They are seeking release but are only getting relief.
Every so often when I’m walking around my property and step into high grass or some leaves, I hear a little squeak underfoot. For a second I wonder if I’m crushing some small critter, but it always turns out to be nothing more than a plastic air bladder from a squeaky toy, torn apart by a dog after a play session.
I’ve lived with a number of cats and have taken care of thousands in a commercial boarding kennel, not to mention knowing hundreds of cat owners, and yet I don’t believe I’ve ever seen or heard of a cat having chewed up one of their toys. Cats stalk their toys, pounce and bat them around with great enthusiasm, but even when two cats are playing tag-team/take-down on a stuffed, furry animal surrogate, the toy always seems to live to fight another day. But this isn’t so with dogs. Beyond toys, I’ve known dogs that have eaten plywood dog houses, roof and all; steel belted radial tires, steel wire and all; galvanized metal buckets and things you might only expect to find in the belly of a Great White Shark. There are dogs without teeth because they’ve pierced, chewed and masticated stuff that enameled ivory isn’t meant to gnosh on. So why do dogs eviscerate toys and set their squeakers free?
The basic feature of the canine temperament, the rock bottom kernel of canine consciousness from which everything about the dog’s nature arises, is that dogs are endowed with an emotional appetite that far outstrips their physical capacity to consummate it. This has many behavioral implications, the most important one being that they are attracted to each other with a force that can’t be consummated by simple social contact and companionship. This also means that dogs end up being attracted to large, dangerous animals or some other type of challenge (these various challenges come through all manner of endeavor, otherwise known of as breed traits) that when overcome does indeed consummate the chronic state of internal pressure that the canine emotional appetite induces. But one of the lesser manifestations of the canine emotional makeup is that dogs can’t just play with a toy, they must make prey on a toy with an intensity commensurate with their constitutional state of frustration and this leads them to shake, rip and tear it into oblivion. Unlike a cat that hunts by instinct, dogs hunt by appetite (emotional hunger) and setting that squeaker free is as close as the dog can get to feeling free when all it has is a fluffy toy to make prey on.
Related Posts
-
Why Do Dogs Chew Up Squeaky Toys?
They are seeking release but are only getting relief.
Every so often when I’m walking around my property and step into high grass or some leaves, I hear a little squeak from underfoot. For a second I wonder if I’m crushing some small critter but it always turns out to be nothing more than a [...] -
Why Do Dogs Love Car Rides?
Dogs love car rides because they feel as if they are on a hunt. For example, cats never love car rides, or at best merely learn to endure them because when riding in a car cats don’t feel as if they are on a hunt. Why when in a moving car, can a [...]
-
Why do dogs bark at strangers?
Because it’s their owner acting strange.
There are three things I need to explain in regards to this phenomenon.
First, in the animal mind, the form-of-a-thing, such as a human, cat, deer, etc, or sometimes even a log, is the confluence of two energies, predatory and prey. The ratio of these two energies compose a “being”, [...] -
Why Do Dogs Do Everything in a Circle?
Why do dogs (circle before lying down or eliminating, play chase games on long round curves, spin like a top before a ball is thrown or when confined in a kennel or tied to a chain, approach other beings along an arc, quarter into the wind, twirl around a scent marking to position themselves, circumnavigate [...]
-
Why do dogs roll over in “submission?”
To expose themselves, their underside in general, their genitalia in particular.
While “submission” may at first appear to be fundamentally different from “dominance,” in reality they are opposite and yet equal expressions of the same urge to make contact (indirectly, i.e. via sexual contact) with something they are attracted to but, have associated a strong [...]
Click to purchase the Natural Dog Training Book!
Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.Tags: attraction, prey
What are your thoughts on the ‘compatibility’ of Natural Dog Training with Schutzhund training? As the owner of GSDs possessed of ’strong appetite’
I am considering the sport, especially since I have the good fortune to live near a first-rate, positive motivational trainer. Some of the training techniques do seem extreme, but the dogs seem so fulfilled and happy (especially the ‘house dogs’ which mine indisputably are!).
Nothing can be more natural for a dog than doing the work they were bred to do. So if your dog has a temperament that is suitable for the sport, and you have access to a good program in your area, you and your dog will form a bond that would be hard to equal any other way. Good luck and happy training.
Ahhh-making prey. When I adopted Henry, he was the most destructive dog I’d ever seen. I couldn’t let him out of my sight for a second. The cell phone, the rug, leather boots, remote control, flip flops, mouth guard, glasses…you name it. He chewed it.
Then I started working with Lee. Fetch (biting) and tug (bite and kill) became a part of our everyday routine. The destructive behavior stopped. We never had to address the destructive behavior specifically because satisfying his need to make prey fixed the problem.