No other animal is as successful at conditioning humans as the dog.
On the other hand, the dog’s orientation towards the ” important other ” is important for the development of a social dog and for overcoming anxieties and the resulting behaviors.
Moderation and balance in mutual orientation are therefore both necessary and difficult.
Orientation towards humans transforms the dog’s orientation reflex towards the stimulus into an orientation reaction towards the human . By asking the questions “What do we do with the situation? Is it dangerous or not?”
| Example | Human towards dog | Dog towards human | |
| No orientation | Person with headphones and dog on a leash | 0% | 0% |
| In puppies | 30% | 70% – Attachment | |
| Problematic 1 | Askew 2003* | 100% | 0% |
| Problematic 2 | German Shepherd Dog Club (formerly?) | 0% | 100% |
| Healthy | Mutual orientation | 40% | 60% – Social bond |
[* Henry R. Askew (2003) describes a family in which the dog has determined the order in which the family members should go to bed and aggressively enforces this order.]
The orientation should be mutual and to a reasonable extent, and above all it should enable/facilitate the dog to overcome its fears and to “habituate” them.
And, I never tire of repeating this, a key component of orientation is leash training in its three stages (see “Der natürliche Weg zum souveränen Hund”).
Anyone who thinks that only the dog needs to orient itself towards the human is seriously mistaken. The leash is merely a means of communication between human and dog.
The so-called “safety harness”, which has unfortunately become widespread and which always makes dogs look like a cabbage roll, is ultimately an “ un-safety harness ”!
Pavlov impressively describes the effect of the dog’s orientation towards humans …
” In September of last year (1924) Leningrad suffered a great flood. The dogs were saved only with considerable difficulties, and under extraordinary circumstances. Within five or ten days, when everything was put in order again, our dog, to all appearances perfectly healthy, greatly perplexed us in the experimental room. All the positive conditioned reflexes had completely: the dog did not salivate at all and did not take the food offered to it in the usual manner. For a long time we could not guess what was wrong. None of our initial suppositions about the reason for this phenomenon could be substantiated.
Finally it dawned on us that the strong effect produced on the dog by the flood persisted. For our dogs we now make certain changes. Dr. Speransky sat quietly in the room together with the dog and did nothing, while I performed the experiment for him from the other room. To our great satisfaction the conditioned reflexes reappeared and the dog began to take the food. By repeating this method for a considerable period of time, at first infrequently and then more often, gradually weakening it, ie, sometimes leaving the dog alone in the room, we finally restored the dog in a certain measure to its normal condition.
…
The other method was only a variation of the one just described. We placed in the dog’s room only part of the experimenter’s clothing, rather than the experimenter himself, and this was enough markedly to increase the reflexes. The dog did not see the clothing and, consequently, it was the odor that acted.”
(Pavlov, IP: Psychopathology and Psychiatry. Selected Works)
… but he in no way understands the significance of his observation.
