By David Futrelle
Red Pill dudes agree that to be a true alpha male, you need to dominate the women in your life. Apparently the same rule applies to man’s best friend as well: Alpha males need to be the alpha dog to their own dogs — even if (especially if) these dogs are teenie-weenie cutie-wooties.
You sinply cannot allow your dog to walk all over you (perhaps literally), no matter if it’s a hulking rottweiler or an itsy-bitsty baby-wabie, the Red Pill Redditor calling himself Whisper warned his fellow would-be alphas in a classic post on the Red Pill subreddit.
“Just like any other canine,” he wrote,
small breed dogs need training, discipline and exercise. The dog must be taught to walk at a heel, sit, down and stay on command. Yet the major problem owners have is to recognize that all dogs need to work to earn food, praise and treats.
The trouble comes when owners break frame and give their tiny dogs unearned affection.
It has been my experience that small breed dogs are often lavished with affection, food and treats for no other reason except that they are small and cute.
Well, technically, dogs are “lavished” with food because they need it to live and starving your pets is animal abuse, but anyhoo, Whisper wants us to know that too much of this sort of coddling makes your tiny dog think you’re a big pussy.
Dogs do not understand this. In fact it makes them mentally ill. They interpret this cascade of affection without reason as submissive puppy-like behavior from their owners.
Uh oh.
In turn, they attempt to dominate and control their puppy/owners which can lead to aggression, separation anxiety and a host of neurotic behaviors.
Whisper then laid down the rules for TOTALLY DOMINATING your tiny dog.
1) If your dog sleeps in the bed with you, stop it. Now.
2) Teach your dog to walk at proper heel. Do not carry your dog. His paws are for walking.
3) Nothing in life is free. Have your dog work for food, rewards and especially affection.
4) Do not tolerate bad dog behavior because your dog is small. Consistently enforce all your commands.
Huh. What if you like having your dog sleep in bed with you?
I mean, yes, it’s good for dogs to have at least some rudimentary training and discipline and yes, this will make the dog feel more secure. But, damn, dude, spending your whole life worrying about breaking frame with your toy poodle? And being a jerk to a tiny creature who depends on you for everything? Just saying.
And now is the time in the post where I put up pictures of giant men with tiny dogs.
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Totally OT: Today was my last day at work. I have been coping by cuddling kitties and watching videos of cute kittens romping about.
“But you can totally tell a dog to wait by the door until his paws are clean, that one time his paws were muddy, or if he starts running in before you had time to say “wait” you can call for him to come back instead… that’s how we do it, all the time. We have almost no consistent rules, everything is just case by case, and it works fine.”
Sounds like you’re training your dog. ;p
Being the “pack leader” is all about being the one that sets the behavior, and not about
abusingdisciplining the dog anyway. Dogs don’t naturally know how to fit into human society. A person who doesn’t teach a dog on how to act in this world is being irresponsible.But as far as this dip Whisper? You can tell a lot about a person and their deepest desires by how they treat animals. For real.
Grrr. Usually I can find some humor in what these assholes are up to. But with this one, I can’t. This is a tragic story. My wish for these dogs is that they are immediately removed from any household like this by new, good doggie parents.
@MikeOscar: I havent’ said I don’t train my dogs. I do!
They do get some kind of “automatic” training just by living with people, being talked to etc, but also planned training on certain things, like coming when they’re called.
I think many people over-estimate how much you gotta consciously train in order for dogs to learn necessary stuff – they really learn a lot just by hanging out with people in various situations. (And I also think many people totally overestimate the need for “consistent rules”, rather than just doing what fits the current situation on a case by case basis.) But always coming when called and a few other things you usually gotta train in a more planned and conscious way, I think, and of course a lot of dogs really ENJOY learning tricks, track- and search-training etc.
Re pack leader: In my experience, USUALLY when people say you gotta be the pack leader (even when they add stuff about not being mean or punishing etc), they have loads of unscientific, sometimes mean, and just plain unnecessary ideas.
It can be punishment stuff – although NO ONE uses the WORD “punishment”! Everyone is in complete agreement that “punishment” is bad, it’s just that the stuff THEY do does NOT count as punishment. But it can be stuff like lashing out with an angry voice, hard leash yanks, even twisting ears etc when the dog does something “forbidden” or doesn’t obey. Call it what you like, it’s still about showing the dog that mum is gonna get pissed off, or even that things are gonna hurt, unless you do what you’re told.
Alternatively, the pack leader stuff can refer to a shitton of unnecessary just-because-rituals, like mum has to pretend to eat something before the dog gets their food, or mum always walks ahead of the dog through doors, stuff like that. Stuff you supposedly have to do in order for your dog to respect you, because wolves supposedly do this in the wild and dogs are supposedly just like wolves. (I used to do all these stupid rituals ages back, when I was new to dogs and took obedience classes for a woman who was a Jan Fennell fan…)
Sometimes it’s even about cruel repression of natural behaviour, like forcing the dog to do some sort of heel position from start to finish when going out for walks, rather than walking normally and checking out interesting scents.
