Hello fellow forumers; a very interesting/ hotly controversial notion has come to my attention.
Essentially: I'm not sure which is more mythical. The dominance myth. Or the 'debunking' of the myth.
Basically I've searched the web and found NUMEROUS complaints of puppy misconduct involving biting and growling occasionally. Upon further research I started to doubt not only the dominance myth but the 'mythical debunking' of that..myth..err, as you can see it gets kinda messy.
Does anyone know the 'truth' about this cause it just seems so controversial. I give you an example:
puppy wants to bite and doesn't stop:
response:
a)yelp b) say No firmly c) yelp and walk away or avoid eye contact d)time out
puppy response:
a) get excited and bite more b) gets even more excited and bites more c) gets excited and nips are your ankles as you walk away d) gets hyper shortly after letting it out and nips at you again
So I tried the 'oh no you didn't' methods, though very gently. I did the weird 'alpha roll' thing where I'd try to pin it. Failed. Then I tried something like acting like the mother-bitch. I growled and kind of nipped her with my hands. Epic fail, she GROWLED at me back. 9 week old puppy wants to take me on ! I shouted.
The more stern my "no" gets the more she wants to play. In fact..this is why I'm curious about the 'dubunking' of the dominance myth. Cause this is what I think: I think Wanta is learning that if she bites us she gets her way, whether it is play or dominance. I've trained my mom to yelp and I think its a mistake. We yelp and scream. She SO knows she's hurting us, I mean there's no way she couldn't at this point. I even let stern "Owws", but that only gets her more excited and growly. So I think she..kinda USES it to assert herself as "hey, I wanna play, listen to me BIATCH!"
So I really do suspect Wanta is trying to assert DOMINANCE. I was like.. NO WAY, after all we did for you! Unconditional love my arse =P
I love my puppy and am willing to try to whine that my parents allow her to go to obedience school. But more than anything, I dislike controversial messes, and it definitely does seem like my puppy is trying to be the alpha female, and the advice of "yelp and walk away" is seeming increasingly ridiculous, and I feel like a dummy doing something that doesn't work at all except in making me look lame. In addition, going to obedience school in this air seems like a 'defeat' of knowledge/theory-kind. In short, I don't want to give up to obedience school without learning the truth of whether or not all this is BS !!
I've read a lot of threads online and all of them are like "well..mm. I dunno. Time for obedience school!".
but what about the theories? Doesn't my puppy know she's hurting me, sometimes she bites hard enough to rip or bleed my hand. I yelp and give stern "no's" and "eh eh eh's", but she just LOVES torturing me. Given that she even growled at me today, I kinda feel like this 'relationship' of ours is going a little outta hand.
I feel like an alien, where I have 'ZERO' means of telling her whats wrong; thats kind of the issue with positive reinforcement, you can't ever use punishment of any kind. I doubt the statement "the absolute WORST thing you can do is remove your attention from your puppy! You turn your back!"; problem with that is my puppy gives me kind of like a "fine..I'll just play somewhere else, I dun need you!", and contently trots off on her own with a care. And when she DOES suffer [AKA whining in confinement], after I lecture her and release her SHE STARTS AGAIN. and I repeat this process like 3x over and over, and she doesn't get it! Hmm. or maybe she DOES get it-- *hinthint [trying to dominate me]
I pet her and shower praise when she's calm and kind. It just doesn't seem like positive reinforcement has much 'kick' to it. I swear that when I walk away, all my puppy's learning is that she BEATS me when she bites. We all look like we're running from her. My mom pulls her feet up on the couch to hide. this is SO a dominant streak! I mean.. right?
*note: I'm not at all challenging positive reinforcement theories, I'm just posing a slightly humorous challenge to the "all you have to do is YIP!" statements out there. And I've seen that my case isn't at all unique online, with tons of people complaining, getting ambiguous advice. But still, what's left to do besides those ridiculous alpha rolls or grabbing her neck area lightly and shaking her? I can only imagine when my puppy gets older and how she'll use her mouth to take advantage of us then... :yikes:
Thanks again forumers! Wondering if any experts out there can shine concrete-light on this issue. I'm surprised that my puppy is destroying the hand that feeds her, with no remorse. I've done everything right according to the theories for bite inhibition, I swear!
