Scott Linden Outdoors

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you … to every kind soul who has offered me advice about dogs’ behavior. It has opened my eyes over and over again to a different kind of thinking: canine. And if you watch and listen to dogs enough, you realize they do think differently than we do. More honestly, literally, and with baser instincts. (Maybe we mere humans could learn something from this.)

I wish I could remember who first suggested this trick, used last weekend when picking up Manny. If you know who you are, please know I’m forever grateful. So are Buddy and my wife’s Corgi, Emmy.

Dogs, as we know, are territorial. They will often defend their turf against anyone and anything … from other dogs to people, to a newly-planted tree, but especially against puppies softly and ungainly treading in their space.  In a fit of brilliance borne of desperation, I remembered this lesson one puppy ago (Buddy) and employed the strategy again with Manny: I brought all the other family dogs with me to meet him on neutral ground.

Without turf to fight over, without the need to assert one’s “alphahood,” all three warily sniffed both ends, peed in numerous places, then settled into getting to know each other through careful watching and eventually, play. Once the pack was loaded into the truck, all was well in the world.

By the time we got home, everyone knew where everyone else stood, how the pecking order was to shake out, and the pack had gelled. No defense of the home base required when we pulled into the driveway, tired and stiff from the five hour drive. We were on our way to becoming a team.

Have you experienced this? Or the opposite? What about MORE than three dogs? Two: one established and one new? Should I have peed too? I’m interested to hear from you.