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Your dog is thinking about the current situation, they always do. While your dog would like you to be doing so as well, and more importantly, focusing on the now involving them, it doesn't matter if you're not. Your dog is not concerned about any future social, financial or legal situations that may detrimentally cause harm to your family. She or he is not reflecting on the past.

A dog's memories are solely used to provide the experience to evaluate and respond to current situations, whether positive or negative. He or she is now, and always will be, thinking about what she or he perceives in their immediate surrounds and how that may affect firstly their pack and secondly themselves. Most dogs view current situations purely in regard to potential impacts on their pack; you, your spouse, your children, and lastly themselves. Even when abused, most still think this way.

How much they consider these situations generally depends not on their own thoughts and abilities, but yours. Your dog is, or should be, a subordinate member of your family; what he or she conceives of as their pack. They will suppress thoughts of their own well-being if that supports the pack/family. They will quite readily recognize that the young children of the family are the young of their alpha pair, as long as you provide the leadership and dominance that declares you to be their alpha pair Your children, that as far as your dog is concerned, the pack's future depends upon; the young that your dog believes it perfectly acceptable to die to protect.

This is not a strange attitude for your dog to have. It is the natural result of its genetics and instinctive social development. This sort of devoted attitude only varies when his or her cooperative interaction with people is modified or constrained by our actions. While many breeds of dog have potential attitudes and attributes, they are general only; how they behave will be dependent on how they are raised.

All and any harm that a dog may cause any human, whether infant, child or adult, is the result of the attitude they are taught, that each individual dog receives from the human he or she predominantly associates with. The negative actions of domestic dogs in our society are always the responsibility of the humans who raise them, never the dogs themselves. That we kill dogs that attack or bite people while only minimally punishing their owners speaks very poorly for our society's sense of justice or fair play.

Dogs have the ability to be dangerous to humans, they do not have any innate desire to be so. They usually think of us as their alpha animals, and therefore their dominants. We, on the other hand, have both the desire and arrogant attitude to mistreat, abuse, harm and distort their attitudes to the detriment of others. We fail to protect some members of society from dog attacks, not because of the breeds we allow, but because of the "people" we allow to "own" and raise them.

Learn more about this author, Perry McCarney.
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