Essentially: I'm not sure which is more mythical. The dominance myth. Or the 'debunking' of the myth.
Basically I've searched the web and found NUMEROUS complaints of puppy misconduct involving biting and growling occasionally. Upon further research I started to doubt not only the dominance myth but the 'mythical debunking' of that..myth..err, as you can see it gets kinda messy.
Does anyone know the 'truth' about this cause it just seems so controversial. I give you an example:
puppy wants to bite and doesn't stop:
response:
a)yelp b) say No firmly c) yelp and walk away or avoid eye contact d)time out
puppy response:
a) get excited and bite more b) gets even more excited and bites more c) gets excited and nips are your ankles as you walk away d) gets hyper shortly after letting it out and nips at you again
So I tried the 'oh no you didn't' methods, though very gently. I did the weird 'alpha roll' thing where I'd try to pin it. Failed. Then I tried something like acting like the mother-bitch. I growled and kind of nipped her with my hands. Epic fail, she GROWLED at me back. 9 week old puppy wants to take me on ! I shouted.
The more stern my "no" gets the more she wants to play. In fact..this is why I'm curious about the 'dubunking' of the dominance myth. Cause this is what I think: I think Wanta is learning that if she bites us she gets her way, whether it is play or dominance. I've trained my mom to yelp and I think its a mistake. We yelp and scream. She SO knows she's hurting us, I mean there's no way she couldn't at this point. I even let stern "Owws", but that only gets her more excited and growly. So I think she..kinda USES it to assert herself as "hey, I wanna play, listen to me BIATCH!"
So I really do suspect Wanta is trying to assert DOMINANCE. I was like.. NO WAY, after all we did for you! Unconditional love my arse =P
I love my puppy and am willing to try to whine that my parents allow her to go to obedience school. But more than anything, I dislike controversial messes, and it definitely does seem like my puppy is trying to be the alpha female, and the advice of "yelp and walk away" is seeming increasingly ridiculous, and I feel like a dummy doing something that doesn't work at all except in making me look lame. In addition, going to obedience school in this air seems like a 'defeat' of knowledge/theory-kind. In short, I don't want to give up to obedience school without learning the truth of whether or not all this is BS !!
I've read a lot of threads online and all of them are like "well..mm. I dunno. Time for obedience school!".
but what about the theories? Doesn't my puppy know she's hurting me, sometimes she bites hard enough to rip or bleed my hand. I yelp and give stern "no's" and "eh eh eh's", but she just LOVES torturing me. Given that she even growled at me today, I kinda feel like this 'relationship' of ours is going a little outta hand.
I feel like an alien, where I have 'ZERO' means of telling her whats wrong; thats kind of the issue with positive reinforcement, you can't ever use punishment of any kind. I doubt the statement "the absolute WORST thing you can do is remove your attention from your puppy! You turn your back!"; problem with that is my puppy gives me kind of like a "fine..I'll just play somewhere else, I dun need you!", and contently trots off on her own with a care. And when she DOES suffer [AKA whining in confinement], after I lecture her and release her SHE STARTS AGAIN. and I repeat this process like 3x over and over, and she doesn't get it! Hmm. or maybe she DOES get it-- *hinthint [trying to dominate me]
I pet her and shower praise when she's calm and kind. It just doesn't seem like positive reinforcement has much 'kick' to it. I swear that when I walk away, all my puppy's learning is that she BEATS me when she bites. We all look like we're running from her. My mom pulls her feet up on the couch to hide. this is SO a dominant streak! I mean.. right?
*note: I'm not at all challenging positive reinforcement theories, I'm just posing a slightly humorous challenge to the "all you have to do is YIP!" statements out there. And I've seen that my case isn't at all unique online, with tons of people complaining, getting ambiguous advice. But still, what's left to do besides those ridiculous alpha rolls or grabbing her neck area lightly and shaking her? I can only imagine when my puppy gets older and how she'll use her mouth to take advantage of us then... :yikes:
Thanks again forumers! Wondering if any experts out there can shine concrete-light on this issue. I'm surprised that my puppy is destroying the hand that feeds her, with no remorse. I've done everything right according to the theories for bite inhibition, I swear!