Curiosity

[Darren82]

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We have a border collie. If me and my wife play fight he let's her hit me but if I so much as move towards her he jumps up and growls jumps around etc. Does any one know why he protects her but let's her hit me. Purely curiosity he never hurts me or my wife it's just something we have never figured out.

 

[JudyN]

I'm just speculating but I would guess that either he's a bit more attached to your wife in general (he might see her as a more important resource, say if she feeds or walks him more often, but some dogs just do tend to attach themselves to one person), or he sees her as being more vulnerable - her punching you might look as if it's not going to cause damage, you punching her might look more convincing.

Either way, as he finds it unsettling, I'd try not to play fight in his presence and stick to cuddles!

 

[Drift's Owner]

Is the dog a male or female? If it is male, it might see itself as the alpha male and might see you as 'attacking' his alpha female.

 

[JoanneF]

Is the dog a male or female? If it is male, it might see itself as the alpha male and might see you as 'attacking' his alpha female.

The alpha and pack leadership theory was based on incorrect analysis and has since been thoroughly disproved. Please have a look at the article linked below. I would add to @Drift's Owner that as he is a Kelpie, force free handling will be imperative for such a sensitive breed.

The Alpha Dog Theory | Whole Dog Journal

 

[Biker John]

Not going with the silly alpha male idea, but in my experience male dogs tend to defend females. In the same way that it is most unusual for a male dog to attack a female dog. Years ago we took in a large male, he was said to be a cross between a GSD and a Dane and he could have been. He was a lovely dog very easy to train and friendly, one day my wife said 'males are supposed to defend females so pretend to hit me and see what happens' so we had a pretend argument and I went to punch her, Bruce grabbed hold of my hand, didn't actually bite but I could feel his teeth pressing. So we both told him to relax and fussed him, a bit later my wife said I wonder what he would do the other way round and went to hit me. Bruce grabbed hold of MY hand again, he must have decided it was my fault somehow. So again we relaxed him. I worked shifts and while we had Bruce I had no worries at all about my wife taking the dogs out in the dark

 

[merlina]

Do you know your dog's background? Maybe he has a memory this stirs up to do with a male and aggression...don't want to be a killjoy but be careful of doing things that excite your dog into protective behaviour. Dogs don't have our understanding of play fights nor do they always read a situation correctly. It's how lots of children get nipped in the family home!

 

[Biker John]

Merlina, no we knew very little about him. And totally agree it was silly of us, but we were young.

 

[merlina]

Ah-h-! I'm not preachy, honestly. I speak as someone who must have frequently-flier miles at our local A&E!

 

[Drift's Owner]

The alpha and pack leadership theory was based on incorrect analysis and has since been thoroughly disproved. Please have a look at the article linked below. I would add to @Drift's Owner that as he is a Kelpie, force free handling will be imperative for such a sensitive breed.

The Alpha Dog Theory | Whole Dog Journal

Hi, I had never heard of the alpha theory being associated with aggressiveness or force, nor do I condone it, but I can see quite a few google links with it, which I found surprising! It's not how I have associated that term before, but it is interesting to see how others have referred to it. Thanks for enlightening me. Force free handling is a bit of misnomer to me, as it is hard to define and I also come from the school of thought that positive reinforcement will always win over negative and no aggressive force should be ever used to train a dog. Others may differ, but I cringe at the thought of it.

 

[leashedForLife]

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“The Alpha model” of k9 behavior was developed by the very researcher who later disproved it - sadly, it had already escaped into the wilds of the public memeland, & as a romantic “sticky” idea, it still holds on powerfully.
Dr David Mech studied captive wolves, living in very artificial settings, & made-up into a “pack” as if they were a Chinese take-out order: one 2-YO M from Column A, 2 adult unrelated Fs from Column C, one 4-YO M from Column B... Needless to say, that’s not how WILD wolf-packs are formed. // The 1st thing that happens in founding a wild pack? - one adult F & one adult M choose EACH OTHER as mates, & they become the parents of generations of pups.
That never happens in captivity - free choice of one’s mate, & it’s the literal foundation of any wild pack; every event after that is a footnote to that crucial moment, of 2 young adults meeting or a widow / widower meeting a new mate.

Needless to say, aggro - especially over food! - was enormously increased in such unrelated captive packs, who resemble human refugees in a barbed-wire fenced camp, not the wild self-created family of normal wolves.

