Follow a Leader

This PIB requires a dog to follow the instructions of pack members it sees as having a higher status then itself. Those people who object to being their dog’s boss should recognize the fact that obedience to authority is instinctive in dogs, and therefore no harm or distress is being caused by humans being in charge. Many of the dogs I’ve been asked to help have exhibited stress and anxiety and had been acting out because there was no other authority in the pack. They were required to lead in an environment they didn’t understand and they needed someone to tell them how they should behave in human environments and human social situations. Being social, they were aware that there should be rules, but no one was telling them what those rules were.

This is one of the biggest differences between human and canine thinking. Humans want to believe in social equality and canines can’t. Instinct tells dogs in a pack that there must be bosses. If we aren’t the boss, dogs believe they must be. For a dog, it isn’t optional.

A pack follower is instinctively driven to follow the leader. One of the clearest examples of dogs following instinctive instructions due to lack of leadership are those dogs that want to pursue prey or fight other dogs during the walk. A follower waits for the leader to act and then either actively supports the leader’s actions or passively accepts those actions. Dogs with no recognized leader act independently and defy attempts to control them. Another example would be those dogs that greet visitors as if the dog is insane, regardless of whether those greetings are friendly or hostile. Lacking leadership, they choose the actions that instinctively seem right to them and express their anxiety through hysteria.

Other examples include dogs that “can’t be trained”. In the dog’s eyes, the humans attempting to train them aren’t the boss and therefore aren’t qualified. Another example is dogs that exhibit aggression toward pack members. Aggression is the last option of a leader whose followers are refusing to learn or obey. If the dog was a follower, it would never exhibit aggression toward a higher-status pack member.

All of these unwanted behaviors are produced by people who refuse to lead because they want to feel like kind dog lovers, but don’t understand canine instinctive needs. They are actually gratifying their own emotional needs at the expense of the dog’s feelings of security and confidence.