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Executive Decisions: Why Do You Have to Parent Your Crew?

Executive Decisions: Why Do You Have to Parent Your Crew?

Frequently, I walk into multiple dog households that are running amok, for lack of a better term. Some just a little, some far more than a little. In many cases, my presence would have been mostly unnecessary if someone had stepped in as the decision maker right off the bat. Simply put, stepping in as needed assures the safety of all your dogs.

Many of you, who are also human parents, understand the need for creating and enforcing boundaries. Fairness and polite behavior towards siblings is important for human harmony in a family. The same thing applies to the canine members as well.

This is not an advisory to micromanage your dogs’ interactions. A comment to this effect on the How Many Dogs Facebook page brought up this important point. Intervening is a judgment call in some cases. For what can be considered small things, no intervention is necessary if your dogs generally get along well. An example of this is a dog objecting to being stepped on by another dog, by grumbling or barking but nothing further. As long as the clumsy one is not inclined to redirect, that is a perfectly normal interaction between family members.

Parenting Your CrewHumans object to being jostled too, usually by reminding the jostler to be more careful. Dogs get this same privilege provided they can be reasonably polite about it. The key point here is to know your crew. If there are issues, you need to intervene far more often in order to prevent bigger problems.

Do not let your dogs work it out on their own! Not most of the time anyway. Really, the implications of such a scenario boggle the minds of behavior experts. It’s a recipe for disaster, just as allowing one’s human children to make inappropriate decisions regarding their interactions with their siblings. Oh sure, if you “raise them right”, some decisions will be appropriate. But so many more won’t be without initial supervision, intervention and consistency.

Consistency is the key word here. Set an example, make it happen all the time with few deviations, and you have a guideline for success. It doesn’t mean that you need to run your household like a boot camp. Nor does it mean that force needs used to ensure compliance. The best human parents don’t scream, shout and/or hit to handle their children’s infractions. They use conversations that include wise words and non scary but effective consequences for poor choices. But intervene they do, and because of that, the entire family feels a sense of security that all members are properly cared for emotionally and physically.

Will you always have to intervene? That depends on your particular crew and their relationships, but the goal is that you have to intervene as little as possible eventually – aside from preventing furniture from flying due to playtime bursts in the wrong rooms!

Security is one of the most important issues to any life form. Feeling secure allows everyone to relax. Safety from emotional and physical assaults ensures security. Give your crew security early on and you create the right formula to prevent problems later on. Combine safety and security with teaching manners and impulse control and you will put a lot of behavior consultants out of business!

Feel free to use the spaces below to describe how you create safety within your crew.

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4 Comments

  1. Mary Withrow October 25, 2013

    “Security is one of the most important issues to any life form. Feeling secure allows everyone to relax. Safety from emotional and physical assaults ensures security. Give your crew security early on and you create the right formula to prevent problems later on. Combine safety and security with teaching manners and impulse control and you will put a lot of behavior consultants out of business!”

    Great advice. Amazing to me, the similarities in raising children! Same thing, security, good foundation very early, awesome people, adults, productive members of society.

    Love your blog!

  2. Johanna Teresi May 15, 2015

    Totally agree! It is important for people to understand that intervention is necessary to have a calm household. The faster the dogs are redirected and taught good responses the more likely they will be able to redirect themselves in the future! Valuable insights here for multi dog households!

  3. Leah October 6, 2020

    my little babies get along 90% of the time, the bigger older dog has alot of fur and patience lol. She doesn’t mind the chewing chasing and being sat on…However if one brings in a rock from outside, well all hell breaks loose sometimes and i think the big dog is just harassing for play but they both forget the game and start real growling real snarling and real rowe…rhe older one tought this to my chiwawa now she over reacts sometimes if she is awaken when sound asleep now…i do not let this go on but how do you stop it appropriately???
    I have had to hold her while she stops it and be careful she doesn’t get me…like u said she doesn’t mean it she shakes and carefully links me when it’s over she shows remorse…
    Any help will be greatfully accepted
    Charlie and Llie pups…
    Leah

  4. Debby McMullen October 17, 2020

    Hi Leah, it’s hard to rectify this in this venue without asking a ton of questions. I can help you find someone in your area to assist if you want to provide a zip code for me? Also, I do virtual consults if you are interested. You can email about that to debby@pawsitivereactions.com

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