CHAROITE SIBERIANS

When you browse the husky forums one thing that constantly comes up is the issue of dominance. I'm not sure if it's raised as much in other breeds but certainly with Siberians, concepts like pack order, hierarchy, dominant behaviour and the (to me, anyway,) dreaded term Alpha come up regularly.

I got a message off someone who'd watched a video I had posted on YouTube showing some of my gang messing around indoors. I've mentioned before how much comment this has attracted, mostly along the lines of it's funny but you shouldn't let them jump all over your furniture. Fair enough. Yes, they should play outside but sometimes they don't and I'm not going to worry about it. My correspondent, however, worried there was more to it from a canine point of view and saw it as a signal my dogs didn't respect me and implied I was putting myself at risk. This poses an interesting question. If your dog climbs on the sofa is he trying to take over the world ?

Dominance, of course, exists in the dog world. All of our dogs are descended from ancestors who lived in packs and relied on some kind of strict order to make sense of the world and not go hungry. There seems to be the expectation that because Siberians still comfortably live in groups that they are more likely to have dominance issues than dogs whose path to domestication involved guardianship, lap warming or herding livestock. Hmmm, not sure I agree.

I'm not a behaviourist. I have spent many hours of my life around dogs though and watching the huskies, the thing that strikes me most about them is how pragmatic they are. Siberians strike me as the greatest opportunists of a species that has flourished on its opportunitism. Yes. my lot will fall out occasionally but they always fall out over STUFF, not ideas and, I don't think, rank. We've had noise wars and the occasional toothy/naily thing over food, over toys, over girls, over a hedgehog and, inexplicably, over the cardboard tube out of a kitchen roll. I have a hot-head who takes exception if anyone bumps into her, another one who acts like she rules in the outside world but sits under the coffee table if doggy voices are raised at home and one who will risk stealing anything off anyone because he can grab quick and run like hell. I've never seen much behaviour that constitutes hierarchy.

When one of them gets on the sofa, I always figures it's because it's more comfortable than the floor than because they want to the big daddy, or mummy.

I'm pretty relaxed around the dogs (unless someone jumps on my sore wrist then I can get a little shouty, which is nuts as that doesn't make sense at all to a dog). We do have house rules though. Mainly that they are supposed to do what I ask them. I know they like the furniture but if I ask them to get down then they should. The dogs are all different. Pye is, for example, much more stubborn than Brew and gets quite mardy with the girls if anyone hurts him during play. Brew just gets dragged around the floor and comes and hides behind my legs if he wants a break. I think this is more personality than rank - certainly no one takes Brew's food off him but the girls will try and pinch Pyewacket's dinner if they get a chance however much he rants about it. Similarly Mojo spends a lot of time running round telling the others off but they tend to ignore her. She reminds me of Cartman - "Respect my Authority, Respect my Authority !"

Anyway, I hate to think of some poor dog getting alpha rolled or whatever for wanting to sit on the settee.

 Beany planning world domination. Today the sofa, tomorrow the planet ....