedigree vid though. Still trying to bleach that spanial's screams from my head.

Actually the dog is one of the most understudied animals of all time, they were always regarded unworthy of studies because they were 'just dogs' and 'just there'. It's only within the last 20 years or so that scientists have started to seriously study them.
That being said, undeniably there is a big hype about dogs these days. They're man's best friend for a reason!

I like to look into animal intelligence in general! There are so many fascinating animals, like crows, for example! Dolphins are another great example, or whales in general... it's interessting that their social emotion is much higher than ours!

Ah, Surrey. I miss him. Sometimes I daydream about moving back to that place in Berlin and gave more night meetings with him. He was one outstading fellow! I hope he is doing alright.

A shame that the second one got taken down, but I'm sure if you look for it on youtube you will find it again, what's been put into the internet once stays there, forever OuO

Oh, I was talking about the public at large. Even for someone who doesn't have one, a dog's the most likely pet to encounter. Not nearly as many people take their chinchillas or goldfish out for walks, after all. The general public is also where you'll get all those stories of dogs alerting their families about housefires or breast cancer or whatever. At the same time, these sorts of anecdotes are fairly useless for scientific research, since they lack the rigor and control of scientific method. I couldn't even venture a guess at what ratio different species are studied scientifically other than that rats and mice are probably well in the lead, and I've even formally studied the topic! I did recently happen across research from the 1960s which used dogs (a rather unpleasant study on learned helplessness).

One of the problems with (the public's interpretation of) science is that conclusions are rather conservative, since they rely on a preponderance of supporting evidence; hence, while it would seem common sense that dogs experience things like pain and emotion, proving it scientifically is much more difficult. This leads to lay people claiming things like "Animals react purely by instinct, they don't feel emotion." Another problem is that lay people also tend to take such conclusions as final and factual when they're actually open to revision; this leads to tv shows stating as fact that humans created dogs from wolves when they'd have looked rather less silly now had they instead stated it as the currently popular theory at that time.

But yeah, I like dags. They certainly deserve the positive press they're getting. I'd be even happier to see more for other species as well. And keep your eyes open, never know when you'll meet your next Surrey.