I just read an article by Jan Fennell regarding puppy/dog training. She believes that human being are seen as part of the pack by your dog/dogs, and so your behaviour needs to reflect your leadership within the pack (i.e. eating first, controlling when the dog gets attention etc.) I went to research into her books and read a terrible review which slammed her approach as outmoded and cruel. This pack method was seen as ineffective, and the reviewer concluded that (not a direct quote but...) 'dogs do not include cats and other animals into their pack structure so why would they accept humans? They see humans as a different species and develop specific behaviours to interact with humans whicih are not part of canine/pack behaviour'. I would just be really interested in people's opinions regarding dog training and this method. I am going to be getting a puppy in the summer, and of course need to begin looking into puppy training classes and would be interested in acquiringmore knowledge regarding different approaches to puppy/dog training.

Thanks xx

You will find there are lots of opinions about Jan Fennell's methods :D

Most feel that, although she may have come to their ways via her own experiences, she is in fact rehashing pack theory from over a decade ago.
I was not happy when i saw her give advice in a newspaper re. a very bored border collie; her advice was to ignore it.
A lot of the ideas are also fundamentally flawed; for instance, alpha wolves will under some circumstances allow the pups to feed first, to allow the continuation of their own genes, and so on...

A great book to read is Ray and Laura Coppinger's "Dogs: A startling new understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour and Evolution."

Lindsay
x

Throw JF on the fire, buy the Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson, Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor and read Gwen Boehenkampf.

All much more relevant than JF and her outmoded ideas...........

defintally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That reviewer got it absolutely right!

To be fair to JF, she has at least stopped many people from thinking of dogs as being mentally deficient deformed children in fur coats, but they're not adult wolves either ...
:)

wow, it is really nice to read so much feedback. I have never owned a dog before, and have really thrown myself into researching ownership and training etc. and suddenly realised what a can of worms training really is, with so many different opinions and approaches, but people seem pretty unanimous here!

I think the pack theriories can be useuf7ul to show people that dogs are different to us, and knowing how they interact with each other can be helpful in making us understandable to our dogs, and to interact with them in a way that they can understand.  that said anyone who has lived with dogs (especially quite q number of dogs) will soon realise that they know full well we are not dogs. 

They even learn to mimic some of our behaviours and to do things that we find amusing or acceptable even if for them they would have no meaning or a different meaning.

They are better at understanding us by and large than we are them, whcih is just as well as many successfully live with very inept owners.

Domestic dogsd are very far removed from wolves and the pack theory just doesn't work.
You need to read coppinger's study of dogs in other countries that roam free on the streets, they don't form packs anymore