Pack Dynamics for Dog Training

“The tribe is whatever we believe it is. We become one tribe because we say we’re one tribe. Then our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours.”

Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

What is a Dog Pack?

Thousands of years ago a portion of wolves started teaming up with humans. This subset of wolves eventually became the four legged companions we now call dogs. Dogs have evolved to live in concert with a tribe or family of humans. For the sake of simplicity, this team of dogs and humans is what we’ll be calling a “pack”.

This isn’t about the dogs that have broken off from humanity in order to return to the wilderness. Nor is it about dogs that freely roam the streets of cities. It’s about the modern, domesticated dogs that live in our homes.

For our purposes, the word pack will be synonymous with words like family, team, tribe, or any other type of group. That is to say, your pack is any group of people or animals that you say it is. It is an inclusive term that includes you, your partner or spouse, your children or parents, your dog or dogs, and any other people or animals that play significant roles in your life.

Everything here is written to apply to your relationships in general. I encourage you to practice mentally swapping out the phrase “your pack” at any point with, “your family”, “your business”, “your team”, or any other type of group you are affiliated with.

If you really want to have some fun with it, feel free to swap out the word “dog” with “child”, “boss”, “friend” or “parent”.

At its heart, this is about forming strong, healthy relationships, including the relationship you have with yourself. It is important that when you read the word pack that you remember that you are just as much a part of it as anyone else, and that leading others starts by leading yourself.

What is Leadership?

Leadership is the process of earning your pack’s permission to influence their decisions.

Read that again.

The role of leader is given to those who make daily decisions which prove to their pack that they are capable and caring. True influence is only ever the consequence of demonstrating that you have your pack’s best interest at heart.

There is no finish line to leadership. It is an ongoing way of showing up in relationship to your pack that creates mutual trust and respect. If you are skipping this step and simply trying to gain influence with control, you aren’t leading. You’re managing, and no person or dog wakes up in the morning looking forward to being managed.

In order to earn the hearts and minds of your pack, there are two fundamental steps that must be taken.

Step One - A Leader Serves Their Pack

One of the clearest examples of real leadership I’ve ever experienced happened while I was working as a server in a restaurant. I’d come into work feeling fairly tired and hoping for an easy night, but unfortunately the place was already packed.

Given that I wasn’t feeling great as I began my shift, the tidal wave of tasks soon began to overwhelm me. I quickly began falling behind, making mistakes, and receiving complaints from the people sitting at my tables.

The general manager soon caught wind of my poor performance and began reprimanding me and cracking the metaphorical whip. The message was clear: Get your shit together and stop making mistakes or you are going to be in trouble.

This motivated me to work harder, but it also added dramatically to my stress and feelings of being overwhelmed.

As the night went on I continued to struggle to keep my head above water. About an hour after my manager’s “pep talk” a busboy came over to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

When I told him how I was feeling and what I was struggling with, he said, “What can I do to help?”

The difference these two simple questions made in my night and in my relationship with the busboy was immense. With only a few minutes of help from him I started to feel like I could breathe again, and I was able to get all my tasks under control.

The general manager used his power over my position and employment at the restaurant as leverage to motivate me to perform, a.k.a behave, the way he wanted.

The busboy, who had no direct power over me, demonstrated that he actually cared about me and the restaurant’s guests with his thoughtful questions and willingness to lend a hand.

Given a choice, I would have never worked with the manager again, but I would have followed the busboy into battle.

To be clear, I’m not saying managers in the workplace can’t also be great leaders. They absolutely can. It is only to say that my manager that night was more concerned with my performance than with cultivating a state of cooperation in me.

An obedience-focused mindset is, “I have all the power, therefore I get to make all the decisions, and you have to do what I say.”

Obedience-focused managers want control, and will sacrifice long-term relationships for short-term results.

A cooperation-focused mindset is, “First I’m going to use the power I have to help you as much as I can, then when I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

Cooperation-focused leaders want to help everyone on their team be as capable and successful as possible, because they understand reciprocity. You get what you give.

A true leader does not have power because their pack members can’t stop them from taking it.

A true leader is offered power by their pack because they have proven themselves to be trustworthy and dependable through acts of service. Those who best serve the interests of their packmates are offered the most influence and privilege.

Step Two - A Leader Goes First

Often when I’ve been working with someone and their dog for a while, we’ll end up having a conversation that goes something like this.

Me: “How are things progressing with little Fido?”

Client: “Things have gotten so much easier! He listens when I say no. He comes when he’s called. He doesn’t bark at every random sound. It’s incredible how much he’s changed.”

Me: “That’s awesome to hear. Now that Fido has improved in so many wonderful ways, I want to ask you something important. Who changed first, you or your dog?”

Client: (Smiling as the obvious answer dawns on them.) “I did!”

Going first comes from understanding that if you want your dog to develop, then you need to develop yourself. Your communication skills. Your understanding of your pack’s needs. Your motivation to endure hardships. Your clarity of purpose. Your commitment to your pack’s wellbeing. Your respectfulness and trustworthiness.

Pressuring your dog to change when you’re not willing to is not leadership. It’s behavior management.

If you are standing in judgment, pushing, wishing, and waiting for your dog to improve, you’re stuck. When you place the responsibility of your pack’s well being on their shoulders, they have no one to follow. Your dog needs you to guide the way.

Going first means you must grow. Sending your dog off to be trained by someone else may help your dog learn new commands and behaviors, but it isn’t leadership. Strapping a citronella-spray collar on Batman in an attempt to keep him from barking also wasn’t leadership because that approach wasn’t helping me develop in any meaningful way.

You can think about this from a human-to-human relationship perspective. If we were friends and we found ourselves in a disagreement, what would happen to our relationship if I put a shock collar around your neck and electrocuted you every time you displeased me?

What if I had the power to send you away to a training camp for not obeying my every command? How would I grow as a person and learn from you as a friend if all I did was use my power to make you behave the way I wanted?

Depending on how much training and torture I put you through, you may very well end up being a perfectly well-behaved “friend”, but would you also be a true and loving friend?

When you decide to go first, the changes in you jumpstart your pack’s development, because you are a member of your pack. What helps you grow as an individual and as a leader will help everyone around you. Especially your dog, who requires your assistance to be successful in almost every regard.

What is Success?

The word “success” comes from the word “succession”.

Succession meaning both an advancement in progress or development, and the condition of enduring over a length of time.

Walking from the base of a mountain to the top requires a succession of steps. One after another. Leading your pack into a successful life similarly requires a succession of trial, error, and course correction.

Success is not about crossing an imaginary finish line. Nor is it solely about winning.

To become success-full means to have a life filled with a succession of attempts, both effective and ineffective, made in the direction of goals that matter to you.

This is why forming strong, healthy habits is so important. Goals are simply benchmarks that help us measure our progress and keep us moving forward. Whether we achieve, or fail to achieve, a goal is an outcome based on a process. If I have a goal of losing weight but a habit of eating ice cream and pizza at every meal, no amount of goal setting will fix the problem. Even if someone manages to meet the goal of losing weight, but does not make a habitual change to their lifestyle, achieving this goal will not lead to sustainable improvements in their health.

When I say leadership is a process, this is what I’m referring to. Taking one step forward, paying attention to how our pack changes as a consequence of that step, and making the proper adjustments based on what we’ve learned.

Clients often ask me, “How long do I have to do the things you’re teaching me?” My answer is always the same, “For as long as you care.” Relationships don’t ever reach a place where we can simply coast on the investments we made before. They are living, breathing experiences that require attention and effort in order to remain meaningful.