Understanding quality a dog - Page 2

Dog aggression and human aggression are two completely different things. But I expect my dog to protect himself and me. I never run two dogs together. I am alpha and would not allow any other pecking order.

Actually, like hunt or prey or any drive, human and animal aggression come from the same place.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no human aggression gene and animal aggression gene.
Just like i can take a lab that has great hunt drive and train it to be a detection dog or a duck retriever, same thing.

Is agression a seperate trait? 

Or is it a reflection of self-preservation?

If, Hired Dog, as you say, it has no gene, then how would a breeder breed for and keep it in a line?

 

Ibrahim

No Ibrahim, it DOES have a gene, but its one gene, not several...one for animal aggression, one for human aggression and one for whatever...make sense?

Yes yes, now I understood

The unsupervised behavior between dogs are instincts, the behavior of dogs towards owners, strangers, handlers, are a combination of instincts, temperament, raising, socializating, and training.
A wolf normally is shy against humans, even a socialized wolf, whereas a dog is bred for thousands of generations to be not shy, but to be a "member" of society, whatever this society is.
Without domestication no dogs, the dogs the German Shepherd was bred from were domesticated thousands of years ago.

There is a " point of return " - take a look at  the wild dogs, and then take a look at the street dogs of southern and eastern Europe or Africa, living unsupervised  and not evaluated before breeding they tend to look alike, medium sized, short coated, tan color, long bones, they even behave similar - no more breeds, just dogs.

Susie said, unsupervised behaviors between dogs is instincts.

 

Allow me Susie to challenge that a bit to verify absolute correctness.

 

Talking about unsupervised behavior inbetween dogs.

All dogs share same instincts, correct? but some show dominance inbetween themselves and some don't. Some would prey better than others, why if all behavior is instincts and they share same instincts?

 

Ibrahim

There is no uniformity in the world, not in humans, not in dogs, there are leaders and there are followers.

I tried to explain, that unsupervised dog to dog behavior is the best moment to see the "real" dog.

Self-confidence/Insecurity
Dominance/Servility
Drives
Endurance
...
These traits we try to use, to develop, or to suppress.

Dogs and humans co-evolved together, and recent DNA tracking shows that dogs are not simply domesticated wolves, but a line of canids that no longer do have a direct wild ancestor. The dog and wolf have a common ancestor. The wild canids that paired up with humans were their own species/subspecies; it's hypothesized this was the result of divergent evolution between wolves that were shy around humans, and wolves that were not. Shyness is a genetic trait, countered behaviorally by curiosity. Interestingly, in the dog and human brain there are sympathetic structures that are not found in wolves, or other apes. Also certain shared behaviors, like the left-shift gaze, and ability to figure out what another sees by looking at the direction of their gaze, is not something wolves or other primates do. Dogs have some wild canid behaviors, just as humans still retain some of their instinctual primate behaviors; and dogs are no more domestic modern wolves that humans are domestic modern bonobos. I think the symbiotic evolution of our two species is utterly fascinating. No other animals have co-evolved certain social unifying behaviors that dogs and humans have. -- Throw in the inherent plasticity of the dog's genetics, and selective breeding by humans, and you wind up with a creature that, in very few generations, can be very deliberately developed a certain way.

In judging a dog's reactions to humans versus dogs or other animals, I'd like to bring the gamebred pitbull up for consideration. The original lines, back when dog-fighting was legal, were supposed to be non-aggressive to humans. In summary: competitors had to wash their opponent's dog prior to the match, and in the match if a competitor thought his dog was losing too badly he could go into the ring, pick his dog up, they would be separated by placing a wooden break-stick to lever their mouths apart (not break their jaws like some sources say), and the fight would be done. It wasn't till Chinaman that aggression towards humans was tolerated in the breed. This wasn't a matter of raising of training, it was selective breeding to produce dogs that engaged other dogs (didn't yield to normal canine submission behaviors; nor presented submission behaviors themselves), yet did not react hostilely to humans. These days, there are still dog-aggressive tendencies in the breed, even in dogs most loving and gentle to humans. It's much harder to breed a trait out once it's in, especially when it doesn't always show up until mental maturity. Unfortunately, in poorly bred APBTs ones bred by street thugs to BE aggressive to humans, it's also hard to get that out of the lines. The potential for a pitbull to be dog aggressive is higher than average, regardless of how it was raised; just as a showline corgi is still going to display more herding tendencies that a showline lab. Behaviors, drives, do have genetic components. -- A study took pointers from a selectively bred fearful line, while the pups were just born swapped them with pups from non-fearful lines, and let the pups be raised by other mothers. The normal pups raised by the fearful mothers learned fearful behaviors, but could be rehab'd. The fearful pups raised by normal mothers displayed genetic fear, and could not be conditioned by dog nor human to be bold. Genetics sets the foundation, and how they're raised can make an impact, but ultimately does not change the hand the pup was dealt before birth.