Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
I don't agree. Just as there are people who are a-holes, I'm pretty sure there are dogs who are a-holes too. They're not just some monotonous hive mind. They have individual personalities. We just forgive them cuz they're cute.
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Why are those people a-holes? Were they born that way, or is much of it a product of their environment and how they were raised? Humans are also much much more complicated than dogs.
I didn't say dogs don't have individual personalities or don't differ at all. But in my opinion, it's on the owner to understand those things and figure out how to best connect with that dog. As has been said many times in this thread, you can't get a border collie and expect them to be a docile dog that wants to sleep all day. A dog owner needs to understand what fulfills their dog if they want to be successful as a dog owner. For some dogs, that's just a walk a couple of times a day or playing some light games. For other dogs, they need intense mental and physical stimulation several times a week. Again, that's on the owner to figure out, not on the dog, and it seems that many owners just want to be lazy and blame the dog for not being good, when they don't want to put in the effort to make sure that dog is content.
Train a dog from start to finish and maintain it and I think you'd see what I mean. My dog is night and day from when adopted to now, it's actually pretty crazy to see the transformation when you start to understand how they think, how to properly respond to their behaviour, and be very consistent with your expectations of their behaviour. You also start to notice other people with their dogs and how much their actions actually reinforce bad behaviours. It's 100% an owner issue.