Also, wolf parents are leaders not “due to their aggro”, but b/c when their pups are young, THE ADULTS know better than their babies do, what’s safe or not, what’s right in this situation vs that one, & so on. We humans do not fight with our young children; we nurture, protect, & teach them, & so do wolf parents.
A wild wolf pack is a family, typically of 2 to 3, or even 4, generations: parents, 2 to 3-YO pups helping to rear younger sibs, 1 to 2-YO pups also working to feed & care for younger sibs, & the current under-12-MO litter, in their roles as the “babies”.

Dogs & wolves have a lot of genes in common, but their behaviors are markedly different, & nowhere more so than in mating & rearing pups. That’s why wolf/ dog hybrids are such a bad idea - they are neither fish nor fowl, they cannot be released to the wild, & they are seriously problematic as “pets”.

50/50 F1 wolf/ dog hybrids are not usually stranger tolerant - off their own turf, they avoid contact with ppl they don’t know, & ON their own turf, they may actively resist contact or even threaten approaching strangers. Without extensive & intensive preconditioning, they are not “good” with handling by nonfamily persons; the vet, groomer, dog-walker, pet-sitter...
They are typically spooky outside of their familiar home or garden / yard, to novel sights, sounds, scents, or movements; they are SELF-WILLED & self-directed to a marked degree, even as pups (quite indifferent to what U are doing, completely engaged in their own independent activity, & this as young as 6-WO ... no toddling along at one’s heels, for these pups!), & they are precociously quick to develop, physically & mentally / emotionally.
They are also insanely destructive inside a home; most are relegated to an outdoor pen, or living outside on a chain, by 6-MO; some owners manage their destructive impulses by creating them when not supervised directly.

Think about living with an animal who will leap from the floor to rip a ceiling-fan down, when left at home with the fan running to cool the room. Or who will dig thru the cushion, the under-cushion layer, the sprIngs & the frame, clear to the floor, in pursuit of an interesting scent.
Or who shreds lap-throws into confetti, or bath towels into lint, when bored.

Backcrossing an F1 hybrid to a wolf, in order to get higher-percentage wolf F2-offspring, only intensifies their problematic behaviors - fearful or timid, defensive or offensive aggro, flee or hide when approached, bite or threaten when cornered, destructive when bored or simply as an engrossing activity, self-willed & the precise opposite of “biddable”.

Wild wolves are shy of humans, & very very rarely aggress - they prefer to flee, if possible b4 they are even seen. HYBRIDS in stark contrast, are over 11 X as likely as any domestic dog breed or mix, to kill a human. Note that’s not to bite, nor to maul - it’s comparing fatal attacks by dogs, vs fatal attacks by hybrids.
That statistic is alarming, given that hybrids make up less than 2% of the pet k9s in the U-S; 1.5% of 75 million pet “dogs” kills, on average, 1 in 4 of the ppl who die in “dog” attacks each year.

I did the math myself, working with CDC statistics of fatal attacks on humans by all breeds, between 2006 & 2010. // I can only hypothesize that the dog-ancestry of hybrids, reduces their timidity enuf to make biting less inhibited - most dogs will try to avoid biting a person, they signal their fear or anger to try to stop whatever actions / interactions are upsetting them, B4 they finally feel they must bite.

Dogs don’t pair for the life of the partner; M dogs don’t bring food to their mate, in fact, as soon as she stops allowing him to mount, he’s gone, & has no further interest in her or any pending litter.
M dogs don’t bring food to the heavily-pregnant or nursing F; wolves do. MALE pups of domestic dogs will not *argue* over who gets to urp-up their most-recent meal, to feed pups who are complete strangers to them - while male WOLF pups, will, once they age past 6-MO.
Imagine 9-MO male dogs, vying to be the 1st to regurgitate their eagerly-eaten meal, for a puppy under 4-MO, that they’ve never seen B4, who’s soliciting food by licking the corners of their mouths. No way.
Yet young wolves are eager to play big-brother & feed the hungry stranger.

Dogs are no more “like” wolves in their behaviors than humans are “like” chimps, in our behaviors; culturally, there are wild dissimilarities between the wild relative & the domestic species. One of the big areas of similarity where dogs & wolves share behaviors is SIGNALING, but no dog breeds carry the entire lupine lexicon; most dog breeds only have 12 to 20 of the wolf repertoire, used to avoid conflict & communicate intentions and emotional states.

- terry

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