The dog’s aggressive behavior changes depending on the speaker. If the fight occurs between two dogs, a well-listened “moderator” intervenes: Mother Nature in person, who transmits the instinct of conservation of the species.
Mother Nature does not want internal struggles to depopulate the packs of wolves (or dogs), as this would endanger the species: aggression and combativeness within the species are therefore ritualized. To be clearer, let’s say that growls, barks and threats have a specific purpose within the canine community as they serve to establish a specific pecking order.
The dog, like the wolf, is a social animal that lives in packs and within a social structure where anarchy cannot reign. For everything to work well, from hunting to defending the pack, there must be commanders and subordinates, generals and private soldiers. In the pack, hierarchical positions are not established “only” by wrestling, but wrestling is one of the means used; the problem is that fighting to the last drop of blood would rob the pack of some subjects.
This is the raison of ritualization: ritualistic gestures and grand staging that serve to establish who has the most guts, who is the strongest physically, who has the most consistency or the most charisma. . These scenes do not foresee the elimination of the weakest, but their submission.
When two wolves fight, the loser is hardly ever killed: he just needs to “surrender” by ritualistic gestures (lying on his back with his stomach exposed or offering his throat to the winner). These gestures immediately inhibit the aggressiveness of the strongest, which gives up any attack. The victories are therefore above all moral.
In the case of the dog, unfortunately, man has sometimes distorted this behavior: partly by selection and partly by “educating” (even if in this case it would be necessary to speak of the destruction of education) certain subjects to exacerbate in the end. Maximum antagonism between subjects of the same sex. This human work results in the fact that some dogs can be made to fight with each other to the death.
But it must be emphasized – also because this is such a hot topic – that this is unnatural behavior and that nature, luckily, possesses a force greater than that of man. As a result, any breed of fighting dog, left to its own devices, returns to ritualization within a few generations.
The pack can also kill if it comes face to face with a predator, for example a puma; this is indeed a danger for the pack. In this case too, Mother Nature finds no fault with the physical elimination training, in the vast majority of cases, can return to a peaceful existence provided it is taken over by a competent and expert person.
In short, the dog is never born “ferocious” or bloodthirsty towards his fellows: he can become so because of the intervention of men whose behavior can only be qualified in terms that it is better not to use. . The case of behavior outside the species is quite different: in this case, the dog can “naturally” attack and kill.
Packs kill, of course, when in front of prey (killing to eat is quite normal in nature).
Struggles within the same species rarely lead to the death of one of the protagonists and are regulated mostly by ritualized gestures. In contrast, struggles between two different species tend to end with the death of one of the protagonists and are not ritualized.
But are humans and dogs considered to be the same species? “No” is the answer that spontaneously comes to mind, since it seems obvious that we are of a completely different species. And yet the correct answer is “yes”, or at least that’s what the dog should believe. This is precisely the purpose of printing.
Since the puppy begins to form on the psychological level, just like a child, from the first moments of his life, we will follow him step by step from the hour “zero” (that is to say the birth), until ‘when he discovers our existence.
