I don’t know what it is.
But dogs like me.
I didn’t notice it at first, but a member of my family pointed out that, when I’m at a family event and everyone has brought the dogs over, the dogs wind up sitting very close to me.
Yesterday, I had relatives in, including two Jack Russells.
Their dogs are typical for their breed.
And my dog is typical for hers.
But I noticed that for about four hours yesterday, I had three dogs ranging in size from 12 to 61 pounds lying within 18 inches of my feet.
Since I’ve been aware that different breeds have different levels of neontenous behavior, I’ve noticed that Jack Russells don’t “speak the same language” as golden retrievers.
I don’t think either dog figured out Miley’s play bow. And I also think Miley took their “fake growls” way too seriously. (Jack Russells often fake growl when they play. My goldens have never done this.)
Apparently dogs are very perceptive about which people admire them.
And I forever will be a dog admirer.
Most dogs love me, too. Especially sporting breeds and pits. The first GSP I ever met, back in the late 60s, liked no one but his owner, but he was atypical.
But Shih Tzus loathe me. Lhasas, however, don’t. I don’t get it. ???
And a lot of Labs I’ve met are growly when they play-wrestle, but I’ve never met a Golden who did this.
The only dogs that usually don’t like me are miniature dachshunds, and over the years the feeling is mutual. However, I really like standards, especially wire-haired standards.
The old Kurzhaar really were one person dogs. I’ve yet to meet one like that today. IMHO, they are the best woodcock dog you can get, save the Epagneul Breton (Brittany).
(This is off topic, but I find Weimaraners the strangest of the HPR’s. I find that they are closer to Plott hounds in temperament. And that makes sense considering both descend from big game hunting hounds from Germany. In fact, Weims weren’t used for pointing until relatively recently in their history.)
As for goldens growling, they only growl when they mean it. They are also closer to the full wolf behavior than Labs are. In fact, they are just slightly more neotenized than Siberian huskies.
Just out of curiosity, do you know where flatcoats are on this scale?
There are no studies on flat-coats.
The only study I know that includes goldens is this one in Stanley Coren’s book: http://books.google.com/books?id=gbZXYnE2KlgC&pg=PA142&dq=stanley+coren+dog+dialects&client=firefox-a
There were only ten dog breeds tested. Goldens and Siberian huskies were most wolf-like in their body language.
Labs were about average.
My guess is that because goldens and flat-coats are very closely related as wolf-like as goldens. Apparently, retrieving requires dogs to have a higher level mature wolf behavior than was previously suspected.
I know that my goldens have all had very sophisticated body language, and whenever they were in contact with less wolfish breeds, the other breeds never could figure them out. One of my goldens tried for a whole week to get a Jack Russell to play with her. He just couldn’t figure out the play bow.
I’m not surprised retrieving breeds require wolf-like behaviors–desire to hunt, chase when find, put mouth on prey… everything but the kill.
Herding–modified chase? Pointing–desire to hunt, chase interrupted? Guarding–inverse of prey drive?
My flat-coat often strikes me as very wolf-y, to an eerie degree. The Lab–not so much. I would hypothesize that Labs have both a high degree of the wolf-like predatory sequence AND a high degree of neotenization–there isn’t any rule that says a dog can’t have both simultaneously, is there?
Labs are much less wolf-like in their behavior than goldens. Maybe, one also has to include the golden (and possibly flat-coat) setter-like hunting behavior to get a more wolf-like behavior.
My goldens never used a fake growl but my springer does it all the time. It took me a long time to figure out what it was and now I laugh at him and start playing with him when he does it. Before I figured it out I was really confused.
My Jack’s are both play growlers. You’d think they were killing each other when they play. It always scares new people who see it.
Dogs LOVE my husband. I swear every time we go anywhere with dogs they find him and sit at his feet. I have never seen anything like the way they react to him. We were at a park the other day talking to a lady about her abused/doesn’t like strangers/super afraid of men little Aussie when the dog slowly sneaked up beside my husband and sniffed his hand. The lady was amazed.
I have seen numerous studies indicating jacks are much
smarter than golden retrievers.
LOL, Catie.
Smarter in digging up varmints, yes.
In retrieving shot birds, no.
I hope you realize that about half the people who frequent this blog are Jack Russell people, and the other half have some kind of retriever.