Now That You Own a Puppy: Tips for Taking Care of Your Puppy

By Joan Tate

This book is about understanding your dog --- just why it behaves in a certain way. For instance, when a dog buries a bone--- whether it is in a hole in the garden or under the cushions of the sofa---it is behaving in an instinctive way that it has inherited from its wolf ancestors. Ethologists, scientists who study animals and their behaviour, have made many interesting discoveries about dogs, and we now know that their behaviour is made up partly of instincts inherited from wolves, and partly of habits learnt as puppies and young dogs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780883917985

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Introduction

No two dogs are exactly alike and no two dogs behave in exactly the same way. In this, dogs are very like human beings. But in nearly all other aspects, dogs behave essentially according to a complicated system of instincts and habits they have learnt. Dogs cannot really think.

You see something that you want up on that high shelf, for instance, and your brain then works out a way in which you can acquire that thing. But a dog cannot think out how to do anything. By a series of actions which it has learnt, it can perhaps achieve something such as scratching at a door and making you get up and let it out. It may learn how to pester you to get the thing off that shelf. It can even learn to open the door if the latch is a suitable one. But it cannot, for instance, drag a chair over to a table and then use that chair to get on to the table to take that delicious piece of steak which is lying there. So although a dog can drag a chair about and it can climb on to a chair and thus gain the meat, it cannot think this joint action out for itself.

This is because there are no instinctive inborn actions in a dog that enable it to carry out such an action. This is the essential difference between people and most animals. Dogs stem from wolves and when wolves roamed wild in the forests or on the plains of the world, habits were formed which have remained ever since. A wolf has to hunt for its food and although few dogs today have to do that, many of the hunting instincts of a wolf still remain with the dog. It is largely these inborn instincts and learnt habits that govern why a dog behaves in a certain way at a certain time.

By studying the wolf, scientists have discovered a great deal, though by no means all, about the dog. Despite the fact that over the centuries the dog has changed its habits, shape and behaviour enormously, largely because man has bred dogs for particular purposes, their wolf-habits remain. By breeding carefully and then training them, man has been able to produce dogs which are useful to men as well as beautiful and companionable. He has also reduced some of the wolf’s more ‘dangerous’ instincts: dangerous to man, that is.

Of all the animals, the dog is nearest to man. It is usually allowed in the home and it becomes attached to its owners. And vice versa. It is even useful and can work for its living, as sheep-dogs, gun-dogs and guard-dogs do. Dogs are also trusted companions to many owners: there is an attachment between them which is not common between man and other animals. If you understand just how your dog functions, then it is easier to handle and life for both you and the dog is happier.

Young Dogs

When you first get your dog, it will probably still be a puppy, perhaps only eight or ten weeks old. Alone now, and away from its mother and the other puppies in the litter, it will need a proxy mother, father, leader, brothers and sisters, all of which you have to provide. It will be mischievous, energetic, chew everything in sight and quickly become exhausted, which is perhaps just as well, because a young dog spends a great deal of time sleeping it off and this gives you a rest too.

HABITS AND ROUTINE

If you have two dogs of this age, it is much easier to study their habits and establish a routine which suits you and the household. If dogs were wild, as wolves, they would at this age be learning to fend for themselves, roaming and learning hunting techniques, for the need for food is the main driving force behind their existence. A domestic dog’s ‘childhood’ goes on for a very long time in comparison, and it spends this period of its life learning to live the kind of life it is going to lead in the future, or