Neighborhood Packs

Earlier this month my wife and I took our annual vacation. We like to pick somewhere we haven’t spent time before and head there to explore the region. Since neither of us had ever been to Williamsburg VA we headed out that way.

We were fortunate enough to be invited to visit Pat Rock who lives in the area. Pat is the president of the United States Lakeland Terrier club and a long time breeder.

The visit was wonderful. We talked about dogs, and got to meet all the dogs in her kennels, including two of our Tag’s pups. And much to our surprise, we found out Pat has Chicklet’s father. That will have to wait for another blog but led to some wonderful discoveries.

In one of our conversations we discussed the behavioral problems in dogs today. One of my observations is that more dogs than ever seem to need training.

Pat said that one of the reasons is that there are no longer neighborhood packs. When she said that a light bulb lit up.

I grew up in the late fifties and early sixties. As soon as she said that I remembered the neighborhood in Arlington, Texas where we lived while I went to grade school. One of the differences between that neighborhood and the one I live in now was that almost no one had fenced yards. You could step out our back door and look north to four or five open backyards. We had enough room to play football.

As a result there were always three packs running through the neighborhood. One was all the boys, one was all the girls, and the other was all the neighborhood dogs. The dog pack usually traveled back and forth to the two human packs.

There weren’t any leash laws back then. And people were much more careful about not letting intact dogs accidentally breed (I can’t remember a single litter in the neighborhood).

When a new dog came into the neighborhood, there was already an existing pack to join and rank had been established. The new dog quickly figured out its place. And if it was foolish enough to challenge one of the neighborhood kids, the pack quickly put it in its place. I can remember the occasional fight but not once was any blood shed.

And as I am writing this I suddenly remembered that the one dog we were all afraid of lived in one of the few houses with a fenced back yard. When he got out their was all kinds of confusion. Because he was not socialized to the various packs, he simply did not know how to act.

When a dog finishes its primary training here in our center, it goes into group sessions to make sure that both the owner and the dog know how to handle themselves around other dogs. What I am forming is a neighborhood pack. And as a result, these dogs are learning what the dogs from so long ago knew.

I kind of wish I could pull down some fences in my neighborhood.

Doug