ULTIMATELY, though, words don’t matter! If someone is nice and relaxed and normal with their dogs, allows them to engage in natural behaviours, communicates with them, doesn’t ignore or try to dominate them all the time etc, and still wanna call themselves “pack leader”, sure, go ahead and do that, I don’t really care about words per se.
Re seperation anxiety, our oldie got this problem in a bad way when he was less than a year old. Looking back, I think Husband and I (who were new to dogs) created this problem by moving forwards to quickly with the leaving-alone-training when he was a pup, and thus we made him anxious. He’d just yell and shout and try to scratch his way out through the door when we tried to leave him.
We had to find an assortment of dog sitters to keep him company and then really start again from the beginning with the being-alone-training.
First, just opening and closing the apartment door, stepping back and forth through it, several times a day, until he wasn’t bothered by that at all.
Second, stepping out, locking, unlocking, stepping back in, several times a day.
Third, actually moving down the stairs and then up again and back into the apartment.
Fourth, going down the stairs, out of the building, back inside again.
After two weeks, we could go out, stay out for a few minutes, and then back inside again – with a completely calm and unbothered dog!
After that, we moved forward at a slightly higher pace, and after over a month, we could leave him for a few hours, and it didn’t bother him. Success!
When he was fourteen though, he seemed to get a bit of dementia going. Sometimes he seemed not to recognize people like my dad, whom he’s known his entire life, but doesn’t meet very often (since we live in different parts of the country). He’d greet dad like he was a stranger. He’d also “zone out” and just stare at the wallpaper occasionally. And his separation anxiety got back!
FORTUNELY, he’s fine as long as one of the other dogs are at home with him. So since then (he’s now sixteen), we simply make sure that he never has to be completely left alone; there’s always at least one other dog OR one human with him.
Ironically while small dogs can develop bad behavior from too much human affection, it’s not because we just “wuv them too much” that causes it. It’s because small dogs are more likely to have their personal space disrespected, constantly picked up or yanked close regardless if it’s a thing they’re into (now, some dogs are into it.My dog is a cuddle monster. But others like to not be bugged all the time while trying to nap or whatevs). The dogs often show signs of discomfort or distress when humans do this, but if those signs are ignored, the dog will simply learn they need to escalate their message of “I don’t wanna be picked up/cuddled/smooshed right now!” to barking and snapping.
Also, depending on the breed, many toy and teacup small dogs have a lot of health issues that can contribute to their moods. My aunt and uncle had an aggressive teacup poodle. You couldn’t touch his back in the second half of his life because he had a bad back and pressure in the wrong spot equaled pain equaled snapping. Throw toys for him and he’d love you for days, but no touchee the back, or he’d go for the teeth.
So, I heard that the US’s Democratic Party had another debate last night…
O/T: David RT’ed this article (TW: discussion of transmisogyny and antisemitism) and so maybe there will be a post on it later, but I want to talk about it now.
TL;DR is that a TERF appeared on a white nationalist YouTube channel, and all her friends on Mumsnet are very happy about it. Most of them seem to simply not care that she appeared with a literal Nazi, but a significant portion appear to actually support his fascist views.
Although the article doesn’t mention it, Gariepy also raped an autistic teenager and may have raped other women as well.
This is a great demonstration of the obvious fact that TERFs are not feminists, merely transphobes who are looking for anywhere they can latch on and spread hate.
Naglfar,
It definitely exposes the TERF claim that they’re opposing trans rights to protect women and girls as the lie that it is.
Given that Nazis are blatantly pro rape and pro pedophilia and believe that it’s white women’s purpose in life to birth white babies, they are definitely not a group that any feminist should ever ally with in any circumstances.
I know that as a cis women, I feel and am safer in a room with a trans woman than in a room with a Nazi.
@WWTH
Of course, over on Mumsnet (which for some reason is where all the TERFs congregate) they tried to claim that they opposed Nazis but wanted to protect Nazi children. I don’t think anyone’s buying that excuse.
The Mumsnet denizens tried to explain this away as it being “outreach” and a few even congratulated her for it. One actually complained that a caller to the show asked if the TERF was Jewish, going on to make an antisemitic statement.
TERFs have allied with the far right before, just not usually this transparently. These people are ridiculous and awful.
Kereea:
I called it Small Dog Syndrome when I worked at a vet clinic. Some of what you said could be true, but I’d regularly experience aggression from smaller dogs far more often than larger dogs, and not because I’m invading their space to any unnecessary degree (rather, just trying to put them on a leash, put food in their dish, etc).
I agree it isn’t because small dogs are ‘loved too much’, but they ARE often allowed to get away with behaviors allowed far less often in larger dogs, such as jumping up on people. This is a problem, because this kind of behavior can morph into nervous energy or just plain aggression. ‘Can’ – not always, but ‘can’. Whereas larger dogs are more likely to be reigned in as they grow.
Obviously large dogs still jump on people, and plenty of small dogs are sweet and cuddly. I’m just sharing my personal experience working with animals at a vet clinic/boarding facility for about 8 years.